South Sudanese colleagues visiting Berlin

With a range of exciting events happening these days in Berlin we are very happy to welcome three of our colleagues from South Sudan.

The founders of the #Go Girls ICT Initiative Yine Yenki and Eva Yayi as well as Bior Jaden attended the annual Global Innovation Gathering, presented at this year’s 12th edition of re:publica and will attend the Open Tech Summit here in Berlin.

Meet’n’greet

We celebrated their arrival with our own annual tradition of the r0g_agency meet’n’greet and presented the key milestones of our work:

• the Open Hardware Field Kit #ASKotec
• the Hate Speech Awareness project #DefyHateNow with our current social media campaign #Thinkb4uclick
• a special sneak preview screening of DEFY – the film the new film by Sam Lukudu and Cont de Monk; shot and produced entirely on location in Juba, South Sudan

GoGirls ICT is a Juba, South Sudan based non-profit initiative employing a philosophy of ‘Chain Based Trainings (CBTs)’. They focus on mentoring independent, innovative and confident girls and women who can proudly compete with their male counterparts in the world of ICT. #GoGirlsICT emerged in late 2015 in conjunction with the South Sudan #peacehackcamp, and now regularly trains a group of ca. 90 young women in IT and social media literacy skills as both a means of protection against gender based violence as well as  for peacebuilding.

John Bior Ajang, who along with Yine Yenki is a #defyhatenow social media correspondent, acts as a community-based youth trainer in Bor, South Sudan. Having helped develop #ASKotec – the Access to Knowledge Open Tech Emergency Case, Bior’s mission is that of an education oriented activist and peace-builder, focusing his energy on the building of equitable, informed and empowered communities in South Sudan.

Global Innovation Gathering summit

This year’s GIG summit again provided plenty of networking and brainstorming opportunities with likeminded social innovators from around the globe.

Amongst many other vivid discussions, we agreed to follow up on previous #PeaceHackCamps in order to get the next destinations prepared: Zimbabwe, Mexico, and South Sudan.

#ASKotec workshop

During re:publica and together with Timm Wille from Open Source Ecology Germany, we presented the #ASKotec: our emergency field kit for Access to Skills and Knowledge to a highly interested audience.

No women no web

On day 3 of re:publica, Yine Yenki and Eva Yayi were part of a panel entitled No women, no web – Digital skills trainings in fragile contexts; exploring the potentials and challenges of teaching digital skills to female users in fragile contexts like South Sudan, Lebanon and Pakistan.