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Photo by Temi Coker

The intersection of technology and social good is a powerful combination. Over the past few years, technology has been a catalyst used to widen influence and understanding by easily connecting us to one another as we advocate for particular issues within our communities. This year has been particularly important as we shift our global focus onto the Millennium Development Goals to create a course of real change.

The Millennium Development Goals are the world’s time bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in many dimensions. While we have made much progress, we are far from being unified.

One organization that is leveraging the use of technology to help advance the Millennium Development Goals is Humanise. Humanise is a platform that aims to alleviate the socioeconomic divide by collaborating with local communities and activists to strengthen cities. With an increased focus on the gender gap, Humanise has placed a spotlight on the 5th Millennium Goal — “to promote gender equality and empower women” with their initiative Women in Front. This latest global initiative strives to unite women by promoting the victories, aspirations and needs of women leaders, entrepreneurs and activists through storytelling and technology.

“We wanted to drive the discussion and promote people to tools on gender equality in order to create a more human centered approach to it,” said Melissa Jun Rowley, CEO of Humanise.

While women are more empowered in the year 2015, we are far behind where we should be, considering we started this movement in the late 1920s.

When more women are capable of joining the workforce through sustainable means, economic growth develops more quickly and efficiently.

According to UN Women, Gender inequalities are still a persistent issue in all countries. When paid and unpaid work are combined, women in developing countries work more than men, with less time for education, leisure, political participation and self-care. Despite some improvements over the last 50 years, in virtually every country, men spend more time on leisure each day while women spend more time doing unpaid housework.

“If we’re going to make more progress, we need to form a more united front”, said Melissa Jun Rowley. Through the use of technology, we are able to connect, share experiences, and find solutions to issues pertaining to women in different regions. “

As we take the next step forward, conversations need to happen at the local level in order to bring about change. “Women need to join forces to make changes, we need Women in Front.” Humanise has been working to bring women from different communities together and promote tools to create an avenue to find solutions. By collaborating, our movement will only continue to blossom taking the empowered women and girls along with it.” said Melissa Jun Rowley.

FROM THE EDITOR
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