Digital Voice is the project aimed to increase civic engagement and Digital Safety awareness to young girls’ students at universities/colleges in Tanzania of the age between (17-25 years) through capacity building on how they can be protected from online gender based violence (OGBV) by improving the level of women participation online.
The use of internet has increased which facilitate communication in different activities, but now days internet has become a source of violence against women online, which led to reduce the number of women participations online by fearing to be abused. Several incidents of OGBV has been reported including distribution of sexually explicit videos of girls, Scandalous and hate speech, social media account being hacked and used by people to distribute nude photos and videos of women and this has mostly found in young girls students at universities.
Due to that situation Zaina Foundation decided to conduct Digital Voice Project which aimed to increase Digital safety awareness to them, increase civic engagement for women online and increase the number of women participation online. The project will be conducted on five (5) universities/colleges in Tanzania for four regions which are Dar es salaam, Dodoma, Arusha and Zanzibar in duration of one year (2022-2023).
This project will further advocate for the formulation of Data Protection Law in Tanzania that will recognised into rights to privacy where by internet users should be respected and protected into their private communication by considering that there is no general Data Protection legislation in Tanzania.
Digital Voice project goes with the slogan “BE ONLINE” which target to encourage women to be actively participate online by creating safe environment for them through fighting against Online Gender Based Violence which seems that is the big factor which led to decrease of women to participate online.