How can we enhance regional networking and build collaborations to help expand and popularise digital rights issues in Southeast Asia?
EngageMedia, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), along with key regional allies, will be hosting COCONET, a Southeast Asia Digital Rights Camp, in October, in Indonesia.
COCONET, named after the coconut plant that is widely grown and used in the Southeast Asian region, also means Connecting Communities and Networks, as it aims to enhance regional networking and to build collaborations with organisations that can help expand and popularise digital rights issues. We hope to connect members of the digital rights community to media and technology makers, as well as to grassroots digital activists, as a way to expand the social reach, and social movements, engaged with digital rights issues.
EngageMedia, APC, and SEAPA have brought together a regional consortium to co-design and host the camp. This consortium includes SafeNet (Indonesia), EMPOWER (Malaysia), Thai Netizen Network, Witness, Myanmar ICT Development Organization and Cambodia Center for Human Rights.
This camp is specifically targeted to people from Southeast Asian countries (Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam), but the organisers are also open to participants from other countries in the Asia-Pacific. It is organised using a participatory methodology to generate ownership over the process, content and outcomes, and to encourage everyone to take responsibility for the event's success.
For more information, visit the event webpage.