The workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to think together with the facilitators towards finding innovative solutions to critical questions related to access to information. Starting with a brief presentation by the facilitators offering three different perspectives from digital initiatives working in the Arabic-speaking world and that focus on topics related to gender and sexuality.

During the presentations the facilitators will present some of the key challenges their initiatives face in providing secure and uninterrupted access to the content they provide, posing three critical questions that their initiatives face in the region:

• How do we reach our audiences without having to rely heavily on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter? 

• How can websites that are blocked in specific countries circumvent censorship? What are novel methods technical or not that can be adopted by these sites?

• Due to the sensitivities of the content, how can we ensure the anonymity and security of our audiences while still providing unfiltered and open access to the content?

Participants will be broken up into groups and will be given the opportunity to offer solutions to the questions above. Towards the end of the workshop the groups will come back together with the facilitators to discuss some of the key ideas and solutions that have emerged.