1. Background

Women'sNet is an electronic communications outreach and support programme designed to enable South African women to use the Internet to find the people, issues, resources and tools needed for social action. Women'sNet was launched in March 1998 to coincide with the SADC conference on Preventing Violence Against Women (PVAW) convened in Durban. As part of its launch activities Women'sNet received funding from DFID to develop a section on the Women'sNet web site (womensnet.org.za) on preventing violence against women as well as an official SADC conference web site.

Since March 1998, Women'sNet's web-based preventing violence against women resource has attracted a great deal of interest; user statistics indicate that it is the most visited section of the Women'sNet web site. In order to develop this resource and ensure its continued usefulness, a criteria of the original DFID grant, Women'sNet decided to consolidate PVAW information systems through a strategic workshop with PVAW organisations.

Seven women representing four PVAW organisations attended a three-day workshop at the SANGONeT offices from 29 June to 1 July 1998. This group critically evaluated the Women'sNet PVAW resource and using the web-publishing skills taught to them as part of the workshop, they re-built the section incorporating group decisions about a "perfect" PVAW resource.

• To capacitate violence against women organisations to use the Internet and other forms of electronic communication to enhance their organisation's work.
• To evaluate the existing Women'sNet PVAW resource and produce a content development plan to ensure that the resource is useful and relevant to VAW organisations and South African women.
• To build information partnerships with violence against women organisations to ensure the sustainable development of the Women'sNet PVAW resource.

3. Methodology

Participation

Organisations who participated in the workshop (see appendix one) had demonstrated interest and commitment to the Women'sNet project during the initial phase of developing the PVAW resource in February 1998. Because of funding limitations, all but one of the participating organisations was Johannesburg-based.

Invited organisations were requested to meet the following criteria for participation:

• Because this is a group training event Women'sNet requires that all participants currently use email (preferably in their organisations) and have basic computer and Internet literacy.
• Participants must work with an organisation working in the area of violence against women.
• Organisations represented at the workshop must commit in principle to contributing information on an ongoing basis to help develop the Women'sNet PVAW resource.

Electronic Workspace

Two weeks before the workshop, Women'sNet created an electronic mailing list for workshop participants so that they could introduce themselves to each other and familiarise themselves with "virtual" workspaces (see appendix four for the mailing list "welcome message"). This mailing list will remain active for three months after the workshop to maintain a dedicated workspace for feedback and further planning on PVAW section development.

Prior to the workshop the mailing list was used to accomplish the following:

• Introductions from each participant with background information about their organisations
• List of requirements for participants to bring to the workshop (2 PVAW documents and organisation logos)
• Discussions about the workshop agenda

• To post information about the latest developments in the PVAW section and solicit feedback
• Request additional information for the web site
• As a forum for technical support and troubleshooting
• To co-ordinate follow up meetings with the local organisations
• To review the Statement of Responsibilities between Women'sNet and Information Partners (all participating organisations)

For a detailed workshop agenda see appendix two.

Evaluation of the Women'sNet PVAW Resource

In order to evaluate the Women'sNet PVAW resource and expose workshop participants to other violence against women web sites, workshop participants critiqued three other web sites including Women'sNet PVAW resource. Participants graded each web site according to standard questions (see appendix five) and gave a brief synopsis of their findings to the group. In general the Women'sNet PVAW resource compared well to the other web sites. Many participants commented on the relevance of the content and the ease of accessing it.

Emerging from this exercise was a list of Do's and Don'ts to guide participants in planning an effective web site.

Web Publishing Skills Training

HTML Training

The second half of the first day was dedicated to training participants on the basic components of coding documents in hypertext mark-up language - the language of all documents published on the World Wide Web. Each participant worked at her own computer in the SANGONeT Training Room and SANGONeT and Women'sNet staff trained the group using test documents on the basic codes specifying colour, links, images, tables and other formatting features.

All participants worked on a free software package called HTML Tool that they were given on diskette at the end of the workshop so that they could continue to practice HTML coding.

By the end of the first day participants had been exposed to the basic skills needed to prepare a document to be displayed on a web site.

