Summer 2008 marked the end of my time at Barnard College, but my reflection and learning did not stop with my diploma. That summer, I attended a one-month gender-sensitive training institute for young women activists (and a few men) of the African continent and its diaspora. The training institute focused on economic and social justice, with goals to build the capacities of the young women of African descent in attendance, to encourage the formation of personal networks, and to explore the tools needed to actively engage in monitoring and fighting for social justice. On the eight-hour flight from New York's JFK Airport to Senegal's Leopold Senghor Airport in the capital city Dakar, I looked across the aisle and knew that I was flying with my sisters. They read books on my list of personal favorites—books that I was currently reading or intended to read. We were sisters, united by our interests, convictions, and aspirations to effect change in our communities.

I heard about the training institute from a Barnard graduate involved as both an organizer and a participant while studying abroad in Senegal a few years earlier. I viewed this as a unique graduation present that would expose me to women from all over the world who were striving to embody a vision of social justice through their work. The fact that airfare was included eliminated any financial obstacles that would have prevented me from going. And I couldn't wait to meet the sixty women and seven men in attendance, ranging in age from seventeen to thirty and descending from all parts of the continent and the diaspora. The group consisted of students, professors, intellectuals, government officials, non-profit managers, actors, and radio show hosts. Yet beneath these titles were real people with stories of strength and survival within diverse contexts. There was an HIV-positive woman from the Southern African region; a West African refugee who spent the past ten years in the U.S.; the daughter of a prominent Brazilian political leader in O Movimento Negro; a maroon-descendent from Suriname; and a former child bride. There was even a young man who dedicated his life to helping men in his country learn about the negative impact of traditional practices on women's health—along with someone actually formerly involved in those traditional practices.[1] The array of personalities, experiences, and causes in attendance amazed me, as did our common passion for the psychological, economic, and social liberation of women of African descent.

A group of activists from the diaspora conducted various workshops. They included a woman from the Southern Africa region who described herself as an "International Water Warrior" and conducted lessons about globalization and water privatization; professional economists from Jamaica, the Gambia, and Senegal who facilitated workshops about trade liberalization; and a Ghanaian residing in England who facilitated discussions of the sexual and reproductive rights of women. There was even a "cross cultural arts facilitator" of Jewish descent from the U.S., whose role was to use alternative means (games, role-plays, and murals) to help participants process the themes discussed in class. The outcome of the workshops is best summed up by the comment of one participant who, toward the end of the training institute, said, "I finally have the 'big words' to describe my everyday experiences." This declaration reveals the strength of the training institute, during which participants learned how to view their personal experiences as part of global phenomena, thus making their experiences understood by people outside of their own local worlds. Possessing such a language is paramount in enabling ordinary people to make themselves understood by the larger world.

Upon returning home, I was asked the standard question: "How was your trip?" I responded with the same three words: "Phenomenal, symbolic, and challenging." It was phenomenal because the training institute represents an incredible endeavor that may, in fact, be the first meeting of its kind. That summer, I met women from all over the world—women who serve as leaders in their own nations and share a common passion for social justice issues. The experience was also symbolic because these women, abounding from Zambia, Mozambique, Egypt, Brazil, England, Trinidad, and other places, gathered on Gorée Island—one of the most active slave ports during the slave trade. This place, which saw the division of families five centuries earlier, became host to a family reunion of sorts, with descendants coming together to interrogate social and economic implications of that historical legacy.

Despite the phenomenal and symbolic aspects of the experience, I also describe it as challenging because, as a member of the diaspora, I felt the limitations of a theoretical program that, at times, seemed disconnected from real life and real people. It was only later that I began to make sense of—and support—the program's transformative potential to effect change in a more subtle way.

This paper, I hope, continues that legacy of change by exploring the dynamics of the activism discourse in relation to my experience at the training institute. I use the implications of "diaspora" and "women" as legitimate categories of analysis to frame this discussion. Rather than critiquing the particular training institute that I attended, my goal is to make a general comment about the impact of certain discourses on activism. I first evaluate the legitimacy of identifying "diaspora" as a category of analysis and then reflect on my personal experiences and interrogate the unique realities of those referred to as members of the diaspora. Next, I examine the use of "women" as a category of analysis through a treatment of the feminist scholar Chandra T. Mohanty's discussion of this topic. Finally, I discuss an alternative model of mobilizing activists (the activist exchange network), which aims to disrupt assumptions about diaspora and women by bringing activism back to the field of action.

