Networking for Peace

During a consultation of its steering committee members at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok in late March, ANWIC identified women’s perspectives in communication and reconciliation as a priority area for its next three-year programme. Other workshops on the same theme were planned on a sub-regional basis – in South Asia, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal; in Indo-China, including Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; in Southeast Asia covering the Philippines, Indonesia and East Timor; and in North/East Asia, including Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan.

The Sri Lankan workshop will launch the ANWIC series, and is scheduled for November. It will bring together men and women in the print and electronic media and women political and religious leaders. As a broad-based network linking women’s organisations and training them in street theatre, puppetry and folk media, WDC is in a good position to highlight women’s role in the communication and reconciliation process. In its recent report, WDC noted that one of its workshop sessions on street drama was raided by the police acting on a tip that ‘Tigers’ were being trained there. But the results of the training were worth the trauma, claimed WDC, as the Kandy-trained group, composed of Muslim and Tamil girls, put on a successful performance in Akkaraipattu village in March. One of the participants at the street drama workshop worked in this village, and she was responsible for training the performers.

Aside from the new series of reconciliation workshops, ANWIC also approved a plan to produce a video compilation of short stories on women and communication from the countries in its network. This is to be patterned after the highly successful 5-Minute Project, which came out of the Bangkok Conference and resulted in a collection of five-minute stories on women’s lives in 21 countries. The new video project will be put together by the ANWIC member in Pakistan, Moneeza Hashmi, who is a video producer and manager. Video stories are expected from Japan, Nepal, the Philippines, India and other member countries of ANWIC. The aim is to produce them by the end of the year, and have them ready for distribution in the countries of production by early 2003. Then they are to be offered for broadcast on 8th March, International Women’s Day. However, the idea is to come up with stories of timeless relevance, so that the compilation will have as long a shelf life as the original 5-Minute Project.

The consultation, which was attended by ten ANWIC members from nine Asian countries, also came up with new strategies to further strengthen the network. The Asian women’s network has grown steadily in size, with each group that organised a WACC-sponsored workshop on women and media becoming a member of ANWIC. ANWIC traces its origins to a Manila-based networking project called “WeCan”, which was launched a year after the 1987 WACC conference on Women and Media in Asia.
ANWIC’s secretariat is now based in Mangalore, India. The ANWIC coordinator, Dr Leela Rao, unveiled plans at the consultation to launch a website, which would show not only the activities of ANWIC but also those of its network members. It would also put online the ANWIC newsletter and the papers presented at conferences. The discussion of plans and strategies for the next three years came after the presentation and analysis of country reports given by each of the participants at the consultation as well as their assessment of ANWIC’s past work.

By Teresita Hermano.
ANWIC is supported by EED, Germany.