One entrance to London's Hyde Park features a small gravel area known as Speaker's Corner. A landmark for over a century, its existence ensures that there will always be at least one location in the city where people can speak freely to anyone who cares to listen. The Internet has quickly become a kind of global, freewheeling, computer-based Speaker's Corner, but there are more language, economic, and political barriers to using it than most people recognize.

Lowering these barriers and providing access to the Internet is what the Global Reproductive Health Forum@Harvard is all about, says Orit Halpern, program manager of the Internet initiative at the School: "The capacity for women from developing countries to be active participants in the new electronic media is an important way to ensure that their voices are heard and interests served."

On one level, the Forum (www.hsph.harvard.edu/organizations/healthnet) functions like many other Web sites based at academic institutions, providing a searchable, easy-to-navigate, online database of information about sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, contraception, and other reproductive health issues. Topics on gender, adolescent health, and population and family planning policies and programs are also covered. The Web site also has numerous interactive venues, such as e-mail discussion groups and electronic journals. One of the stated objectives of the Forum is to function as an electronic meeting place for nongovernmental organizations, government officials, activists, academic researchers, and others. "The Global Reproductive Health Forum is a place for people to exchange ideas and to learn," comments Michael Reich, Taro Takemi Professor of International Health Policy at the School and the project's director. "We want to build human linkages as well as organizational linkages."

But perhaps what truly sets the Forum apart from other Web sites is its larger goal for enabling and empowering women, especially in the developing world, to use the Forum and, more generally, the Internet. To that end, the Forum staff have conducted Internet training sessions for women in West Africa. In some cases, they have helped women set up their own Web sites. Halpern sees this work as critical because she views the Internet as a way for disadvantaged women to influence the world wide debate over reproductive rights. "My dream, my goal, is to connect all of Latin America," says Andrea Acevedo, a student in the School's Department of Health and Social Behavior and a Forum researcher responsible for coordinating HIV/AIDS information . Acevedo, who was born in Chile and grew up in Venezuela, is working to expand the Spanish-language portion of the Forum.

"The capacity for women from developing countries to be active participants in the new electronic media is an important way to ensure that their voices are heard and interests served."

This summer, the Forum staff traveled extensively. Acevedo was in Mexico, evaluating the Internet needs there among women and women's groups. Tonya Nyagiro, who is also a student at the School, was in West Africa, training members of a women's health organization and helping them create their own site, which will be linked to the Forum. Meanwhile, Sushma Joshi, based in Nepal, has been working on a Forum-linked site dedicated to the health and social issues of South Asian women. Called "Bol!" which means "speak" in Hindi and Nepali, Joshi's site hosts an e-mail dialogue on topics such as sex trafficking in young Nepali girls and the effects of India nuclear tests on the people of Nepal.

The Forum got high marks in the August 15th edition of The Lancet. The British medical journal said the Web site is "fulfilling an important mission in a credible, thoughtful, and thought-provoking fashion. Visitors who spend time here will almost certainly benefit from the experience."

- Terri L. Rutter