The impressions and critiques that follow are based entirely on my personal experiences and do not in any way represent those of other participants at the training institute. My position as the only African-American participant frames my analysis and shapes my experiences. Before going, I questioned the particular space that I would occupy as both an African-American (born in Jamaica to a Jamaican father and an African-American mother) and a recent graduate of an elite university. I also recognized that my particular ideas about global power dynamics and the material implications on African lives were mainly theoretical. My hope was that by meeting self-described "activists" from the continent and the diaspora, I would emerge with a better understanding of the other side of the theoretical training I received at Barnard; in other words, I hoped to emerge with more awareness of real-life experiences. I planned to use my ability to communicate with Anglophone, Francophone, and, to some extent, Lusophone participants to interact with a broad range of people from diverse backgrounds. Having lived in Central Africa and volunteered in East Africa (and done a good bit of traveling elsewhere), I remained aware that these characteristics could define my worldview as "Western," "privileged," and even "elitist." My experiences, however, are presented as I have lived them, though they embody an understanding of the challenges and limitations of my worldview and the institutionalized endeavors that have shaped my thoughts.

Defining Our Diaspora

The training institute was phenomenal in that it brought together women from all over the continent and the diaspora. Geography defined the parameters of the attendees, and anyone who could trace her lineage to the African continent was welcome. Instead of broadly employing the term "Africa" in reference to the Sub-Saharan region, as is popular in development discourse, the African participants also included those from the North African nations of Tunisia and Egypt. Through the institute, a pseudo-diaspora was constructed, with participants ascending from both inside and outside the continent—Brazil, Jamaica, Surinam, Trinidad, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Although African participants were often divided during the workshop into regional and linguistic groups—North Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, Fracophone West and Central Africa, Anglophone West and Central Africa, Lusophone Africa—those of us from the diaspora were generally referred to as a single group. The assumed commonalities of our group were complicated by the reality of the diversity both between our different nationalities and within the same nationality. However, such diversity was rarely discussed, and I often found myself questioning the implications of the construct of the diaspora within activism.

Academia has discussed and debated the characteristics and definition of diaspora for decades. Scholars Kim Butler, an Africana studies professor at Rutgers University, and Robin Kelly, professor of history, American studies, and ethnicity, explore the characteristics of the diaspora and question its validity. When discussing popular conceptions of the diaspora, Butler identifies a "sense of powerlessness, longing, exile, and displacement" (190), while Kelly highlights characteristics such as "survival, retention, exchange, transformation, acculturation, or conversation" (81).

Moreover, in her 2001 article "Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse," Kim Butler, elaborates on the definition of diaspora in a twenty-first century context. She argues that scholars are embarking on a new arena of intellectual inquiry that necessitates an agreement about the parameters and definition of this complex term (190). She goes on to confirm three relatively undisputed characteristics of diaspora: (1) the dispersal of people to a minimum of two destinations (2) the existence of a relationship to an actual or imagined homeland (3) and a self-awareness of the group's identity (192). According to Butler, those of us from the "diaspora" affirm our African origins and base our identity upon this heritage.

Butler complicates the definition by adding another characteristic—the "temporal-historical dimension," or the existence of the diaspora over at least two generations. This feature is an important because it excludes a number of people who often associate themselves with the diaspora. In the context of the training institute, among those identified as part of the diaspora were a group of Brazilian nationals, a woman from Somaliland living in the UK, a young West African woman who had come to the U.S. to pursue coursework, a refugee who moved to the U.S. as a young child as a result of the civil war in her native country, and myself, an African-American born in Jamaica. By Butler's definition, only the Brazilians, Surinamese, Trinidadian, and I qualified as members of the diaspora; unlike the others, our dispersion is multi-generational, and we claim the middle passage as part of our ancestral legacy.

