Getting my tweeps to follow! Navigating Twitter

Facilitator Nadine Moawad from the Association of Progressive Communications started day 4 of #ASAPYAI by giving the group some tips on how to build an audience on Twitter. She shared that people are more likely to follow personal accounts on Twitter and organization pages on Facebook. Therefore on Twitter one needs to be concise, use trending #hashtags, build your group of followers by following those who interest you and use videos.

Online Security 
“What was the FIRST security breach in History? – Ali Baba overhearing the password ‘Open Sesame’ ” – Nadine Moawad

Participants learned how an email gets sent from one point to another and how our security and confidentiality can be compromised during the process. The facilitator emphasized that digital security should ideally give confidentiality, authentication, integrity and anonymity but today’s technology makes online security difficult. As #SRHR activists we need to make sure we’re digitally secure because otherwise we compromise the security and confidentiality of others in our networks.

Click here to download Nadine Moawad’s presentation

Threat Modeling

There was an exercise where participants were grouped by regional commonalities and asked to chart what online security issues they’re likely to face in their work, the data they want to protect, whom they want to protect it from, how likely is it that they will need to protect it and the consequences of not doing so.

Participants identified anti-choice, religious and government agencies as groups that they needed to protect themselves from. They shared how consequences of security breaches could be immense – including the compromise of the identities of those seeking help and those working in the organization. And in countries where reproductive health rights are limited, security compromises could result in legal prosecution for those in our networks. Participants learned measures they can take at a personal level to enhance their online security such as creating secure passwords.

Creating Content that others want to View!

Nadine gave the participants tips on how they could create content that others want to read and share online. She suggested that online audiences love to read ‘Listicals’: content that gives a list of information and is quick to read. Another content format that online audiences love are infographics: representing data visually by images and graphics. Participants analyzed existing examples of infographics that use mapping, percentages, and comparisons to make their content more interesting.

“Get people to identify with us by looking for something similar that they can connect to” – Nadz

Participants worked individually to create their own content. Some created blog posts, others made infographics and a few formed a group to enact a play on reproductive rights.

SMALL GRANTS

ASAP YAI 2015 concluded with Youth champions from previous YAI’s sharing their own experience of receiving small grants and the projects they carried out. Participants were then given an opportunity to create their own project proposals.