Gender

The second of the 2 partners hosting the Aunty Jane hotline in Nairobi made time to answer some of our questions this morning. Their publicity of the service has been widespread and includes Mombasa, Eastern and Nakuru in addition to Nairobi. Their callers include men but the service is predominantly used by young women.

Although without their own IT department, the retention of key, trained personnel has ensured that the service has been sustained and reliable since it went live over 6 months ago.

Akeyo has been a community health worker for 7 years. Fathiya is also a community health worker, living positively with HIV for the last 15 years and grandmother to 4 kids. Gathoni is both a community health worker and a sex worker and mother of 2.

We were privileged to meet and talk with these 3, who are helping the women of their community, each using their own experiences to break down barriers and empower women facing the same hardships and issues in Korogocho.

The purpose of our trip this week is to evaluate projects using Freedom Fone in Nairobi, specifically to understand their challenges and constraints and to celebrate their successes.

It is posited that, despite the mainstream opinion that technology is gender neutral, cultural values and practices have more tended to exclude women from access to and power over different technologies. Read the article