During the workshops, the implications of failing to investigate the definition of diaspora became glaringly apparent when an African participant passed me a note that asked, "Are you really an American, or are you an African studying in the U.S.?" This question was understandable when we consider that the two other participants who flew in from the U.S. had moved there within the past ten years. However, the note represents a larger issue because it highlights not only the obscure nature of the diaspora but also the ambiguous definition in activist discourse.

Identifying the diaspora within the context of activism is further complicated when we recognize that there are multiple identities within the African diaspora. For example, although we were all self-identified "activists," thus conveying our commitment to social justice, those from the diaspora and those from the continent had different frames of references for the injustices we were mobilizing against. For example, despite the diversity of experience, those from the continent largely articulated the injustices resulting from colonial and neo-colonial practices, while those from other places focused more on the legacy of slavery. Such a dichotomy became challenging with discussions of the different manifestations of these histories throughout the diaspora. For example, the present-day manifestations of institutionalized racism figure more prominently in discussions about Brazil or the U.S. than they do in the Caribbean, as evidenced by unequal educational, housing and employment opportunities according to race. Although we are all part of the diaspora, participants from Suriname, Trinidad, and Jamaica did not articulate the injustices similarly. They were somewhat in the middle, coming from predominately "black" nations, where their political leaders are mainly of African-descent and where issues of housing, education and employment do not have a racial dynamic. However, they are all still unable to exert full economic autonomy on the global stage perhaps due to their history of economic exploitation rooted in the legacy of slavery.

Butler addresses this diversity within the diaspora: "To fix [a] person's identity as part of an undifferentiated African diaspora does not allow for the complexity of multiple identities, the salience of any of which at any given time is conditioned by socio-political exigencies . . .. Conceptualizations of diaspora must be able to accommodate the reality of multiple identities . . ." (193). Ignoring multiple identities within an undifferentiated diaspora created problems that became most evident when participants were asked to wear a "traditional outfit" during an event. While many of the African participants came prepared with traditional outfits, some worried what people would think if they appeared only in jeans or beach clothes. The reality, however, was such that many of the participant's history of slavery made defining "traditional" challenging. A number of us simply did not have a traditional outfit to wear. The request, in itself, ignored our complicated history and did not recognize that our relationship with "tradition" was more difficult to define than for those from the continent. My own experience makes the case in point: In an effort to do something "African-American," I wore a black dress and wrapped my hair in a style often referred to as "Afro-centric." The Brazilian participants faced the same dilemma, with one wearing an outfit (bought during her trip) made from West African material, another wearing a tourist shirt from Brazil, and still another dressed in an outfit worn at carnival. This array of "traditional outfits" demonstrates both the complicated notion of "traditional" and the diversities that exist within a particular diaspora. Butler affirms this complexity when she writes that "even within single diasporas, simultaneous diasporan identities are possible" (193). The organizers and facilitators made certain assumptions, it seems, when they expected all participants to have a simpler understanding of their own traditions.

In his article "How the West was One: On the Uses and Limitations of Diaspora," Robin D.G. Kelly describes how specific assumptions about diaspora limit the ability to understand the diverse range of political, cultural, intellectual, and transnational experiences that exist beneath the umbrella term:

Too frequently we think of identities as cultural matters, when in fact some of the most dynamic (translational) identities are created in the realm of politics, in the way people of African descent [create] alliances and political identifications across oceans and national boundaries . . . [N]either African nor Pan-Africanism is necessarily the source of Black transnational political identities; sometimes they live through and are integrally tied to other kinds of international movements—Socialism, Communism, Feminism, Surrealism, religions such as Islam, and so on . . . (43).

I agree with Kelly's point that a cultural basis of organization is insufficient, especially when faced with multiple identities and experiences. When this was recognized during the institute, a number of participants and I felt compelled to question how we could define ourselves as a coherent group unified around a common goal, despite our different backgrounds and worldviews. We determined that, apart from an ethnographic construction, our presence was political in nature, with the training institute seeking to equip participants with additional tools for our activist work. As such, it became essential for us to not only explore the construction of the diaspora but also for those of us from the diaspora to understand the particular space/role we occupy as members of our own nations and descendants of Africa. This investigation has particular implications on activists of the diaspora attempting to localize their issues within a global context.

