The idea of creating a Women´s Media Pool for the coverage of Beijing + 10 came about on one hot January afternoon in 2005 at the FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavour) office in Ciudad Colón, CostaRica where three young staff women of FIRE were getting ready to travel to cover the V World Social Forum and the Feminist Dialogue in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Being the new ones in the FIRE team, they were for the most part not familiar with the Beijing processes, for which they expressed to us "old-timers" that they did not feel very comfortable having to cover such issues at the World Social Forum. They wanted support to be able to walk through “the Beijings” in order to be ready to write or interview women about these issues for our radio.

For the two of us that have been though them all: Beijing 1995, Beijing + 5 in 2000 and the regional preparations for Beijing + 10 in 2004, the thought of covering the Beijing + 10 process by ourselves did not feel good even though we are familiar with the process and issues. On the other hand, women who had never covered a Beijing Conference but were going to do so for the first time were calling the FIRE office to see how we could do things together.

In every previous “Beijing” event, FIRE had been part of a team of women media practitioners who had made all the difference in promoting understanding and seeing of the whole picture. (If it can ever be said that you get the whole picture in those events!) The fact is that the joint endeavors of us all made all the difference in the world. Radio, press equipment, tv cameras, computers, mouth to ear communication, all seeking to make women be heard out of one single press room at these events.

The media rooms were at times enormous, such as the Women´s Media Center in Beijing during the V World Conference on Women, and sometimes they have been far smaller, such as the one at the Church Center across the United Nations Building headquarters for Bejing + 5. But big or small, they have all been friendly places where you offer help and get help with equipment, information and sometimes even food. We always felt that we were part of a movement of women doing media, albeit a very diverse movement, ranging from journalists with professional training who work for mainstream media or are independent, communicators who are not specialized in media but who do communications, and women who use ICTs to communicate, rathen than just to receive information.

But times have changed in the past ten years, or five years, and even since last year. Each day that passes by, we have to learn to do more of our media and communications work with less money. Media has become increasingly monopolized and so has money.

Judging by the conditions in which we often work nowadays, the allocation of funding for women´s media has definitely shrunk. We do not need statistics, we have the “hard” data. In Latin America, FEMPRESS (a 20 year old women´s magazine) no longer exists, although it was present in Beijing. The same can be said for the regional AMLAT Women´s Feature Service, while ISIS International is struggling with scarce resources.

Those of us who have survived are having to do the work of those who are gone, as well as our own work. Most media and communications groups going to do coverage of the B + 10 process claimed that they have half the money needed to even get to New York to do the work. FIRE did not have any special budget to do its work, even though efforts were made to seek funds.

So, looking at this situation, and considering that no one could even think of creating the kinds of WomenAction or Women´s Media Center of the past, FIRE began to wonder if there might be forms of articulation that would take into account this context. Lo and behold, the idea of a Women´s Media Pool emerged.

Another reference FIRE had in terms of "pooling" together women`s media work was the 2002 8th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentro held in Costa Rica. During that event, FIRE contributed with an Encuentro Media Team to develop a strategy where we all organized a media and communications initiative that articulated all communications groups at the event to do media together without any specific resources for it except a small grant to set up an internet café and a telephone line for community radio and commercial radio broadcasts, as well as some grants to bring journalists and communicators to do the job. FIRE set up its internet radio station and even helped design and organize a closed circuit (in the hotel system) television news cast system for the 800 participants to get morning news about the events of the day in their hotel rooms before geting up in the morning.

Another reference is FIRE´s Internet Audience Study to be published in July, 2005 by the journal Feminist Media Studies, which systematizes FIRE´s communications strategies as an amplifier, bridge, connector, and multiplier, which has led us to believe that the experience could be further developed with others in a more articulated fashion.

A media pool is the “pooling” together of political, technical, organizational and professional know-how for information gathering to produce media.

Because of who we are, a media pool is virtual and it is face to face; it is radio, television, written press, electronic networks, press and websites, mouth to ear communication; it will be produced in New York and worldwide, and we will come from all corners of the globe to go back to it, multiplied and expanded. It will be by, for and with young and elders, and for, by and with women who are newer and older to this process.

It will be produced by journalists, by women communicators, and will also involve women who do public relations work for their organizations to the media, etc.

The media pool will be a galaxy of revolving information gathering, media and communications actions and links that will allow all of us to do much more, and have more fun than if we did things in isolation.

It is a simple concept. We are finding out and sharing what each plans to do for the coverage of Beijing + 10. In knowing that, we will discover what we can share, be it news, computers, skills, microphones, activities and actions, etc.

For example, FIRE discovered that the IWTC (International Women´s Tribune Center) was planning a lobby group and IWTC discovered that FIRE was planning a WMP so we brought the two initiatives together before the final Beijing +10.

Another example is that for the first time GEM cyberdialogues include Latin Americans because we are in a pool together.

A third example turned out with Digitallfuture electronic paper for Beijing + 10.They did not have enough writers in the three languages, but through the pool they have been able to know where to find them.

Young journalists who never came to the Beijing + 10 process before have been "connected" though the pool.

