I slipped past a huge police barricade and into the protest, immediately faced with a wall of smoke. Too early for that, surely - less than an hour into the protest? Braced, I held my sleeve over my face, already too late. ​

The Mohajer App was awarded a special jury prize at the Techfugees Summit: read TechCrunch's report - here. 

This week I had the great privilege and challenge of working with content and messaging in a new context: presenting the Mohajer App at the Techfugees Summit in Paris as part of the 'Global Challenges' competition. I worked with the team to create a presentation, which I then delivered to the panel of judges. Mohajer is the app for Afghan refugees and migrants in Iran: the amazing team of Iranians and Afghans behind this project were not able to present the Project, for security and travel reasons. 

I’ve been linked to this Project since its beginnings, when I was working in the Calais camp, and I and one of the team started discussions and formal scoping with Afghan and Iranian refugees about information and empowerment. The Calais camp was demolished shortly afterwards, but the idea was adapted and and applied to a new context. 

This article was originally published on the website of the Hay Festival - here. 

“We are here to unite and announce our rejection of the separation of countries - and of hearts,” said Shirin Ebadi – encouraging us not to fear walls, but to fight them, knowing that they result in islamophobia, homophobia, and ultimately the fear of others.

“Think about the Berlin Wall. It was destroyed in less than 24 hours. This is the fate of any wall they create to separate people.”

Ebadi drew parallels between Iran, Europe and Mexico: across the world, families are being forcefully separated by borders, women are subject to violence and fear: more than a third of women will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, often from a male partner. “The people of the world have so much in common – it is us who need to find a solution for our problems.”

This article was originally published on the website of the Hay Festival - here. 

“Some of this work has revealed entire infrastructures of corruption – bringing to light information which some people wanted to remain in the dark. This work strengthens democracy,” said Roldán.

Between 2013 and 2017, the government spent 38 billion MSP (roughly 53.7 million USD) on ‘official advertising’ - buying space in the media to distribute information to citizens. This opaque and discretionary allocation of funds to the media has historically proven to be a way of controlling editorial lines. “There is a difference in what we are doing: we are not transmitting messages from politicians, we are doing a slower form of journalism – finding out who is really governing us and how they are doing it,” said Roldán