During the sessions, I found that even though I understand my experiences as an African-American, my ability to connect with certain subjects and participate in certain discussions was limited. While talking about water privatization, for example, I felt at a loss about how to contribute. Growing up in California, I never encountered issues with water access (other than pledging to monitor my water use in kindergarten during a drought), and I remained ignorant of issues of water access in the U.S.—and unaware how access fared among racial and gender lines. I wavered when participants were asked to stand if everyone in their country, without exception, had access to clean tap water. I never stood up because the instructor assured me that the U.S. did not make that list. Although she had plenty of information to offer those from African countries, she did not address the issue of water access in the U.S.. Whereas in some countries water access is a political issue, those of us from other places—particularly from Brazil and Trinidad—were unaware of the particular challenges to water access. As a result, a number of us simply observed instead of contributing to the conversation. Although we remained silent, however, this situation compelled many of us to question and learn more about our local access to water, thus enriching our future activism.

This discussion proved interesting, especially since it reversed the tendency to focus on the U.S. by placing Africa at the center of attention. However, this reversal also led to my exclusion from the conversation, forcing me again to question the role the institute expected me to play. How could I possibly mobilize my own nation without learning more about my particular experiences? Slowly, I began to recognize that how the organization viewed my role in the diaspora had less to do with mobilization in my own country than with my potential contributions to mobilization efforts in the continent. It became increasingly clear that my role—and the role of participants not from Africa—was that of an ally to the continent.

Since 2003, the African Union has actively regarded the African diaspora as a major contributor to the development of the continent. They define the diaspora as follows: "The African Diaspora consists of peoples of African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the Africa Union."[2] The use of the phrase "willing to contribute" situates the "diaspora" within a political context. As such, a person of African descent living in the United States, with no interest whatsoever in the affairs of the continent, is not considered part of the diaspora because they contribute nothing to the continent.

In line with this thinking, the World Bank launched an initiative in support of the African Union's mobilization of willing participants in the diaspora. They group members of the diaspora into two categories: (1) people of African heritage who "involuntarily" migrated to North America, Europe, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Latin America (2) people of recent "voluntary" migration from Africa. Interestingly, the World Bank carves out a specific agenda for those who trace their heritage to the middle passage:

[This] former group is especially relevant in the formation of socio-economic and cultural blocs of collaboration to strengthen Africa's response to globalization; tapping their capacity to lobby Western governments (in the case of African-Americans, African-Canadians, and African- European groups) for the benefit of Africa, e.g., combating HIV/AIDS, Malaria; resolving conflicts such as in Sudan's Darfur
region) . . . (2).

Here, the underlying definition of diaspora comes from a Sub-Saharan construct; there is, in fact, no mention of North African countries. In addition, the World Bank remains clear about its focus on the potential mobilization efforts by members of the diaspora. And its written statement, too, focuses specifically on the political influence of the diaspora in the United States, Canada, and Europe by encouraging people of African descent to utilize their political power to influence their respective government policies in favor of development projects in Africa.

Despite the fact that the institute referenced neither the African Union's nor the World Bank's definition and expectations of the "diaspora," the training no doubt fell in line with the role of the diaspora in the development of continent. Learning about this discourse (from the World Bank, the African Union, and others) affirmed my bourgeoning realization that my role at the training institute was not necessarily to learn how to effect change in my own community but to become an ally of social mobilization on the continent.

"Women" as Homogenized Discourse

Throughout the month, I noticed time and again that the term "women" was used as a homogenized identity, without specification of any kind. Assigning assumptions and characteristics to a group—an essential part of human nature—failed to touch upon the complexities of such a constructed category. Similar to my previous observations about the diaspora, I came to notice that referring to women in discourse without interrogating specific realties has a major impact on our future activist and mobilization efforts.

Chandra T. Mohanty, a prominent postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist, has discussed the problematic nature of women as a lump category of analysis in her article "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse," (1991):

By women as a category of analysis, I am referring to the critical assumption that all of us of the same gender, across classes and cultures, are somehow socially constituted as a homogeneous group identified prior to the process of analysis . . . [W]omen are characterized as a singular group on the basis of a shared oppression. What binds women together is a sociological notion of the "sameness" of their oppression . . .. This results in an assumption of women as an always already constituted group, one which has been labeled "powerless," "exploited," "sexually harassed," etc., by feminist scientific, economic, legal and sociological discourses . . .. The focus is not on uncovering the material and ideological specificities that constitute a particular group of women as "powerless" in a particular context. It is rather on finding a variety of cases of "powerless" groups of women to prove the general point that women as a group are powerless (81).