Mainstream journalists, communicators and organizations that will not be at Beijing + 10 will be able to get information in order to cover the event through the media pool strategy and will also be able to participate directly through the interactive use of the internet by the Cyberdialogues, AMARC´s 8th of March broadcast and FIRE webcasts, among others.

So far, even before getting underway in New York, the WMP has achieved the following: joined language groups, linked regions in media activities, provided sharing of infrastructure for the media work, identified common objectives of the pool, created a virtual information pool, distributed information about women’s media initiatives at Beijing + 10, created a web page of the pool, raised awareness about section “J” of the Platform for Action about Women and Media, joined women journalists and communicators in their countries with women at the United Nations who are participating in the process, and raised awareness in the U.N. Department of Public Information about the Women’s Media Pool. Thus it involved simple sharing of information and cross fertilizing initiatives.

Most of it happened initially through creation and operation of an electronic discussion list that started growing and growing in numbers and dynamics as the process evolved. From five groups to begin with, it eventually was comprised of 59 organizations, networks and individuals.

A further step happened when FIRE created the Women´s Media Pool web page, in order to help the global audience have easier access regarding what women n media and communicaitions would do at Beijing + 10 and to have access to the information they would produce.

The Women´s Media Pool web page, rather than substituting the ones where organizations and networks usually place their information, will compliment and enhance all those particular web pages. It is a web page that will only display the titles of all the productions of the media pool groups during Beijing + 10, with links to the web pages of organizations where web visitors can go to read, or hear, or see pictures of the process.

The WMP web page will only have the full information of those groups that do not have their own web page. It displays information about the organizations and the networks that are part of the pool, but not who they are, but rather about what they will concretely do in the Beijing + 10 process. A link to their own web pages will lead the audience to find out more about those organizations and networks.

One way in which the WMP will be known is though press releases and mouth to ear, but also a new strategy that will be promoted in this occasion is that a WMP “logo-link” (remember I make words up!) was created. The logo of the WMP with an embedded link to the pool´s web page was distributed among women´s organizations (not only media ones) asking them to feature it in their web pages just before Beijing + 10, so that people will find out about the pool, precisely though "the grape vine."

The big challenge, as usual, is how we will close the digital divide in this initiative, rather than playing into it with our use of the Internet. It is also simple: we will appeal to all participant organizations, some in community and commercial radio, some in written press, some in press agencies, others in consortiums, particular newspapers or producing them at Beijing + 10, to make sure they multiply in those other venues what is being posted in the web site.

FIRE wants to suggest the theme that has characterized its own entry into internet radio in 1998, creating a radio that combines with ICTs, and using the internet as a multiplier, amplifier, bridge and connector: “Connecting voices technologies and actions, amplifying women´s voices worldwide.

                                    Content of the Women´s Media Pool productions

While each has their own focus about what they will cover at Beijing + 10, and that is "the strength that should be strengthened", we want to suggest that Full Spectrum of the Platform for Action be our pooled focus.

As many of you know, there are some limitations being imposed by some UN agencies about the scope of the appraisal. On one hand the Secretary General wants the process to focus only on the Millenium Development Goals, but for most women that is not enough. The full Platform for Action to advance women´s rights, and their perspectives on the issues that are in the Platform is what is needed. The Millenium Goals are more limited and should also be assessed, but not as a substitution of the Platform.

On the other hand, the International Women´s Tribune Center has been very clear in informing us about the fact that the online discussions by the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) have left out our point “J” about Women and Media. Likewise, it seems UNESCO has done very little this time around (as compared to 10 and 5 years ago) to bring the issue of women and media into focus at Beijing + 10.

"But Women and Media" is not the only issue that might be left out of the appraisal. We know that there are governments that want to leave out reproductive and sexual rights, the CEDAW Convention and also allocation of resources for the renewed efforts in implementing the Platform for Action. As a WMP we should keep our focus on the non-self-censorship character that our media and communications has promoted. And likewise, we have advocated Full Spectrum of the Platform in our efforts!

Give voice to all issues that are of significant importance to women’s lives in the present global context and local contexts, in community and commercial radio, internet radio, written press (women owned and mainstream media), electronic lists and TV news.

Through interactive connectivity, bring in to the Beijing + 10 process the voices of women activists and media practitioners who will be following the process in their localities around the world.

Report on the CSW discussions regarding accountability for the Full Spectrum of the Platform for Action.

Celebrate by disseminating women’s achievements with regards to accountability to the implementation of the Platform for Action, and in the commemorations of the 8^{th of March globally within the Beijing + 10 process (campaigns and actions).}

Lobby for accountability to Point “J” of the Platform for Action and accountability for the inclusion of funding for women´s media by agencies and governments.

Organize and showcase how women in media “pool” their activist, professional, technical and organizational resources to disseminate women´s voices, perspectives and issues, despite the trend to ignore the issue of women´s media and women in the media, and the diminishing of funding for such initiatives.

Support younger (or senior) media practitioners who will be in Beijing + 10 for the first time by providing a space where they can learn collectively from others and bring in their own experience.

                                                                                                                                                                                            Regards, Maria Suarez, FIRE

                                                                                                                                                                                       February 28, 2005 - March 11, 2005