International: AWID launches the Young Feminist Wire

Welcome to AWID’s new online portal that brings together young feminists working on gender equality and women’s rights all over the world. The idea is simple: we believe in the powerful opportunities the internet presents for activists today. This Wire is a resource for feminists of all genders and ages, especially young women.

Young women are claiming more and more bandwidth online every year through personal and community blogs, Facebook groups, YouTube channels, and Twitter accounts. While access to the internet remains a challenge for many around the world, the increase of web usage and changing nature of information sharing offers fantastic opportunities to network for women’s rights.

Already, young feminists have been using cyberspace creatively to create discussions and tools around gender equality. Kolena Laila, an organized week of blogging around women’s issues,  is one such initiative created by young women in Egypt. The first of our monthly posts to the Profiles of Young Feminist Initiatives is an interview with Eman Abdelrahman, one of the people behind Kolena Laila. In other parts of the Wire, our team will be regularly posting news, funding and publishing opportunities,resources and activities for members to work on projects together online and offline. If you are a young women aged 30 years old or under, please register to join the Wire community. We have also tailored our posts to enable women’s rights activists of all generations, who are interested in young women’s activism, to connect, learn more, and become allies. The directories of Young Women-Led Initiatives, Young Women’s Programs, and Young Women Online will be continuously updated. The Wire is a work in progress, so your input on the whole site is important and welcome!

It is an exciting and challenging time to be launching this new online initiative. Women around the world celebrated the 100th edition of International Women’s Day earlier this year. In March, fifteen years after the Beijing Platform, women’s rights advocates met at the 54th Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations to critically examine progress around gender issues. And yet, new and emerging challenges continue to impact women’s rights organizing everywhere in the world from the financial crisis to the natural disaster in Haiti, from climate change to religious fundamentalisms.