FarQuest Fariha's Quest: Finding an answer to the question "Why can’t Utopia be a reality?" Wish to add some colors of Utopia to this world because I dare to dream and strive to turn my dreams into reality!

The system clock showed it was 21st January and I felt my heart beat increasing - just 9 days left, yes “JUST” because I wanted everything to be perfect. On 29th January I was traveling to Lahore after about 18 years and this time to move a tiny little step ahead in bringing about the change that APC WNSP, Bytes4All, P@SHA and millions of women across the globe are waiting to see - a world where every women feels safe and secure in offline as well as the online world. With this intention, Jehan Ara from P@SHA and I were traveling to Lahore to conduct a seminar on “ICTs and Violence Against Women - Policy Implications”. Shahzad Ahmed from Bytes4All was coming from Islamabad to join us and the SUPER WOMAN Nighat Daad - a lahore based advocate who was our Aladdin lamp to get all things organized at Lahore

We were all super excited as this session was being conducted for the female advocates from Lahore to discuss with them MDG3, Pakistan Electronic Crime Ordinance and its fallacies and TakeBackTheTech Campaign. While Shahzad and Jehan were to talk about MDG3 and PECO respectively, my job was to introduce to the legal community what TakeBackTheTech is.

Even though I had done initial brain storming but I was still not feeling relaxed because the more important part of deciding how to present it without making people sleep, was left. I did not want it to be yet another dull and boring presentation that makes people sleep and oh, the light bulb lit “boring…presentation…sleep”…oh yay! I recalled how a person once managed to fall asleep and started snorting loudly while I was conducting a workshop But hey I always thought only stories make one fall asleep so if i have to make the audience sleep anyway, why not tell a story and bingo! I came up with this presentation:

It took me quite some time to create the graphics for the presentation and the tweaking continued till even an hour before the presentation, the last hour was spent freaking out because when I roamed around the hall filled with about 80 female as well as male advocates, a few educationalists/NGO representatives and 2 senior judges Justice Nasira Iqbal - President Lahore High Court Bar Association and Mian Allah Nawaz - Ex Chief Justice Lahore High Court, I came across a lot of people who told me with raised eyebrows, “You are so young, we were expecting someone senior” :O While I told them that looks can be deceiving and ‘am actually not too young, I got worried thinking if they are going to tag my presentation a piece of junk as well because of the wit it was supposed to contain :S

With a racing heart, I walked to the rostrum to present and then I all remember was telling the story which ended with claps and a lovely smile from Justice Nasira. Alhamdulilah majority liked the presentation and found it useful.

Shahzad’s presentation about MDG3 gave them a good understanding of what MDG3 is all about and Jehan’s presentation about PECO and it’s fallacies, made them all realize the importance of having an unambiguous and comprehensive e-crime law. This even lead some of them propose an idea of having a Technical Committee and to have the topics such as Cyber Crime Law as well as Cyber Crimes be introduced to lawyers, judges as well as law students at the Judicial Academy.

As always it was heartening to see a positive participation from a lot of male members from the legal community as well who emphasized the need to draft a comprehensive law for the betterment of women.

As some educationalists were also present at the session, so they highlighted the need of conducting such awareness sessions for students too where we enlighten them about the importance of ICTs while introducing to them the dangers of it as well and telling them how they can use ICTs safely.

So, all in all the session went great and I think we really managed to change minds of at least few who I’m sure will change a few more and that’s how the chain reaction will continue…

You can read more about the session on Jehan Ara’s blog here and Shahzad’s post on behalf of Bytes4All here.

PS: For those who do not know what TakeBackThetech is? Check out my blog post:
Let’s TBTT!

technorati tags: takebackthetech