“Ease of opt in; democratization of data; encourage analysis to be accessible in more easily communicated formats (infographics, fact / data sheets, visual and media (moving image cartoon or animated videos).
In terms of inclusive – there is more capacity to engage with others using technology rather than orienting to ‘in the room’ or face to face. But generating deeper, collaborative work will require significant investment in time and energy – from participants, and from ‘coordinators or facilitators.”
With inclusivity as a guiding requirement, five other key requirements were identified, listed below in Figure 2.
LEGITIMACY
“Engaging local stakeholders as much as possible. Make sure the benefits of participations are explained clearly and persuasively.”
Legitimacy will need to be considered carefully at every stage of development and implementation – for the participants, for the project partners, and for the collaborators contributing knowledge into the platform. Some ideas to support legitimacy include:
- Careful consideration of the dynamics between organisations operating throughout the region and how their involvement in this effort could possibly support or derail legitimacy;
- The development of ‘campaigns for’ in order to provide support to women sharing stories or knowledge to have a thematic approach (“How do you see climate impacting your community” around COP 26; “What is your vision for the Mekong?”, etc.)
- The provision of curated tools and trainings as a core component.
ACCESS: TECHNOLOGY
“The key challenge is that the poor communities lack of access to the internet and sometimes have to travel a long way to meet at the meeting point whereby the internet is available for the zoom call.”
“The lack of access to the internet is the main barriers.”
“Organize a meeting point at one place where communities could gather and have access to the internet for meeting.”
“It depends on how urgent and necessary the topics are to that community. If they still prefer the conventional channels and could not see benefits of technology in that aspect, it would be very challenging to find the interest.”
Many communities lack access to technology and connectivity, this needs to be addressed. To do so, the overarching project will need to provide trainings in how to use and contribute to any on-line tool or platform. The project team, in particular Open Development Initiative and Oxfam, are well-suited to provide this support.
ACCESS: LANGUAGE
“language and terms that are used sometimes are difficult to catch up for many women who illiterates”
“language is a limiting factor, and often under-resourced in terms of making information available in appropriate (necessary) languages.”
Translation will need to be considered as a key component in the development of a platform, into (at a minimum) the Mekong country languages. Translation from local ethnic languages into Mekong languages and English will also be essential, and any platform will need to be developed to be able to serve multiple languages in its earliest iteration as revising any technology system to be able to account for languages at a later date poses significant challenges related to cost and complexity.
TRANSPARENCY AND INTEGRITY
“These days technology plays important role in our community, we should have a safe platform for everybody to share sensitive and less sensitive stories. Also to be able to exchange ideas and brainstorm with each other without concern on the security.”
“A safe space for everyone to share storytelling, for this principle everybody lead their own creativity way of telling story such as a short film, or documentary film or event the novel to tell story that they want to tell, and writing an alive book like cartoon. These should be one of the ways to approach to many more women and youths to interested in telling stories from their area.”
Ensuring transparency and integrity will require that trusted local partners are engaged to support women to understand the platform, how to provide and also access content.
The issue of a ‘safe space’ came up frequently and is flagged as one of the concepts that needs to be discussed and developed through focus groups.
Communications strategies should also be developed and implemented to guarantee the ‘safe space’ component – for example a communications plan (detailing what content will be shared where, when, and with whom and how this sharing will be undertaken); and an editorial policy and plan (supporting the process by which ethics are addressed, permission is granted for sharing or any distribution within or beyond the platform, etc.)
INNOVATIVE
“Women and marginalized communities are excluded from the development planning and the decision making process. The use of social media could be one way to assist the communities especially the young to raise the voices of the marginalized communities regarding their concerns and impacts from the development project… Access to social media such as facebook and twitter helps women to raise their concerns about the development project such as dam that destroy their homes and livelihoods. Creating a platform for women to share stories via social media is innovative. Organize the platform as a safe-space for women to share stories.”
“Fragmented water governance structure and unclear mandates amongst different ministries and agencies [is a key challenge]. There is lack of local stakeholder engagement and community engagement at grassroots level. I think technology might be able to address some aspects of these issues.”
“It is important to make the platform becomes the only platform about women and river and use it as a Community of Practice for Women and River.”
Embracing innovation as a mechanism to address complex water governance challenges in the region has surfaced as a regular theme. Innovation in terms of technology made specifically for community women to address the access issues described above, and innovation to build links between women to address fragmentation in water governance provides a great opportunity for improved Mekong management.
OTHER KEY CONSIDERATION: FUN AND ENGAGEMENT
In order to be a success, the application will need to be playful, fun, and engaging. Ideas to make this platform fun and engaging will be one of the focus group topics. Some specific ideas for engagement have been proposed as features:
“The platform should be set up on a Facebook page with attractive contents consisting of videos, quotes, quizzes, and interactive chats. It would be useful to include simple messages with nice graphic designing.
The platform should be time to time hosted webinars to share women and river stories of success/challenges/innovations etc.
This platform can be useful if it is allowed more people to share kind of innovative ideas through competition for vouchers/gifts/tokens.”
Exploring the acceptability and feasibility of features associated with fun and engagement for the target audience, and building these recommendations into any solution, is necessary for sustainable uptake and use of any platform.
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