People at Camp - Xena Mohammed

We asked a few of the track and lab facilitators, and a few of the Camp participants, some questions about themselves, their work, what they did at camp and what they came away with at the end of the week.

Xena Mohammed came to Camp as a representative of the Heinrich Boell Stiftung Nigeria. She works mainly on issues of women's rights, sexual minority rights and access to information.

 Within the organisation, Xena is project manager for Gender Democracy. "My role consists of issues dealing with gender, engendering leadership, civic participation and rights of LGBTI," she says. She is also currently looking at the question of how to move critical mass from social media into action.

 Xena came to camp hoping to get new perspectives on "how to work with what we have, without it costing an arm and a leg; tell a story differently to get past "gender fatigue"; and take information to action....People shut down when you bring [gender issues] up. They're tired of it. We need to find a way to change the narrative."

 One of the projects that Xena is involved in is mapping areas or hotspots of violence against women. The data they collected, though, was surprising: " a different demographic was responsible for the violence than [we] expected," she says. Because of this, they are re-thinking their message. "The first step was getting data. Now... we need to get more, and analyse it better. "

 On what she got out of camp, Xena says: "I learnt how data can come alive if you sort through it and arrange it in a way that it makes sense and tells a story. When evidence is laid bare in the correct sequence, it tells a compelling story that can lead people into action."

 She also says that she picked up some valuable tools on digital security (encryption, for example, and alternatives to mainstream communication technologies), as well as tools for conducting investigations. "I want to share the investigative tools I picked up during the week, and hopefully we can help expose some corrupt practices better."

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