Visualising Women's Rights Begins

On the 5th December 55 people dedicated to advancing women's rights will be heading off into the middle of the Jordanian desert on a 3-day adventure of networking, skill-share and learning. There, staying at Feynan Ecolodge, they will explore how the visual presentation of important data can create powerful campaigns on issues such as gender-based violence, family law, women's political participation and the representation of women in the media.

Over 100 women's rights activists – both those affiliated to NGOs and those working independently – working on women's rights in the Arab region applied to attend this event organised and facilitated by Tactical Tech. Our final selection includes 45 participants from Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and a smaller number from Egypt, Yemen and Syria. Most of these men and women have been working in this field for the past five years and more and their areas of focus include around 20 different themes related to women's rights. We are certain this mix of expertise and areas of work will will create an atmosphere for learning and debate.

In plenary sessions, participants will be exploring the process of visualising information from finding the right data for your message to creating a story which speaks to your target audience. For the rest of the time participants will be divided into one of three tracks – information design, geographical mapping and imaging and animation – which they selected at the point of application. The facilitators for these tracks include Tactical Tech's co-founders Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski who will be running the information design track, Southern African animator and social scientist, Tessa Lewin and Egyptian art-activist, Sarah Rifaat, doing the imaging and animation track as well as mappers, Sandra Sudhoff from the German NGO CartONG and, Abdelrahman, a blogger and techie from Egypt.

Everyone who applied to attend the event did so with a specific campaign which they aim to develop over the three days. At the end, we'll see a “show-and-tell” of sorts where everyone can present their campaign idea and plans for implementation to the rest of the group.

We'll be posting updates from the event on the Visualising Women's Rights website and on Twitter.