African Women & Water Conference to use PWX

Attendees of African Women and Water Conference (AWWC) will learn how to use Blue Planet Run Foundation's Peer Water Exchange (PWX) as a tool to manage their funding and projects and to collaborate, and share their experiences.

The AWWC is a five-day conference that will equip fifteen pairs of African women from diverse parts of Africa to create and implement a water service project in their hometown. The PWX sessions will teach the conference participants to: structure a project application on PWX, participate in peer reviews of their own and others’ applications, and manage project reporting on-line. Melinda Kramer of Women’s Earth Alliance was excited to include PWX training: “PWX is a great platform for managing these small projects and keeping these women in touch with each other. It is more than a platform, it’s a powerful philosophy”.

The participants have a varied range of familiarity with computers and the internet, so there is going to be many individual sessions to ensure that all have a basic working knowledge of PWX. Gemma Bulos of A Single Drop is an active member of PWX and feels that PWX gives the attendees who have some experience doing social projects a powerful voice, “Not only will they get a web presence which they might not have, they also get a voice and a vote on a global level. The peer review system brings value to the experience that the people in the field possess.”

The AWWC is going to be held in Nairobi from June 30 to July 5, 2008, at the home of Wangari Maathai's Greenbelt Movement. The AWWC (www.africanwomenandwater.org) is organized by A Single Drop, Groots Kenya, Crabgrass, and Women's Earth Alliance in partnership with Greenbelt Movement. PWX (www.peerwater.org) is a project of the Blue Planet Run Foundation (www.blueplanetrun.org).