condom ah di ting

On March 21st I gave a short talk on blogging during a workshop to a woman’s advocacy group. It was a small group of about 5 women and I’m not sure if they were all positive or not but either way, they were compelled to let Jamaica know the importance of safe sex.

They ladies spoke a lot to the abuse of women in their communities. Some shared stories from their own lives. One story I heard in particular opened my eyes, it was one of those stories that leaves you with goosebumps you know? I don’t even know how ethical it would be to share details of this story with you so I’m going to spare them. All in all I think I was in this workshop for a greater purpose than just to share my knowledge of blogging, I had lessons to learn…

I was grateful that the women were extremely easy to work with they were respectful of me during my fumbles to get thoughts out in a cohesive manner. For most of the women they had not really used computers much so I was starting from ground zero with them. In the end when the blog was up and we had posted a little bit and it started to look like something they were really excited… It was amazing to see them get so happy over it. I felt accomplished and it was so simple for me. We took pictures of condoms and posted them up on the blog with their appropriate uses which was a lot of fun we played around a little bit especially with the big wooden dildo.

They even paid me a 1000 JA dollar honorarium at the end which I was not expecting. I learned a lot from the conversations about violence against women in Jamaica and how it has affected them and about the inequalities between men and women that exist today that go unnoticed. I also felt the importance of my presence because of the knowledge I carry about social media coming from a first world country and how my sharing the knowledge that I take so lightly is so huge to people who have never used such tools before.

So we were supposed to meet again since then but I haven’t heard from them… I hope we do because we haven’t worked on the blog for over a month now.

take a look for yourself: http://positiveadvocates.tumblr.com/