Desiging Feminist CCCIs

LocNet 2025

Designing Feminist Community Centered Connectivity Initiatives

RATIONALE 

Community Centred Connectivity Initiatives (CCCI) are diverse in their models. They are usually designed by members of the community or by technical advisors who are looking for technical solutions to community connectivity or to community communication needs. The models of building CCCIs which are successful rely on the community's willingness and interest in upholding and maintaining these initiatives. CCCIs require time, resources technical skills and know-how. They can exacerbate or decrease inequalities in a certain community depending on who they end up centring in their services.

Feminists have been articulating the need to centre intersecting social and political issues in digital technology in various fields and areas. The work that women, queer, gender-diverse folks have been doing in CCCI over the years clearly indicates the need for CCCIs to hold a different approach to centre women’s lived experiences and realities.

CCCIs are also a reflection of their social and communal ecosystem. The exclusion of women and other marginalized groups from CCCIs often start at the inception stages when community participatory practices fall short due to an array of reasons: at times the lack of women techies discourages women from learning, other times women have reported that these spaces do not give them space to talk about the issues that are present in a community or issues that matter to them. Often, tech trainings take place at times and spaces which are not accessible to women who are tending to other work.

At LocNet, we value that CCCIs rely on the interconnectedness of the infrastructure of the community itself and the relationships between community members. We acknowledge the power dynamics and the way that community members engage with one another. We also respect relational dynamics of the trust or mistrust that exist and the ability of a community to make decisions that are beneficial for everyone. We also have noticed that the primary focus of gender engagement and integration must centre the community itself in all its complexities of power dynamics and power structures and that tech is secondary.

Therefore, this document details a gender integration programme which holds intersectional feminist principles based on models of community integration.

We propose an intervention framework design that aims to build intentional inclusive and community informed connectivity spaces with gender integration politics at its core.

This design or approach is primarily catered to women, queer and gender diverse folks in CCCIs who wish to take on and pass on a spectrum of issues and topics that are relevant to designing, building and sustaining CCCIs.

DESIGN

The comprehensive design allows the one leading the learning process the option to choose from these five major modules

Element I
Community communication, understanding dynamics and conflict resolution.

Element II
Holding women circles: going back to the craft of ancestral ways of community building.

Element III
Developing self-confidence through learning technological solutions and gaining technical skills digital security (networking and local servers).
technical knowledge and learn in a welcoming environment. it will equip them with the necessary skills to overcome challenges they might face and most importantly, to pass on the knowledge to their communities.

Applicants will need to commit to passing over the knowledge they gain to their communities in the form of workshops or circles.

Applicants will receive small grants as part of the CoP on gender to design and lead knowledge workshops in their communities or contexts.

Element IV
Documentation, community archiving and community memory.

Element V
SPACE

SPACE - Socio Political Advocacy for Community Networks Engagement is a capacity-building and movement-building programme that was conceived and designed within the LocNet initiative in 2021.

SPACE was designed to be a safe space that supports and equips women, gender-diverse, queer and trans individuals to take on leadership roles for community network advocacy in policy and regulatory spaces.

The SPACE programme was designed to expose participants to a wide pool of women, who have been leaders in the policy advocacy environment of CNs and the Internet in general. SPACE was intended to be a mentorship programme for participants to learn from and be inspired by the mentors and fellow participants who they will have the chance to exchange learning time with.

The SPACE programme was held in two iterations whereby it was conceived as a mentorship programme that aims to bring together digital community network practitioners and advocates, as well as internet governance and digital rights activists based in the global South to enhance the participants’ understanding and skills so that they can engage in effective advocacy aimed at fostering an enabling community network policy framework that intersects with local gender rights.

In 2021 and 2022, the SPACE chapters held an overarching global approach to common problems. The chapters invited the participants to reflect on their local experiences. The chapters held an intersectional feminist approach to policy advocacy.

SPACE in its new iteration

In light of the women circles and the consultations held in the focus countries in 2024, particularly in Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia. The LocNet team will be moving forward with SPACE in having local or country editions of SPACE. The programme will now be imagined as a feminist capacity and movement building programme which responds to specific needs of the local context.

Crafting community infrastructure: feminist practices for gender integration in community centered connectivity

The SPACE programme itself will cover the below local chapters

1. Lived experiences of communities (mapping the community landscape social and political dynamics and realities)

2. Articulating and thinking gender in the local context

3. Technology advancement and the environment

4. Community Centered Communication

5. Policy advocacy strategies for CCCs

Each chapter be led by one main mentor who will then accompany one or two participants in mentorships (what we previously referred to as spaceships)