On Saturday, June 19, 2010 and Saturday, June 26, 2010, we’re holding a 2-part Graphics 101 workshop with graphic designer Maya El-Helou.

Each session will take place between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM at our office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions).

Given the undeniable power of images and graphics to express ourselves as well as support and/or illustrate our messages, El-Helou will be guiding participants through the use of vector-based design program Adobe Illustrator.

Pre-Requisites: No design skills are required. But participants should have Illustrator installed on their computers. If you don’t have the program on your computer, please come to the workshop at least 10 minutes earlier, so that we can install it for you.

The workshop is free of charge. Places are limited to 15. To register, please email farah@nasawiya.org with a little bit about you. Priority goes to young women and young activists of both or neither gender.

The agenda of the meeting is very flexible. Participants will be proposing different workshops they’d like to give / receive. And together, we can definitely make sure it’s a great empowering feminist meeting. You can read more here and email info@arabtechies.net to participate. The organizers are sponsoring 30 female participants from across the Arab world. Feel free to contact us too, if you have any questions or suggestions.

The main criteria are:

• Woman
• Techie (i.e. works with technology, not only internet technology but also communications, engineering, software, hardware, etc.)
• Arab
• Interested in the intersection of gender and tech
• Able to come to Lebanon from May 11 till May 15

Hurry up and apply. They’re on a rolling deadline – as soon as their openings are filled, they will close.

Please forward this to all of your friends who might be interested.

Run by software developer and blogger Liliane Assaf, the workshop will take place between 11:00 AM and 1:oo PM at our office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions).

Assaf, who’s been blogging since July 2006 at Independence ’05: Thoughts and Opinions from Beirut, will show participants how to set up a blog, explain the different forms of blogging, and will give tips on how to maintain and market a blog using social media.

The workshop is free of charge. Places are limited to 15. To register, please email farah[at]nasawiya.org with a little bit about you. Priority goes to young women and young activists of both or neither gender.

After a series of successful workshops on empowering young women to use ICTs for social change and an equally successful gender initiative at ArabNetME, Nasawiya is thrilled to announce the launch of Take Back the Tech in Beirut. We are now part of a global collective of organizations, feminists, and geeks working on reclaiming information and communication technology (ICT) to promote gender equality.

With Take Back the Tech / Arabia, we aim to:

• Encourage, train, and support young women to use ICTs creatively, purposefully, and efficiently
• Encourage girls to geek up and venture into tech-related careers
• Promote a gender lens among tech initiatives in the Arab world, especially those in the non-profit sector
• Create and support online initiatives, programs, and applications to fight violence against women
• Bridge feminism and communication rights in the Arab world

We invite you to join forces with us! For more information, email n.moawad[at]gmail.com

Maya Zankoul's own illustration of our workshop

“Our emotions change very quickly. We should be able to draw them out quickly too,” said web developer/comics artist Maya Zankoul at the beginning of the workshop she held at our office on Saturday, 27 March 2010.

She explained how illustration is a way of communication, of representation, and how the right brain is intuitive and random, allowing us to see that a stick is not just a stick.

And then, she invited us to draw something that bothered us. Some of us used pencils and papers; others used Paint and Illustrator, which Maya uses for her autobiographical blog, Maya’s Amalgam.

So we all let it rip. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. What do you think of these illustrations?

If your illustration is not here, please do forward it to us and we’ll add it to the gallery.

Led by web developer Mireille Raad, the workshop will take place between 11:00 AM and 1:30 PM at our office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions).

WordPress is a leading open source web-publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a user-friendly work flow, a rich plug-in architecture, and an advanced templates system.

The objective of the workshop is to help WordPress users get a better understanding of the application itself to be able to customize their themes, according to their needs. So if you’ve attended our first WordPress workshop, which was given by Nadine Moawad in February, this is definitely your chance to add to your knowledge and improve your handling of the tool.

Pre-Requisites: Participants have to:

• Have a basic understanding of how the web works, including FTP, hosting and web servers;
• Have a general idea about WordPress.

The workshop is free of charge. Places are limited to 15. To register, please email farah@nasawiya.org with a little bit about you. Priority goes to young women and young activists of both or neither gender.

Led by graphic/web designer and illustrator Maya Zankoul, the workshop will take place between 11:00 AM and 1:30 PM at our office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions).

Zankoul, who’s behind the famed illustrated blog on her life in Lebanon Maya’s Amalgam, will be sharing tips on how to tell stories with simple and fast illustrations.

Doodlers, novice illustrators and curious feminists are welcome.

Pre-Requisites: No drawing skills are required. But participants should have Illustrator or Paint installed on their computers.

The workshop is free of charge. Places are limited to 15. To register, please email farah@nasawiya.org with a little bit about you. Priority goes to young women and young activists of both or neither gender.

The conference will take place on March 25-26, 2010 at Habtoor, Grand Hotel, Lebanon.

If you’re a young Lebanon-based female student with a strong knowledge and interest in online technologies and processes, and you would like to take part in this unique event, please write to farah@nasawiya.org before Tuesday, March 23, 2010.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 – Book Club – 7:00 PM – T-Marbouta
Nasawiya is kicking off its Book Club (Kira’at Nasawiya) with a discussion on women and quota in light of the newly adopted 20% quota for women in the upcoming municipal elections. The discussion will take place at 7:00 PM at T-Mmarbouta in Hamra (call 01-447192 for directions).

Thursday, February 18, 2010 – Theater Workshop – 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM – IndyACT Office
Nasawiya continues its theater of the oppressed workshops in preparation for International Women’s Day with another 2-hour session starting at 7:00 PM at the IndyACT office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions).

Saturday, February 20, 2010 – Imaging Workshop – 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM – IndyACT Office
The second workshop in our Gender and IT program will be on “Optimizing Images for the Web.” Led by Art Director Naeema Zarif, the workshop will take place between 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM at the IndyACT office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions). Participants should have basic knowledge in computer use and preferably have photoshop CS3 installed on their computers.

All events and workshops are free. No registration is required, except for the “Optimizing Images for the Web” workshop, as places are limited to 15. To reserve your place, please email farah@nasawiya.org with a little bit about you. Priority goes to young women and young activists of both or neither gender.

Using WordPress, you can build a website or blog with lots of interactive features really easily. See our Arab Feminisms website as an example.

The training will take place over two days:

Saturday, February 6 from 11am – 1pm
Introduction to WordPress and its different features: themes, plugins, integration, customization.
A practice homework.

Monday, February 8 from 7pm – 8pm
Recap of workshop + presentation of practice homework for comments

The training is free, and will take place at the IndyACT office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions) with a wireless connection for those of you who want to try out features during the workshop. It will be given by Nadine Moawad.

To register, please email farah@nasawiya.org with a little bit about you. We have 15 places available and priority goes to young women and young activists of both or neither gender.