[UbuntuWomen] Introducing myself to the group

[vid]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 18:15, Ms. Somoe Mkwachu <somoe at udsm.ac.tz> wrote:
> Dear members of the group,
> I'm happy to have accepted to join the group,
> Let me introduce myself,
> I'm Ms Somoe Mkwachu by the name. I'm a Tanzanian Masters  student in the
> University of Dar es Salaam Tanzania. I'm employed in the University of
> Dar es Salaam Computing Centre Ltd as acting Quality Control and Business
> Development Manager. I'm 32 years old, a married woman with four kids. The
> first born is a boy and the rest are girls.
> Status of Ubuntu users in Tanzania is starting to pick up from the effort
> of few projects, but majority are still using Windows O/S and other
> proprietary software.
> To women I can say no initiatives have been taken to encourage and empower
> computer users on using Ubuntu, although there are many women workers
> using computers.

Hi Somoe and Welcome to UW :) The Tanzanian situation you describe is
quite similar to my country (India).  Things are changing but impo,
its very slow for non-technical folks. Among various other issues, its
also the lack of awareness and of choice (-- an OS that is not
Windows) and sometimes a reluctance to bridge the fear of "learning
Linux". Plus bandwidth issues prevent home users/new users from
downloading the whole OS --folks would trust the Ubuntu CD's and I can
easily convince them about the lack of viruses and how to get updates
thereafter :)



> I suggest we should have some projects for creating awareness on the
> benefits of Ubuntu to women be initiated.

Do you have a local LUG? See. http://india.linuxchix.org/wiki/LC-Labs
We had two companies sponsoring space for Mumbai and Bangalore. Sadly,
not many women were interested. It would be easier to get some thing
similar going with like-minded folks from your local city/state LUG.
If you can find volunteers to co-ordinate then weekend sessions would
be a good start and just maybe the University of Dar es Salaam may
want to provide hall space or machines or something else.

Hope these suggestions were useful.

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