After hanging around for a few more minutes, one might notice the constant circulation of women who come in and out throughout the day.  The women sit down with the two staff-members, Executive Director Ana Moraga and Program Coordinator Wendy Rosales, spilling the recent news and gossip and chatting away about their lives.  They have ups and downs like any other woman I know.  They might bring up concerns about their children not attending school, or anxieties they’re having about their family members’ financial troubles.  So what’s special about this organization?  The women come from one of most marginalized groups of women in Guatemala (not to mention the rest of the world).  The women are sex workers.

MuJER, which stands for Mujeres por la Justicia, Educación, y Reconocimiento (Women for Justice, Education, and Awareness), is a small non-profit organization dedicated to assisting women sex workers in Guatemala City in empowering themselves through classes ranging from literacy courses to beauty certification courses.  MuJER also advocates for the human rights of sex workers.  Fundraising, as for many non-profit organizations, is a key ingredient in MuJER’s success.  But the serious challenges inherent in trying to raise donations with such a tiny full-time staff, a challenging and unique mission, and a clientele of low-income, and often socially rejected women are undeniable. 

The question, then, is how does such a small, under-resourced organization raise enough funds and make enough of an impression on potential donors to sustainably achieve its objectives and provide its services to the women?  The answer lies in the Internet. 

MuJER is merely four years old.  It has 501(c)3 status in the United States so that Americans can make tax-deductible donations to the organization.  One of MuJER’s main fundraising goals is to market itself to American donors, as there are many US donors who are interested in global human rights issues (not to mention that there are significantly larger numbers of donors ready and willing to donate to non-profit organizations in the US than there are in Guatemala).  But how would someone in the US even learn of MuJER?  And why would anyone from the US contribute to MuJER over other organizations? 

These were some of the important questions Ana Moraga, the co-founder and Executive Director of MuJER, had to grapple with over the past few years so that this past summer, when I arrived as an intern, the first task on my list was to assist in the redesigning of the website.  MuJER’s original website was not especially inviting, interactive, or informative.  Donating was not really possible through the site and there were no profiles of the women, very few pictures, and only a brief summary of how the organization was founded and what its goals were. 

Throughout the summer, the web-designer Walter Aguilar, Ana Moraga, and I set out to recreate MuJER as an internationally connected, socially networked, interactive, and trailblazing organization that would inspire donors to donate, volunteers to volunteer, and others to simply read, discover, and get to know the organization.  We completely redesigned the website (mujerguatemala.org) adding pictures, personal and inspirational stories from the women, information on the challenges facing sex workers in Guatemala, and an online store selling the jewelry the women make in their jewelry workshop (jewelry is bought through PayPal or Google Checkout).  The site was built on WordPress, a free, open source web design system that makes it easy for non-techies to contribute to changes on the site.  

“Through the website, people actually know about us in the States,” says Moraga.  “We just got a volunteer who is going to be with us for a year and she found out about us through the website,” she cheerfully remarks. 

With the new website up and running, we realized that MuJER could potentially connect with many more people if it diversified its use of social networking tools.  Thus, we created a facebook page and a twitter account and invited friends from near and far to join the group. 

While these are all important accomplishments for an organization like MuJER, there are countless more steps the organization can take to increase its online readership, self-advocacy, and fundraising potential.  When I left in August, I couldn’t help but feel anxious about the fate of the organization’s Internet connectedness.   I was leaving, Moraga was planning on moving to the States in October, and we were both concerned about who would keep the website, facebook page, and twitter account active and up to date. 

The problem many small non-profits face lies in the lack of staff time available to make full use of all of the good the Internet can bring to an organization.  Without updates, tweets, wall posts, and blog entries, potential supporters in the US might lose interest and forget about an organization as geographically distant and unknown to the US public as MuJER.  As a former intern, I have an immense amount of respect and appreciation for the incredible work MuJER has done and is still doing with and for sex workers in Guatemala, but I worry about it not accomplishing as much as it can if it doesn’t find a way to keep up with the pack.  Hopefully this won’t be the case.

