Community Care

Community networks proved that an infrastructure is only as robust as the more caring of its communal nodes. In this second year of living in times of unequal global health crisis, we are glad to present this special edition of GenderIT.org: Infrastructures of resistance: Community networks hacking the global crisis and to share with our readers how intersectional approaches in CNs…

In times of crisis, community networks proved that an infrastructure is only as robust as the more caring of its communal nodes. We are glad to present the special edition: Infrastructures of resistance: Community networks hacking the global crisis. Read the editorial article, by Adriana Labardini.

In Vale do Ribeira, São Paulo, Brazil, a group of ecological, quilombola farmer women, in partnership with two feminist organisations: APC and Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF), managed to deploy and operate their Wi-Fi mesh network. Bruna Zanolli highlights the importance of building trust, empathy and feminist guidelines in the community so that their internet infrastructure could…

Upasana Bhattacharjee further builds on this notion of community network not only as a local connectivity infrastructure serving the unserved people and rural areas left out by markets or states, but mainly as a social actor that builds knowledge, autonomy and agency at the local level, through a community-owned infrastructure and organized operation.

Kira Allmann’s podcast will transport you to the rural north of the United Kingdom to invite you witness one of the Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN) community network assembly meetings, where knowledge is shared, and empathy transpires.

During the lockdown in India, the circumstances of marginalised population groups, including gender and sexual minorities (GSM), has worsened. Community and peer support has been critical, but in many cases it depends on phone and/or internet connectivity. The author wonders if informed choices regarding internet usage is possible in this context.

Once upon a time, not long ago, in a village in southeast Brazil, women came together to exchange information and learn collectively about the influence of technology on their lives and on the spirit of the community. In the process, they learned something of great value.

GenderIT and Locnet invited women who work in community networks to share their experiences in the times of COVID-19 and their reflections on what these times have revealed around centring meaningful communication in their physical and digital communities. This is the second part of the stories that got to be told about the acts of care in communication technologies under the pandemic.

Through awareness-raising work groups organised by Pamoja Net in DRC, women and girls learned how to participate in the network and to access and verify health information through a telephone helpline and a chatbot.

GenderIT and Locnet invited women who work in community networks to share their experiences in the times of COVID-19. This is one of the stories that got to be told about the acts of care in communication technologies under the pandemic.