In order to elaborate a content development strategy for the Women'sNet PVAW resource - a key workshop objective - participants broke into working groups to discuss the features of a perfect PVAW resource. Each of the three working groups was assigned a particular user profiler:

• A woman in crisis
• A women working in a preventing violence against women organisation
• A legislator or policy-maker working in the area of preventing violence against women

1. Understanding Violence against Women
2. Getting Help - resources for women in crisis and practitioners
3. Campaigns
4. Organisations and Resources
5. Laws and Policies
6. Internet Resources
7. Getting Involved

Interactive Features

Participants also had preliminary discussions about interactive tools or features to include in the PVAW section. The following features were identified:

• Mail To's:
• Electronic Mailing List on PVAW in South Africa
• Feedback Features
• Add Information Features - to encourage users to submit documents, links to other web sites, etc
• Support centre - a space to share experiences about individuals and aspects of the justice system, post tips for fundraising, request volunteers for campaigns, etc.
• Advice Centre - email Q&A with an identified person (photo and biographical details would be posted on the site)

Once the group had identified the new sections of the PVAW resource, trainers introduced participants to the underlying directory structure of a web site and how site contents are organised for easy maintenance. The trainer explained the different levels of a web site, the file structures (directories) used to organise documents at the different levels and the commands which link documents together from one level to the next. Using the newly identified information categories, the trainer worked with participants to develop a map of the Women'sNet PVAW resource.

Participants along with Women'sNet staff then broke in to pairs and each of the five pairs elected responsibility for one of the proposed new sections. One pair also undertook to work on the main index page for the Preventing Violence against Women section.

Rebuilding the PVAW Section of the Women'sNet Web Site

In order to simulate as closely as possible the process of building a web site from scratch, the pairs began the task of rebuilding the PVAW resource by coding one document related to their information category. The documents were selected from the material participants had brought on disk to the workshop and coded using a Women'sNet template that had been loaded on the participants computers. In addition to formatting the text of each document, participants also practised inserting images by adding organisation logos where appropriate - these logos had been scanned by SANGONeT staff from print copies participants had brought to the workshop.

Four SANGONeT and Women'sNet trainers were on hand to assist with any questions or problems with coding. After coding one document each pair then worked to design an index page for their information category.

At the end of the second day, participants had used their newly-learned web publishing to begin the process of re-building the Women'sNet PVAW resource as well as defined the key aspects of a "perfect" PVAW web site.

Information Partner Commitments to Women'sNet

• Promote the use of the Women'sNet site and the PVAW resource specifically
• Proactively gather and submit information to build the PVAW resource
• Submit at least one coded document a month to Women'sNet and provide as many other documents as possible in digital format
• Participate in the Women'sNet Information Team mailing list
• Feedback skills to own organisations and networks
• Evaluate and give feedback on the web site on a regular basis focussing specifically on content gaps and suggestions for new areas of information

• Email and phone assistance to trouble shoot technical problems
• Assist organisations in developing own web presence and electronic communication strategies
• Explore possibility of conducting a refresher workshop to consolidate web-publishing skills
• Provide a text manual to supplement HTML training conducted at the workshop
• Organise in-person follow up meetings with all information partners to assist in planning development of information category organisation has elected responsibility for
• Provide web space and presence for information partner's PVAW electronic publishing initiatives

It was agreed that Women'sNet would follow up discussions about commitments and expectations using the mailing list set up for the workshop and that participants would ensure that their organisation formally committed itself to responsibilities entailed in the information partnership. A "Statement of Responsibilities" would be finalised after Women'sNet had met with all participating organisations and all organisations had an opportunity to feedback on the document electronically.

A Conclusion to Charting Documents

In order to define a practical process for submitting documents to the Women'sNet site for information partners and to further assist participants in reviewing the keys steps involved in making a resource live on a web site, the process of charting documents was revisited. Using examples of documents identified as key resources in the "Building a Perfect PVAW Web site", different participants traced the path of processing a document through a flow chart depicting the key phases outlined in the document processing form.

One participant said that prior to the workshop she had only given the Women'sNet web site a cursory look but after re-building the PVAW section she felt a strong sense of ownership and commitment to Women'sNet.

Participants agreed that mixing information and content development work with web publishing skills training was a successful combination.

In general the pace of the training portion of the workshop met most participants' needs and everyone expressed confidence that they could return to their organisation and with the web publishing software, practise coding documents. All participants however felt that they would benefit from a follow up course where they would have an opportunity to deal with problems encountered while using the software as well as to learn more advanced web publishing skills.

One participant felt that an ice-breaking exercise at the beginning of the workshop would have brought the group closer together and that the on-line introductions couldn't replace the in-person process of getting to know each other.

Several participants commented that the instruction and support received from SANGONeT and Women'sNet staff had been sensitive, constructive and friendly.

Highlights

• A revised PVAW resource developed and built by women working in PVAW organisations
• A content development strategy for the PVAW resource and commitments from four PVAW organisations to spearhead its development
• A team of South African women working in PVAW organisations trained in introductory web publishing skills committed to ongoing collaboration in developing the Women'sNet PVAW resource

• Most participants felt that the workshop could been conducted over four or possibly five days and that training schedule and exercise of rebuilding the section had been gruelling.