Here, Mohanty argues the limitations of defining women as a group united by shared experiences of oppression.

During our group discussions, the term "women" was employed frequently without proper analysis, resulting in a homogenized image of women on both the continent and throughout the diaspora—a not surprising reality, considering that the same use of women infiltrates our everyday life and is often used by powerful funding sources worldwide. For example, the Nike Foundation funds international projects that conform to its concept of the "girl effect": the belief that investing in the girl child is the "unexpected answer" to alleviating the world's poverty. Although Nike's goal of enabling adolescent girls to become agents of change is commendable, the danger of such a discourse is it encourages the application of these same terms ("powerless," "exploited," "sexually harassed") to all women, regardless of their life circumstances. This failure to differentiate directly impacts the world's view of women, even leading activists to become complicit in their homogenization.

In one workshop, for instance, participants voiced the opinion that polygamy represents a violation of women's human rights. One of the facilitators even urged us to "use our brains" when considering whether or not polygamy makes sense. Although some people readily agreed with the assessment of polygamy as a wrongdoing—these people were the most vocal—no chance was given to find out if anyone among us was raised in a polygamous household. Consequently, those whose life experiences spoke directly to the topic were silenced from contributing.

Of course, not every discussion held during the course of the training institute contributed to the image of the "powerless," "exploited," and "sexually harassed" woman. Despite such homogenized discourse, many instances occurred that subverted this image. Such a subversion was best demonstrated by a participant who was very open about her seropositive status (a status that indicates the presence of antibodies linked with HIV infection). In fact, she stood up one day and shared her life story, revealing the unfortunate circumstances of how she contracted the virus. Her story started with a line characteristic of her dynamic personality: "Some of you are HIV-negative, and I say some of you because I don't assume your negative HIV status [because] I haven't tested you!" Back home, this woman serves as a community organizer, traveling throughout her country and speaking out against the stigma of HIV. Her goal is to personalize the HIV epidemic and to demonstrate that one's seropositive status does not define the value and limits of life. She further surprised participants when she explained that she has a seronegative partner and child, thus demonstrating her conviction that the virus does not have to interfere with her life accomplishments. Her testimony disrupted the monolithic image of the "powerless" woman, and it forced us to contemplate the diverse realties of women too often defined as victims.

No doubt, this subverted use of "women" as a monolithic category of analysis has profound implications on our work as activists. As Mohanty says, "it is only by understanding the contradictions inherent in women's location within various structures that effective political action and challenges can be devised" (85). Activists must continually investigate the contradictions present in women's lives. This is especially important when we consider that most of us at the training institute were educated, upwardly-mobile professionals, and some were even professional activists. Nevertheless, the institute, as a whole, fell prey to further homogenization. With this in mind, activists have an added responsibility of thinking critically about the localized experiences of those on whose behalf we work.

Attempting to Make Sense of It All: Liminality

One of the best things that happened at the institute was the chance to interrogate, on a personal level, the validity of using "diaspora" and "women" as categories of analysis. I decided to explore the diverse experiences of African-American woman. I did this by designing a tableau about African-Americans in a magazine produced by the participants. Everyone else contributed written stories that related experiences in their home country to a topic discussed during the training institute, but I chose collage as a creative alternative.

At first glance, the collage is a tableau at the center of which is a quote from African-American artist Kara Walker: "MANY BLACK WOMEN LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THEY LIVE THERE NOW STILL. MANY BLACK WOMEN VISIT OTHER COUNTRIES TO SHOW PEOPLE IN THOSE OTHER COUNTRIES HOW BLACK WOMEN SURVIVE."[3] Close inspection of the collage reveals a border composed of statistics about black women in America, including the finding that thirty-five percent of African-American women between ages eighteen and twenty-four go to college and that African-American women make up sixty-six percent of all AIDS diagnoses in 2006.[4] My goal here was to highlight the inequalities—and diversity—of African-American women, with the statistics revealing the range of experiences inherent in this single group of people. I also wanted to use Walker's quote and the statistics to hint at the overall history and experiences of African-American women.