Peter Gabriel created WITNESS, a non-profit organization based in Brooklyn, NY, that uses video and online technologies to broadcast human rights violations across the globe.  Ultimately, WITNESS became an organization that reinforces the notion of turning stories of abuse into tools for justice while promoting public engagement and policy change.

While many NGO’s are  now creating full time media departments, they have only begun to understand and embrace the power of online technology.  On the other hand, WITNESS has relied on video and online technology from the beginning. WITNESS’s mission of using video and online technology to document human rights violations relies heavily on a philosophy of promoting values of partnership, shared learning, and adaptability in the face of change.   This created a foundation from which a belief in participatory media developed and lead to the creation of the WITNESS Hub.

LEARN MORE ABOUT WITNESS – VIDEO

The WITNESS website describes the Hub as “an online destination and a global channel for human rights, where anyone anywhere with access to the internet can upload, view, share, and connect with others around media that can serve as a catalyst for social action.”   The Hub has been an integral and successful component to WITNESS’s profile in the human rights arena, but could that change as we move towards new technological tools and processes?

The rapid rate of technological advancements today poses significant challenges to organizations that utilize technology in promoting their agendas.  As these changes in technology occur, an organization such as WITNESS may ask them self if they were to start all over today, would they use the same technology and platforms?  Additionally, they may want to ask how they will manage future changes in technology.

WITNESS is not a technology company and doesn’t have the expertise or resources to monitor changes that may impact their use of video and online forums.  They might benefit from partnership with a technology organization that can  specializes in new technology and platform building.

The next thing WITNESS might ask themselves is, is there a need for another platform like the Hub? We’re seeing more and more independent video platforms pop up around the world.  Do activists need this?  Does human rights need this?  A source from WITNESS believes that the best way to answer these questions is to conduct a much needed study and survey in order to find out what human rights really needs today.

Another important component to consider is the changing media landscape.  A source from WITNESS explains that the original hope of the hub was to create an outlet for activists without corporate restrictions.  However, tools and technologies have since been outdated by the changing media landscape.  An initial goal of having  a space where groups could create their own pages and have peer exchange as a way share ideas and blog.  There were a lot of big ideas the source explained.  Unfortunately, these big ideas sometimes were slowed down and hindered by technological issues.

This emphasizes the key issue about the importance of accessibility, especially when the intended purpose of the online tools is to create a participatory media environment.

One of the most important issues though revolves around security and ethics.  How do you address the online ethics surrounding human rights?  Were WITNESS decide to move forward in creating a new platform, questions regarding safety and security would be at the core of their decision making.

Just look at Youtube.   A WITNESS source explains how Youtube has many qualities that are concerning to activists.  These include the fact that they own the rights to any media you might post on their site, even you decide to eventually remove the material.  This creates a dilemma surrounding questions of ownership and censorship.  The source continues that “We cannot not use Youtube, but we have to be very conscious about what the limits and rights are and what we can do to think about human rights values.”.   She goes on to say that what they can do is encourage Youtube to embrace adaptive policies to make more activist friendly.

The WITNESS Hub’s initial popularity illustrated that there was indeed a need for a blog designed for advocacy, specifically video for change.  This is where it had proven to be most successful, with people engaging with projects from the WITNESS website.  It’s worth acknowledging that when WITNESS was first conceptualized, Youtube was not what it is today. Since Youtube was first created, there had been a pervasive increase of mobile cameras and consequently the elasticity of Youtube and online and video technology is very different from when the Hub was conceived.

Today there is a shift in rational.  The source concludes by illuminating that  “the important thing to say is that we thought we were going to be at the front end for the human rights video use, we thought people were going to come to us. Now we believe it is better to go to where people are and infiltrate their spaces with our values. Lets go to Youtube and infiltrate their space with human rights values that witness holds.”