WOUGNET held her annual members meeting on 11/03/2009 at Nob, View Hotel, Ntinda in Kampala.

The theme of the meeting was “ICT opportunities in Networking and Collaboration” and the major objectives of the meeting were;

• To identify networking opportunities among WOUGNET members
• To Explore tools for effective networking and collaboration
• To review the WOUGNET strategic plan 2009.

An overview of the workshop was given and it was followed by an overview of WOUGNET in 2008.

The meeting attracted partners from different organizations like NVIWODA, EASSI, NAWOU, MIFUMI, CEEWA-U, BURUDA and DIWODE among others.

Participants expressed different interests in the annual member’s meeting. However, they showed a common interest in using ICTs to make their interests realities.

The guest speaked was Ms. Racheal Kadama from the Danish Development Agency, also a member of the I-Network expertise Team gave a talk and discussed “ICTs for Poverty  reduction”. Her presentation was detailed and well explained. It attracted questions like:

Ø      Can we apply what we have been taught to generate money??

Ø      Is it possible to get a documentary and feature activities of various people that answer questions to getting out of poverty? If yes, can the videos be circulated to the people in local communities?

There was also a presentation on the networking tools used with in WOUGNET to network. Theses included among others skype, RSS, Wiki, blogs, Mailing lists, Newsletters, telephones and radios. Participants were so excited to know in detail how each tool simplified networking and they showed interest in learning how to use some of them within their organisations.

The most interesting part of the meeting was the Geek Speed; During this session, members were asked to share briefly their organisation’s experiences in areas of health, Agricuture, Human rights and many more other areas of specialisation. After that very interactive session, networking opportunities were identified among WOUGNET members.

The meeting ended with a very detailed explanation of the functionalities of the WOUGNET website (www.wougnet.org) and brief explanations of the Kubere Information center website and the Women in business website.

Members recommended that:

§         Networking should be done frequently (Visit up country members).

§         That the youth should be put on board

§         That WOUGNET should improve on her networking strategies to capture stories form her members

§         That more emphasis should be put on new networking tools

§         Advocate for gender based activities.

The meeting was so successful. It ended at 5:00pm.