Along with these goals, I wanted to discuss the relationship between African-American women and Africa. Beneath Walker's powerful quote is a watermark of a slave ship. The barely detectable slave ship symbolizes the ever-present impact of history on our current reality. Although slavery has ended, many of the social-economic injustices in existence today have roots in slavery. Toward the bottom of the collage, I included the definitions for "diaspora" and "liminality," the latter of which references the dual spaces occupied by U.S. women of African descent as both "African" and "American." My goal with all of this was to initiate a discussion about the diversity among African-American women. Although African-American women belong to both categories ("diaspora" and "women"), some have access to higher education, and some do not; some receive adequate medical treatment, and some do not. In many ways, Walker's quote about survival subverts the disempowered notions communicated by some of the statistics.

Sauti Yetu: Our Voices

I was not the only participant who recognized the limitations of the institute—and, by extension, many institutional activist endeavors. A group of us felt the need to exploit the opportunity of having been brought together to mobilize other activists. Informal discussions held during social time revealed that some fellow participants and I wanted to capitalize on our experience by arming ourselves with greater awareness and critiques of our experiences. Some of us decided to form an activist exchange network that focuses on connecting young women activists of African descent from around the world. We are committed to recognizing the diversities inherent in the experience of women within both Africa and the diaspora. Our aim is to sponsor an activist from the continent and another from somewhere in the diaspora on a six-month exchange program, during which they participate in activist efforts on the ground. We have tentatively chosen the name Sauti Yetu, meaning "Our Voice" in Swahili, to represent both the group itself and the individual communities comprising that group.[5]

Our aim is to "engage young activists of African origin through an exchange program to increase their understanding of Africa and the diaspora and to stimulate them to find intercultural responses to the cultural, social, economic, and political challenges of Africa and the African diaspora." Inherent in our mission statement is the recognition of the multiple diversities that exist both on the continent and within the diaspora. By capitalizing on this diversity, we hope to ensure that participants are continually critiquing constructions, such as diaspora. This exchange network relies on the idea that we must learn from each other.

Our intention is to subvert the disempowered assumptions often affixed to communities of African descent on the continent and throughout the diaspora. Kim Butler speaks about this very effort: "Traditionally, diasporas have been viewed as disempowered because they typically lack the resources (particularly economic and military) of formal states. It has therefore been easy to establish their disempowerment as normative. Nonetheless, transnational formulations are clearly capable of overpowering the national insofar as they are able to mobilize necessary resources . . ." (213). The disempowered narrative that Butler references is based on assumptions that the diaspora is connected through experiences of shared oppression. However, the entire aim of Sauti Yetu is to recognize that, despite global economic disparities and diverse experiences, we can all contribute to the amelioration of global society if we free ourselves from making false assumptions and commit to the process of learning and investigation.

To address issues of the homogenization of women, we hope to connect the participants with various community-based women's rights organizations. They will meet empowered women contributing to the betterment of their own lives and to the health of their communities. The focus is on learning from rather than on saving the "disempowered." It is worth mentioning that the concept of empowerment did not figure into our discussions because this term connotes a particular power dynamic, rather than a relationship based upon collaboration.

The Sauti Yetu board communicates via e-mail and arranges Skype conference calls to discuss the development of the initiative to date. These virtual conferences have to contend with the challenges of Internet access, time zone, and language differences—among us, we claim English, French, Portuguese, and Swahili as mother tongues, and we represent varying degrees of English proficiency. Our initiative represents an emerging movement of the twenty-first century described as "technology-enabled activism," which, as the name suggests, uses technology as a tool for generating social justice.

