Digital Democracy

Happy International Women’s Day! To mark the 101st celebration of International Women’s Day, we at Digital Democracy want to take a moment to reflect on our work to empower women and girls,  and celebrate their remarkable vision, courage, achievements and inspiration around the globe. Two years ago, Dd launched programming focused on Women and gender [...]

At crossroads in my life, I bike across countries. Nine years ago, I biked across the United States. Today, I find myself at another transition: I am moving on from my role as President of Digital Democracy. In honor of that change, I’ll be crossing the Dominican Republic and Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. [...]

In one year since CGI commitment, Digital Democracy has trained 150 women and built a database documenting over 400 cases of rape in Haiti. Today we announce the launch of the only phone-based emergency response system dedicated to rape and sexual assault in Haiti. Together with our partners at  KOFAVIV, the Commission for Women Victims [...]

On April 28th, 2011, Digital Democracy and ELK Studios launched Jan Nou We L/The Way We See It: A Collection of Haitian Women’s Photography at SplashLight Studios in New York.  The Collection of 47 original photographs is the culmination of a year of programming with Haitian women and a partnership with Erin Kornfeld and Erica [...]

On Saturday, March 12th, technologists, humanitarians, and community organizers gathered at the second ever #BarCampHaiti, convened in Port Au Prince. For those not familiar with “BarCamps,” they are a conference style long popular among technologists – and increasingly other communities – with an agenda partially determined at the event itself based on the skills of [...]

Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, and Digital Democracy was celebrating from Port-au-Prince, where our Haiti Program Manager Emilie Reiser joined one of our local partners, KOFAVIV, for a day-long celebration. The situation for women in Haiti remains challenging, particularly in the displaced person camps where attacks of rape and sexual violence [...]

…protected by translation, the cycles of racisim and classism continue…

Still reeling from the earthquake nine months ago and with elections later this month, what do Haitians living in the camps think about voting and the opportunities for changing their country? Last week, Dd’s Emily Jacobi, Emilie Reiser, and I traveled there to find out.

We are thrilled to announce support from United States Institute of Peace for our work with grassroots Haitian Women’s groups. Thanks to an urgent grant from their Haiti program, we are launching a citizen reporting initiative for the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in Haiti, scheduled for November 28. This week, I’m in Port-au-Prince to [...]

Participation, collaboration, and engagement are words that come to mind when empowering communities with digital tools. These same words also belong to the methodology of design thinking. Design thinking is a process used to create innovative solutions from complex problems. Live With Design, a group of designers, design thinkers, social entrepreneurs gathered at a MeetUp [...]