Author Emily Jacobi

First Hackathon to be held in Haiti: Cross-cultural collaboration to create community-driven solutions

February 1-3, 2013 –  This weekend, Digital Democracy – along with partners KOFAVIV, ESIH & more – is hosting “From Local Solutions to National Systems,” a Hackathon in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. We’re thrilled to be convening a talented group of Haitian & international developers, designers and issue areas experts for the first Hackathon FOR Haiti to [...]

Share

Digital Democracy selected as a winner of the Knight News Mobile Challenge

Digital Democracy is thrilled to announce we have been named as one of eight winners of  the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight News Challenge on Mobiles. Support from Knight Foundation will enable us to launch Remote Access this spring, an initiative aimed at empowering remote and off-the-grid communities with a toolkit to [...]

Share

BarCamp Yangon: Sparking local innovation in Myanmar/Burma

Yangon, Myanmar: The last time I was in Myanmar (aka Burma), the country was ruled by a military government. It was fall 2009. Elections were on the horizon, but most people I met were skeptical about what they might yield. Mobile phones and internet access were increasingly popular but relatively hard to come by – [...]

Share

Resilience & Response: Sandy in Haiti, New York & Beyond

[This post is excerpted from a letter sent Friday, November 2, 2012 via the Dd Newsletter (Sign Up Here!) following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy & includes links below to articles by Emily published in the Huffington Post about our partners in Haiti.] Dear Friends, Over the past weeks, a powerful storm impacted Digital Democracy’s [...]

Share

Upcoming Haiti Hackathon: From Local Solutions to National Systems

How are Haitian women organizing to address and prevent rape and sexual violence? How can critical services be extended to survivors across the country? What is the role that technologists, designers & data wizards can play in strengthening the capacity of Haitian technologists & community organizers? On February 1-3, 2013, Digital Democracy is hosting a [...]

Share

Remote Access: Connecting Threatened Communities

At Digital Democracy, we’re passionate about the opportunities new technologies create to disrupt how information is communicated & shared, especially across traditional divides – urban/rural, rich/poor, majority/minority, and many more. However these opportunities also come with new challenges & risks – when marginalized groups use new tools that amplify their voices, they can also encounter [...]

Share

Reporting back from Chiapas, Mexico

Deep in the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas Mexico, indigenous groups are facing the fight of their lives. Caught between conservation policies and the slow pace of land reform, villagers are fighting to prevent forced evictions from the land where they have lived for generations. If evicted, they face urban slums, poverty, and the necessity of [...]

Share

Urgent action to prevent forced evictions

Chiapas, Mexico: Three indigenous communities in the Lancandon Jungle are under urgent threat of eviction from the Mexican authorities. We need your help to halt the evictions and help the indigenous communities gain more equal footing to advocate for their human rights. There are three ways you can help today: 1) Understand this complex issue. [...]

Share

Celebrating 3 years

Thanks to all our friends, partners, advisors & supporters who joined us last Thursday for Digital Democracy’s 3rd Birthday Party. We are so grateful we were able to celebrate with all of you. Photos from the event are up on our Flickr … check out the excellent images by Jon Reznick, as well as the [...]

Share

Burmese refugee youth photos to be featured at Indianapolis City Market

Indianapolis, IN: Wednesday, August 10th, the students of Project Einstein Indianapolis will have an audience of hundreds as visitors to the Indianapolis City Market’s weekly farmer’s market will be able to view the work of young photographers, who are primarily refugees from Burma/Myanmar. Tomorrow’s exhibit is the result of a year-long photo training with students [...]

Share