Last month, E-Mediat hosted the “New Media for the Networked NGO” conference in Jordan to celebrate the conclusion of its 18-month program. Since its inception, E-Mediat has equipped over 220 NGOs in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia with the capacity and skills to use social media to effectively advance their missions. The conference highlighted the remarkable and inspiring work of the participant NGOs and provided them with the opportunity to share valuable insights they gained from the E-Mediat program.
Beth Kanter, E-Mediat curricular designer and trainer, facilitated sessions on advanced social media and spoke on a variety of topics including content curation and measurement. (Read more about Kanter’s experience at the conference here.) Representatives from local NGOs discussed their social media strategies, success stories and the lessons learned while using social media to promote their organization’s work.
Among those in attendance were three Alumnae TechWomen Mentees from Jordan, who were moved by the concept of using technology and social media to promote social good. Afnan Ali reflects:
E-Mediat gave me some insights about the social work in Jordan and Lebanon, and how social media tools like Twitter and Facebook can really improve the efficiency of NGOs.
Fellow Mentee Thekra Dwairi, who plans to start her own nonprofit organization, was similarly inspired by the potential of social media to enhance the work of NGOs:
The most amazing thing was learning how many powerful NGOs we have in Jordan and Lebanon, and how E-Mediat is helping to educate the founders and employees in such NGOs so they can utilize social media tools properly. During the conference, we enlarged our knowledge about the best practices to launch an effective NGO in Jordan. I hope that this will be our next step.
Both Afnan and Thekra enjoyed reconnecting with familiar faces from the TechWomen 2011 cohort and IIE. Afnan recalls, “It was a true pleasure to meet again…and spend some time together talking about beautiful days we spent last year during the program.” Thekra confirmed, “It was absolutely amazing to meet Heather again in Jordan. We were very happy and had a fruitful time there.”
Thank you to provide us important informations on women initiatives programs from NGOS, but we are very sad that Palestinian women are not at all represented in the time when women are struggling to survive each day especially in Gaza Strip. We know all that Palestinian women desserve to be excluded from punishment while women and children are reported the most affected people in Gaza Strip from economic breakdown and political conflicts. Thank you to allow me to write a comment.
Thank you for your comment. We are pleased that women from the Palestinian Territories are eligible to participate in the TechWomen program. In fact, eight women participated in the 2011 program, the highest of any country represented.