Open Heroines’ Call for Contributors

When we set up Open Heroines, we wanted to amplify voices of women and non-binary people in civic tech, open data and open government spaces. Often, voices of women and non-binary people, especially from the “Global South”, remain missing in important global conversations. We also understand that women and non-binary people have less time and often less paid opportunities to write and be part of these conversations.

For that reason, we are having our first paid written contributions from community members to our blog. We want these to be part of the open+ corpus and help to create a more diverse knowledge pool. Members of Open Heroines can submit articles on different topics within the Open+ themes.

Unlike personal blogs or the open gender monologues which are entirely based on an individual’s experience, these articles need to have some element of research. The pieces will be published on Open Heroines’ website.

Below are the guidelines:-

1. Rules for Submission

The writer will submit a pitch (proposed idea), three paragraphs or less. The pitch should contain the following information:

• What the story is;
• Why it matters, and why it matters now;
• What your findings are

2. Topics

Your piece should address one of the following themes from a regional/country angle:

• Privacy /safety (Safety on the Internet/Trolling/cyberbullying, safety of devices, e.t.c.)
• Access to information (including access to internet/technology)
• Artificial Intelligence
• Information Disorder (misinformation/disinformation/mal-information)
• Open Government/Open Data
• Feminism
• Mental Health (Mental Health Tech, Mental Health and access) or women’s health

3. Eligibility

• The writer must be a member of the Open Heroines community
• The article/essay must not have been published on any other blog, website, journal book or any other publication whatsoever
• It must be based on substantial research
• It must add a personal and regional perspective to the theme selected
• Could be co-authored by another Open Heroine but not by external members

4. Selection Criteria

Open Heroines team will review all submitted proposals and contact shortlisted candidates by April 29, 2022.

5. Copyright

All work published on the Open Heroines’ website is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

6. Time Frame

Once your proposed idea has been approved, you will have 30 days to submit the article and one week to include comments once it has been edited.

7. Word Count and Paragraphs

The article should have a minimum of 1,500 words and a maximum of 2,500 words.

8. Payment

Every contributor will receive USD 200 per article. If the article is co-authored, the authors will receive half of the payment each.

Note: The articles can be in English, Spanish or French. You do not need to be a previously published writer to submit your idea.

The application is open until Friday, April 22, 2022. Click here to apply.