Here is my interview with Nermeen Edrees, the women whose blog was responsible for bringing the attention to the sexual harassment issue in Egypt and uniting women to fight it. See how she did it and what she is up to now.
 
I know you talked about the sexual harassment issue on Cairo streets, can you tell me about that? 
"Well, it all started after the Eid downtown sexual assaults event in 2006, as many Egyptian females I was infuriated and wanted to express my anger, we started brainstorming, and I came up with the idea of the women in black stand, a social gesture to direct the society's and authorities attention, and tell them we are so angry and wouldn't take a "no action" for what happened as an answer.   Bloggers (males as well as females) started to cooperate and we managed to organize the stand with the support of the Press Syndicate and the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights.  
I then managed to get some real stories from the ECWR from samples they have collected and published them in my blog kind of opposition to the voices that came back and said there is no sexual harassment in Egypt and this whole fuss was all made up.

The feedback was really encouraging, however, the stand kind of turned into a political unorganized one rather than a stand with a purpose. Seminars, workshops, and presentations had been held by the ECWR, Boussy Project at the American University in Cairo, and the Press Syndicate"

Why did you start your blog? and what do you hope to accomplish through your blog? 
"I started my blog on February 2005, and actually back then I didn't have any messages what-so-ever to deliver, I just found the idea of importing my thoughts, ideas, and knowledge  to the world  pretty dazzling  and  wanted to explore it.
Honestly speaking, nothing big. I am still treating it as my very personal space, because that is why I first started it.  However, I try to announce cultural events, good initiatives that I come across, recommend books or movie, share experiences, or just disseminate the word on something I came to know and others might not know about."

Blogging is a growing trend in Egypt, do you think it will help changing the status quo for women?
"It sure will, for example,
Kolena Laila
campaign/initiative has been vastly developing over the past 3 years, and I can confidently say that Laila has certainly reverberated not only across the Nile Valley but also in the Arab World."

Will this trend continue to grow stronger, or you think it will fade away?
"A year after the blogging phenomena mushroomed, it sort of started fading already, some of the very powerful bloggers quit, and the others are just reluctant to write, and when they write they tend to stay politically correct. 
Nevertheless, after a while of somberness blogging has become a very important if not the main tool in the newly established “citizen media”.  Authorities are now threatened by blogs and bloggers coz they simply know that their voice is heard.  The recent release of blogger Mohamed Adel is just a great evidence, after months of detention authorities have finally decided to set him free as a result of the “3amaleyet el 3amid mayet” campaign that echoed not only on the national level but the international as well."