Ananke is a digital platform empowering women through awareness, advocacy and education. It was launched in 2014 as a digital media entity documenting women's achievements, showcasing them as role models for aspiring women and girls to emulate; as well as a forum highlighting issues with a gender lens.

Our in-depth articles, news and interviews focus on women's economic empowerment and shed light on topics from women's health, tech to the SDGs. Ananke also publishes special editions. Our previous editions have focused topics including: Day of the Girl, Gender-based Violence, Women’s Day and Human Rights. These digital edition are free to read on the ISSUU platform and can be viewed: https://issuu.com/anankemag

Ananke’s vision is to lift women by ensuring equal participation in the technology revolution. In 2016, Ananke launched its groundbreaking digital internship program which is a home-based and self-paced initiative.

The internship program started with one participant from Morocco and has so far mentored and trained over 40 girls from Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, UAE, US, Morocco, Australia, China, Belarus, Tanzania, Kenya, Russia, Denmark, and Bangladesh.

Ananke’s digital internship program not only aims at leveraging tech to empower women by offering access, meaningful engagement and safe online space; it is also intersectional as the interns belong to different ethnicities, religions, race, and having different vocations ( lawyers, engineers, human rights advocates and teachers).

Ananke seeks to create powerful transformative force for socioeconomic development by having conversations on creative economy. Our wide array of digital activities focuses offering expertise, fostering relationships through collaboration and hence enabling learning. In short, Ananke ensures not just women’s participation in the creative economy, it builds empowerment on the pillars of inclusive discussions, in-depth research and an intersectional conversation advocating human rights.

http://www.anankemag.com

• International

• Women
• Youth

Ananke's digital internship program started with just one intern in its very first cohort in 2016. In 2017-2018, we had a total of 15 girls and in 2018-2019 – more than 40 girls have participated in our digital cohorts. After our first session/cohort, we successfully formed alliances with organizations like Women's Digital League Pakistan, Women Engineer's Pakistan, Circlewomen.org, TAP Africa and is currently collaborating with one of Pakistan’s largest women in tech Facebook Communities called WomenInTechPK. So not only have we scaled in terms of our participants and collaborations, we have replicating the program since 2016 based on the feedback of our past interns and potentianl, new participants.

The creative sector in the development landscape is important because its outputs shape the identity of a country and its people. It is also important because it enables dialogue and exchange. The creative and cultural industries are an increasingly important piece of the puzzle. These industries have all too often been overlooked as legitimate avenues for jobs and gross domestic product. But that is starting to change. Not just in the Middle East, but across the globe

Many countries in the MENA, especially the Arab Gulf as well as South Asia, are making efforts to improve creative industries as they make efforts to wean themselves from oil-based economies into economies based on employing creative assets – a sector that embraces inclusion and actually communicates with a wider audience. While the realization to tap into creative activity is there, the mindset of considering many artistic endeavors not considered real jobs is still there. In addition to this, there is a huge gap in skills giving rise to youth unemployability. And this is where Ananke comes in. A media platform that disseminates gender-focused news and information as well as offers a virtual training ground to individuals primarily belonging to the creative sector – it helps create changemakers for the future of work.

Ananke has scaled in terms of scope, vision and goals. What started as a platform that showcased visionary women as role models, now offers multi-dimensional approach to empowerment by curating quality content on gender, inclusion and diversity. But most importantly, it is a training ground in real time for participants through our wide array of offerings: through videos, twitterchats, webinars, facebook live and other active, mentoring collaborations.

At Ananke, our approach to community is not regional or national - it is focused on Gender and therefore our community base is women. And, one of the biggest threats to empowering women through technology – is safety and restrictive policies. Information and communications technology (ICT) has revolutionized the way we live our lives. Smart technologies and new media as not only empowered us socially; but have played a pivotal role in fueling global economic activity. Viable growth within the constraints of the planet’s finite resources is only plausible if the infinite potential of human resource, particularly that of the female gender is globally realized. But this will not be possible if we don’t focus are attention to giving access to women and bridging the digital divide and most importantly creating safe online spaces so that women – who are half of the population of the world – thrive and fuel sustainability. Ananke has been consistently promoting values enshrined in WSIS by creating a platform that offers access to information regarding empowerment, particularly women’s economic empowerment digitally. Through its wide array of digital activities including social media collaborations for example Twitter Chats, webinars, Live events, and in-depth news coverage on human rights, the SDGs and sustainability; its groundbreaking virtual internship program which is not only inclusive but also intersectional and focuses on capacity building and development – Ananke plays a pivotal role in the creation of a gender-sensitive information society through its holistic approach to dissemination of information and creating stakeholders embracing a rights-based approach as their mantra.