A substantial amount of research has gone into documenting the development of technology, particularly that of mobile phones, for activist purposes on the African continent. Herman Wasserman of the Department of Journalism at South Africa's University of Stellenbosch has argued that the Internet can establish links between similar groups around the world in an effort to build networks of solidarity: "Not only do these new media technologies facilitate formal political participation (so-called "e-governance"), but they also provide the means for social movements, activists groups, or minority groups to engage with these processes on a global level . . ." (4). Technology-based activism, as demonstrated by Sauti Yetu, continues to effectively connect people in a manner unimaginable even a decade ago. Still, large segments of the global population remain marginalized by lack of access to technology. Though this does not totally exclude them from working to improve the conditions of their communities, the further development of and accessibility to technology will extend a role to groups otherwise disconnected from each other. In the interim, it is the role of organizations like Sauti Yetu to be conscious of its relative privilege and to work toward giving marginalized groups a voice at the global level.

Perhaps the greatest testament to our aim to subvert the narrative of disempowerment is an examination of the people who make up the exchange network. Our members are often grouped in the category of "disempowered" by virtue of both our African origins and our gender. The very fact that we have put this organization in motion, however, disrupts any presumptions of our powerlessness and positions us as agents of change.

Moving On with More Awareness

There is no doubt that the training institute offered a unique and transformative experience. I was privileged to meet women and men from all over the world who were committed to contributing to the betterment of society at both a local and global level. Even its challenges proved transformative because of the reflection—and action—they engendered. And even though the definitions of "women" and "diaspora" employed by the training institute silenced and excluded some of the participants, the assessment of these limitations served as an impetus for the development of an alternative form of activism, namely Sauti Yetu.

I consider every woman I met that summer a sister, not merely because we share the same biology or because of our relationship—real or imaginary—to the continent. We are sisters because we are activists, united by a passion to effect change in society. The fact that our socio-political situations differ does not matter. The fact that we may not have access to the same tools to combat social injustice is of no consequence. We are all committed to contributing our utmost to the psychological, social, and economic liberation of the human experience. I am greatly indebted to the hardworking staff that put forth the effort to make this gathering a reality.

By interrogating the complexity of terms such as "women" and "diaspora," I hope this paper serves as an essential first step in improving and authenticating our activism. My wish is that this discussion will enrich the planning of future training institutes, as organizers strive to honor the experiences of all participants. Such institutionalized activist endeavors are limited by a global body of knowledge engaged in theorizing—instead of listening to and understanding—lived experience. However, since lived experience varies by the individual, true activism involves interrogating and honoring the unique circumstances of every single person we plan to serve.

Works Cited

African Women's Millennium Initiative on Poverty and Human Rights (AWOMI), 2009. http://www.awomi.org.

Butler, Kim D. "Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse." Diaspora 10.2 (2001): 189-219.

Kelly, Robin D.G. "How the West was One: The Uses and Limitations of Diaspora." The Black Studies Reader by Jacqueline Bobo, Cynthia Hudley and Claudine Michel. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse." The Women, Gender and Development Reader. Visvanathan, Nalini and et al. (eds.). London: Zed Books, 2006: 79-86.

The Nike Foundation, 2009. http://nikefoundation.org.

Wasserman, Herman. "The Possibilities of ICTs for social activism in Africa: an exploration." Paper presented at Codesria's 30th anniversary conference: "Intellectuals, Nationalism and the Pan-African Ideal." Dakar, Senegal: 8-11 Dec 2003.

World Bank. "Concept Note: Mobilizing the African Diaspora for Development." 7 Sep 2007. http://www.worldbank.org/afr/diaspora.

Endnotes

1. Plenty of scholarly work exists that complicates the notion of "traditional." See Mahmood Mamdani. Citizen and Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. [Return to text]

2. http://web.worldbank.org/afr/diaspora. [Return to text]

3. This quote was displayed at The Whitney Museum (NYC) as part of the exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love from October 11, 2007 to February 3, 2008. [Return to text]

4. African Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States; thirty-five percent of African American women between eighteen and twenty-four years old are enrolled in college.; black women represented sixty-six percent of AIDS diagnoses in women in 2006, though just twelve to thirteen percent of American women are black; African-American women constitute roughly forty-five percent of single female-headed families in America. [Return to text]

5. We have since discovered that an organization "Sauti Yetu" already exists in New York City (www.sautiyetu.org). Their motto, "Our Voice in Our Diversity for Dignity and Our Rights," recognizes the diverse experiences of African women both on the continent and as immigrants in the United States. Our group is in the process of choosing another name.