It should be noted that usually gifts of valuable technology require more than just an item of equipment for maximization. We have seen examples of equipment given to organizations in South Africa, for example, that were stolen because they had to be housed in an insecure structure. Last but not least, an additional hidden cost is the actual time of women to learn and practice the new technologies. All over the world, women tend to have greater demands on their time and energies than their male counterparts and therefore less time and energies available for media work. As we value the input of precisely these women who are so invaluable to their families and communities, we need collectively to come up with some financial support that can relieve them from other income-producing duties long enough to participate.
Language is another barrier that needs to be addressed.
Much technical support and interaction is available to those who can speak and write a major language of the developed world such as English, Spanish or French. But support and outreach need to be addressed very specifically to women from other language groups so that their information will not be lost to the rest of the world, or to each other. Aside from the actual languages of people being different from each other, there is also the issue of perspective. As an example of best practice, consider the work of the International Women Communication Centre in Ilorin, Nigeria. Director Limota Goroso-Giwa came to a radio conference in the US with huge bags of clothing and crafts that she worked very hard to sell to all the people there.