TRAVELING ACROSS THE GLOBE WITH NO MONEY OR VISAS

Technological advancement has brought exciting tools for creation and consumption of content online, known as Web 2.0. These applications allow participatory information sharing as well as user-generated content and design through new media. Examples are blogs, search engines, facebook, twitter, wikis, video sharing sites, interactive news sites and Google map.
What excites me most about web 2.0 is that it enables individuals to create, edit, publish and distribute media content, whilst cutting across geographical and cultural divides. While traditional media are limited by time, space and language, new media are interactive and user-driven, giving on time demand access to real time information, and have diverse tools performing many tasks at once. They can report on everything, and to as many people as can work online.
The advent of Web 2.0 is a historical watershed in women’s lives. For generations women have been silenced by history and existed as passive recipients of male-generated media content. As women citizen journalists, we now have state-of-the art web 2.0 tools with which to project and promote our voices, reinforce collaboration with our counterparts globally and accelerate the exchange of working models for our own empowerment while providing solutions to global challenge. When we report and write the news as women, we are more likely to promote women’s political participation and expose gender based violence taking place in our communities better than our male counterparts owing to our personal experiences. Also, we are more likely to feature women as actors and news subjects, thereby challenging the existing gender stereotypes.
Web 2.0 makes women’s mobilising of ideas and resources easy. There is a rising wave of online women’s empowerment movement building globally. Blogs like PulseWire help collate women’s experiences from all over the universe, making it possible for us to connect and share experiences and visions for the future. This is a peaceful but powerful means of mitigating patriarchy to create egalitarian societies. Working online, women introduce projects and ideas to a global audience, and in turn find connections and allies that support and invigorate the work that they do offline in their communities. Women also report abuse and violence online, projecting their voices far enough for international news organisations like CNN and Reuters to capture and further publicise.
I can travel across the globe with no money or visas and share experiences that give me a new and expanded world view through collaborating online across geographical cultural, racial, class and religious divides. My voice has been amplified; I can now write and publish issues that used to be censored in my country, such as politics and sexualities with ease. Through PulseWire I have a network with interests and passions as mine. I learn about horrendous foreign practices, such as Female Genital Mutilation and breast ironing, and acquire skills women in other spaces use to mitigate patriarchy. I improve my writing and journalism skills through free PulseWire training programmes, and get my online community to peer review my work and pass comments for improvement.