Afghan women use technology to stop street harassment

Code Women Challenge: To promote increased opportunities for women in the fast-growing information, communication and technology (ICT) sector and in mobile technology, Promote - Women in Economy (WIE) partnered with Code Weekend by sponsoring a Code Women Challenge. Code challenges solve problems by creating tools that put technology to use in overcoming business, social, environmental, and other issues. WIE's Code Women Challenge challenged Afghan female coders to develop a smart phone application that will help stop street harassment of women and girls. Two concept tied for first place, and the three coders who submitted them joined to form a single team that received the first prize: contracts for developing and deploying the fully functional application. the application under development will allow women to report street harassment, display maps of harassment potshots, allow women to send SMS messages to friends, family or other nearby users for assistance, post incident reports to increase awareness, tips on how to handle or avoid harassment, and notification to users that warns them if they are entering an area with a lot of incident reports. Mobile Money: M-Paisa (M-Money) is an innovative mobile transfer and payment solution provided by a telecom company Roshan, the first of its kind in Afghanistan. The mobile money system allows individuals to send and receive cash and make payments through mobile devices through a fast, cheap and secure environment. WIE is using the system to make stipend payments to interns across the country improving access to finance for women, particularly those with limited or no access to financial banking institutions.