Acting Locally, Connecting Globally
Stories from the Regions
Writers: Nani Buntarian, Cheekay Cinco, Karin Delgadillo, Dorothy Okello, Dafne Sabanes Plou, Chat Garcia Ramilo, Sonia Jaffe Robbins, Marie-Helene Mottin Sylla, the Women’sNet Team

From the Baltic to the South China Sea, from the Mexican Gulf to the Andean mMountains, from. From New York to Senegal, from Johannesburg to Seoul — . Aall over the world, women in towns, cities and mountain villages are being connected to the Internet. While some feared the loss tof identities and self-determination in cyberspace, there are are those who found find their own voice and will to action.

In "Connecting Locally, Acting Globally," women from diverse geographies and cultures tell how their communities are defining the Internet, and how they are themselves redefined by the experience. The telling comes in different tones: some voices were are terse, some verbosevoluble, and some quietly passionate. But all are, in the end, inspiring.

* * *

"In my view, the telecentre and the Internet when they were integrated into the community became tools for aiding community development. They also served as instruments to unearth deeper community problems, those that festered and were kept hidden like rape and incest. However, these tools are not in themselves the forces that finally altered the relations of power within the community. The power to transform the relations in the community comes from the women's new-found strength, their realisation that it is alright to demand changes, and the discovery of their voices by which to assert themselves."

- Karin Delgadillo, Finding One's Voice in the Internet

"The luxury to touch each other, and thereby experience virtual bonding with other activists, is essentially the core appeal of Rumpun e-mail Perempuan. It is a space that allows Indonesian women activists to gain a sense of oneness, of being in it together, through every challenge encountered during these times of unpredictability. The human strength that can be drawn from this seemingly fragile virtual body has time and again proved to be valuable to the whole movement."

- Nani Buntarian, Rumpun e-mail Perempuan

"When the NATO bombing of Serbia and Kosovo/a/a began in March 1999, women-east-west was was inundated with messages. They ranged from arguments for and against the bombing, meditations on what was happening, news reports and commentaries, pleas for support and angry outbursts. The posts themselves generated hotly contested discussions as anti-nationalists and advocates of non-violence nonviolent women, from the war zone or and from far away, tried to comprehend not only what was happening and what they happening but felt along with others their own emotions as well as those of others caught up in fear and the violence they had no control over."
- Sonia Jaffe Robinson, Network of East-West Women

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Part 1: Putting Beijing Online
Part 2: Networking for Change
Part 3: Acting Locally, Connecting Globally

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