Ananke has partnered with leading organisations and world renowned field experts to kickstart its flagship capacity building program, Empower, in January 2023. Partners include organisations like London School of Economics’ think-tank JournalismAI, Pollicy, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, Media Matters for Democracy, WomeninTechPK, and The Gender Security Project.
Empower was launched in 2016 and has to date trained and mentored more than 75 girls from all over the world especially the Global South that includes countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi, Cameroon, Morocco, Pakistan, India, the UAE, Bangladesh, Belarus, China, Russia, Australia, Bahamas and more.
Under the umbrella of Ananke Labs, the organisation has also successfully organised numerous online and offline events such as Twitterchats, IBMZ bootcamps, ICT workshops and Ananke’s Girl Summit as well as Women in Literature Festival. Selected individuals get to actively participate in all Ananke events.
Ananke’s Founder and Executive Editor, Sabin Muzaffar said: “Ananke offers a wide array of capacity building and leadership programs with the vision to create a talent-pool of female trailblazers, enabling them to work at the intersection of journalism, communication and development by leveraging emerging tech. Many of our past interns are proof of how creating a safe, constructive space for women in the digital sphere paves way for creativity and innovation. There is this beautiful sense of mutual respect and camaraderie that comes out of this program. We have achieved this before and I am happy to anticipate that this cohort will be no difference.”
Talking about the collaboration, one of Empower’s key partners Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism’s (ARIJ) Director General, a filmmaker, and media specialist, Rawan Damen said: “At ARIJ, we are committed to improving our network's digital literacy, through collaborations aimed at creating an aware foundation to ensure a safe and secure digital presence, with the rising digital threats, especially those against women. This collaboration is another important step in our commitment to raising awareness towards current risks.”
Empower offers access to safe digital spaces and enables participants to work in a virtual environment with peers living in different parts of the world. Shortlisted participants hail from countries including Canada, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Last year, the 2021 cohort had the opportunity to attend workshop on a wide array of topics including adaptive leadership, feminist peace journalism, design thinking, growth mindset, breaking your limiting beliefs, personal branding, overcoming the imposter syndrome, guide to financial independence, problem identification and resolution via emerging tech, goals setting, data visualisation and entrepreneurship.
Ananke has been nominated twice by the World Summit on Information Society Prizes (2019 and 2020) for its digitally inclusive work on gender. Ananke is a Generation Equality Forum Commitment Maker.