My name is Hakima Abbas. I’m the co executive director of AWID. We’re joined today by my colleague Kamee. Kamee, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself?

Our colleague, Camila, who set up the meeting and was, unfortunately, drawn into an emergency, and not able to join us. She appears here because she’s opened up the meeting for us, but she’s not actually able to join us. It’s just myself and Kamee. Minister, how would you like to be addressed?

OK. [laughs] Thank you so much for joining us on this call. We were so excited to learn about your work. To learn even that there was a digital ministry in Taiwan was exciting to us. All of the activism that you’ve done, and so we were thrilled to be able to get a meeting with you.

We thought that the best thing perhaps for this meeting, and let us know what you think, would be for us to tell you a little bit about AWID, about our engagement in Taiwan, and what we’ve been thinking in terms of technologies. We would then love to just open it and hear from you about your experience and digital work for social justice in Taiwan. Would that be OK?

OK, fantastic. AWID is global feminist membership and movement support organization. We were founded in 1982, so next year that will be 40 years. We have about 6,600 members across the world in 180 countries.

Hi, SzuHui.

[laughs]

Do you two know each other, or should we stop with a pause and do some introductions?

Fantastic. I was right in the middle of explaining what AWID is, and what we do.

Yes. We, as an organization, work on lots of different themes. One of the things that we do or are known for is what’s SzuHui was talking about, the forum. The forum is this 2,000 people event that happens every three to four years.

You can imagine what it feels like when 2,000 feminists come together from around the world in one big celebration, but also a place of deep reflection and analysis and discussion about what feminists needs to do and what it can look like. We bring from this from lots of different movements and identities and geographies.

Unfortunately, the 14th International AWID Forum has had to be cancelled because of the pandemic, and, simply, because of how difficult it has been to be able to do that in the last two years. Instead of that, we are talking about, and maybe even at a bit of a late stage in terms of where technologies are, and the possibilities.

We’re wondering how we can leverage technologies to further some of our outcomes of movement support, and what that looks like. We’ve come up with, I don’t know, some quite creative, out there ideas about what can happen and where. What we also wanted to do, was talk to people who have done this before, and find out from you all what does that look like.

Who should we be talking to? What should we be considering? What do you imagine if you could design amazing feminist tech for movements to use, what would that look like? That kind of thing. This is where your name came up. We wanted to talk to you about these kinds of things.

Yeah, thank you so much, and thank you for that language. It’s so helpful. I like the idea of assistive technologies. One of the things that we talked about…Because we have these members around the world, 6,600 in 180 countries, we felt that it would be great to use technologies to enable solidarity across movements.

To enable connection, to give people platforms where they can also gain knowledge, resources, and even, simply, have fun, but together and what that could look like. At some point, our board member joked, something like a political Tinder for…

Exactly. We were talking about, would it even be possible to almost create a feminist resource bank on this app? You could exchange skills, time and resources with one another, outside of monetary resources and all of those things. We also talked, separately from the app, about the fact that our work on what we’re calling feminist realities, alternatives…

We did say something about capturing the imagination of people. Could we use virtual realities, as you said immersive reality and that kind of thing, to give people those experiences of what an alternative and more just world could look like. Those who came here. I do want you to jump in here because I know that you’ve also been thinking about different areas of this.

I appreciate how you’ve broken them all down. The feasibility and the expense you said run, for instance, the deep and expensive resource which would be the one of forum type experience whereas the day to day continuous might be…

How would we sustain engagement over time? As you were saying, in some ways…I might download an app on my phone. It might be interesting. I might at smaller intervals make content that goes there.

Facebook is something that people have had for coming up to a long time. Is it possible to be that consistent engagement which no longer then depends on the organization like it would? It becomes almost a space where people talk to each other.

Wow. [laughs] It’s such a amazing way of thinking about all these tools that, for instance, I’m using in my day to day, but I don’t consciously know how they’re built in order to do the things that they do. The language that you’re using in the explanations are so helpful to me in terms of how these can interact with one another. I would love to hear from you.

We, as an organization, this is not our specialty. This is not what we on a day to day. What we do is the activism, and we use different tools, but we haven’t gotten this far with technology.

How would you suggest we follow into this? What’s the best approach? Is it to create an advise for people like themselves who know deeply the technology? Is it to hire a company and go with what they do and say? What would you advise?

[laughs] Thank you so much. You’re making me think of things like we should, as you said, focus may be in on two things that we can do in this year, and center it around the calls for actions as you’re saying. Then deep dive in that and think about how we generate engagement through the different mediums that exist.

I know I’m taking up a lot of the space, so I just want to also ask SzuHui and Kamee. Did you have any questions for Audrey, or things that you wanted to bring into this conversation?

Yes, thank you. Kamee, did you have anything that you wanted to bring?

My favorite part was the cat.

[laughs] Audrey, do you have any questions for us? I know we’ve been a little extractive, so I’ll let you speak. It’s all about asking you what about this? I wanted to thank you so much for your generosity and for your wisdom. It’s been fantastic to hear. Do you have any questions for us or anything?

Yes, that is. We’ve been in touch with FWRPD. When we came to Taiwan, we did site visits and met with them. Definitely, we’ll be in touch with them and find out a bit more about the summit, and what that looks like. Thank you so much.

Yeah, exactly. Fantastic. Again, I want to end by saying I can’t thank you enough for your time and for your energies. If you don’t mind, we would love to stay in touch with you?

OK, fantastic. As we go on this journey, we will be in touch and let you know how it’s going. We would love to connect with you at a later stage when we’re developing these things.

Live long and prosper. Thank you so much.

Bye bye.