As part of this year’s Take Back the Tech! Campaign (TBTT), the Pakistan team decided to talk to celebrities here and ask them to endorse the TBTT initiative, and create an awareness regarding ICT and Violence Against Women. Below are a series of TBTT celebrity messages that have been shared with us.

Retired Justice Nasira Iqbal talks about the importance of TBTT

Justice Nasira Iqbal is a retired judge of the Lahore High Court. In her video, she sensibly talks about the benefits of technology while at the same time advising listeners to promote technology with great care.

TV Personality, Journalist and Blogger Naveen Naqvi talks about TBTT

Naveen Naqvi has been working for television for many years. She is also a journalist and a blogger. Click play below to watch the video.

Zaheer Kidvai talks about the need for men to support TBTT

Zaheer A. Kidvai is the CEO of Beyond Information Technology Solutions (BiTS). He is also a blogger and is known for his pioneering work in Education Technology and Multimedia. I caught up with him the other day and asked him if he thought men should support the Take Back the Tech! campaign to end Violence Against Women. Here is what he had to say.

Sabeen Mahmud talks about the role of technology in mobilizing people

Sabeen Mahmud is a young woman whom I have known since the 1990s. She is excited by technology and has, over the years, used it in many different ways. Having run a technology company for many years, she recently set up T2F, a project under the PeaceNiche umbrella.

Sabeen and T2F have been very supportive in the TBTT campaign and this year have partnered with us on several initiatives such as the “Creative Coalition against Gender Violence” and the “Interactive Session on Social Activism”.

I asked her to give us her views on TBTT and the role that technology plays in creating awareness regarding important issues. Here is what she had to say.

Rabeea Arif feels strongly about the objectification of women

Rabeea’s TBTT design work has been on my blog for the past week. I spoke to her at T2F to find out why she decided to join the Take Back the Tech! campaign and what was behind some of the creative work she has been doing since her college days. Listen to what she had to say.

Young people take up the reins against VAW

I had gone to T2F to get together with some other TBTT campaigners before heading off to a rally organized by Aurat Foundation. Usually there are people of all ages hanging out at T2F and you easily start a conversation with someone you don’t know (that is the kind of place it is). Yesterday, however, was a little different. There was a abnormally large number of people who were in their O- & A-levels.

I asked Sabeen Mahmud, the Director of PeaceNiche, what all the buzz was about. She said that a workshop on Gender Violence was being run for young people by UKS. Amazing how one walks into these kind of things, isn’t it? She introduced me to Surayya Mahmood, a young lady probably also in her A levels, who was running the workshop with three of her friends. They had attended a similar workshop themselves the summer before and had begun to understand the impact of media on young minds. They have since been working with UKS on spreading this awareness among their peers.

Naturally, I was not going to miss this opportunity to capture Surayya on video and share her thoughts with TBTT campaigners and supporters around the world. So while she is not a household name, it may not be long before her work is recognised among larger circles.

These videos have previously been shared by Jehan Ara (president of P@SHA and TBTT activist) via herblog.