What is a Hackathon? A combination of the words “hack” and “marathon,” a hackathon is a convening of computer programmers and others (graphic designers, user experience experts, project managers and more) to build specific tech tools, rapid-style, over the course of a few days. Our upcoming, transnational collaboration will focus on developing tools to help scale the impact of our partner KOFAVIV’s work by nationalizing the 572-Call Center and digging deep into trends and visualization of data they have collected on incidents of gender-based violence over the past three years.

As we first blogged about in October, the Hackathon has two primary objectives:
1) design tools to improve the efficacy of the 572 Call Center by developing better ways to access and organize available information on valuable resources (like emergency care) outside the Port-au-Prince area.
2) improve the use and visualization of data on instances of rape and sexual violence throughout Haiti. New data visualization tools will allow for enhanced visual reports on cases received by KOFAVIV, the identification of new trends in existing data and improved advocacy for increased security for women & girls.

The Hackathon will be hosted at the École Supérieure d’Infotronique d’Haïti. Not only has ESIH opened their space for the event, nine of their 3rd & 4th year students will be participating in the hackathon. As Director Patrick Attie told us:

“The first Hackathon in Haiti represents an amazing opportunity for our students to be placed in a production situation, apply their  knowledge to solving real problems and meet other (Haitian and foreign) geeks, as passionate as they are about what technology can do to help improve the harsh living conditions in Haiti. A Hackathon is a culture that we absolutely need to be able to promote and perpetuate on our own. Remembering, after the earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12th, 2010, that most hacker events about helping Haiti took place outside of Haiti, the Hackathon brought to us by Digital Democracy should also demonstrate that this type of event can efficiently take place in Haiti.”

Hosting the Hackathon in Haiti is what attracted one of our international participants, Sara-Jayne Farmer of Change Assembly, a veteran of many Hack events and open-source communities. When applying to participate, she wrote, “I led the London CrisisCamp team that responded to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Like many crisismappers, that’s how I started, it’s a very special place for us all, and I couldn’t pass up the change to come help it again. I wanted to participate in the Hackathon because it supports Haitians helping Haitians in Haiti. And I’m looking forward to meeting and working directly with Haitian developers.”

In addition to students from ESIH, local participants will include a development team from Dd’s partner Solutions, creators of Noula.ht, the technical team from KOFAVIV with whom we have worked closely over the years, mappers from COHSMA & more. Joining the Haitian developers to lend skills & expertise is a great group of international participants, coming from Prague, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. Our international participants include:

• Willow Brugh of Geeks Without Bounds, who is helping facilitate & coordinate the event.
• Mariann Urban, software programmer working on data & maps for UNHCR Innovation unit (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).
• Mark Libkuman & Eric Goldhagen of OpenFlows, open source software developers who have worked closely with Dd over the past two years to build KOFAVIV’s database, and most recently conducted technology trainings in Haiti in December.
• Sara-Jayne Farmer, aforementioned crisis-mapper extraordinaire, data guru & CTO of Change Assembly.
• Juan Müller, veteran NYC Hackathon-goer, software developer at ChallengePost.
• Ben Wilkins, longtime hacker for social good, UX engineer at One Medical Group.
• Wendy Fong, freelance visual designer and multimedia studies instructor at City College of San Francisco.
• Two issue area experts – Blaine Bookey of Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, UC Hastings College of the Law & Sasha Prokopets of Hastings to Haiti Partnership, UC Hastings College of the Law. Note: It was through Blaine & the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti that Dd was first introduced to KOFAVIV, three years ago. We feel so blessed to still be collaborating!
• Dd Advisor Marquise Stillwell and Deepthi Welaratna of OpenBox.

I’ll be flying down with many of the other NYC-based participants this morning, and of course, leading us all over the next few days will be Emilie Reiser, Dd’s irreplaceable Haiti Program Director. There’s excitement all around from both the Haitian & international participants. As Blaine wrote,

“I am participating in the Hackathon because I have already seen the incredible impact of the call center, not only for the women but also for the groups organizing for change, and am thrilled to think of more, innovative ways to eradicate gender-based violence.”

For Juan, who will be traveling to Haiti for the first-time, there was another reason to join.

“I’m usually quite excited about hackathons and humanitarian ones in particular. That’s why when I heard about Dd’s efforts in Haiti I knew I had to join. I’m very much looking forward to helping improve the sense of safety (hopefully many) women in Haiti have.”

For Dd, the Hackathon represents the final step in our fully transitioning the tech system we have built over the past three years into the capable hands of our partner KOFAVIV. Success – to us – means systems that last long beyond our departure. We’re excited that the Hackathon represents an opportunity to bring very bright minds together to build technical solutions in the place where they will be implemented, with an emphasis on building local capacity to maintain and continue adapting these tools. Although Hackathons for humanitarian purposes take place all over the world, they happen more rarely in places like Haiti, and we’re keen to learn what works and what doesn’t in this context. In adapting the format to build tech solutions in the places where they are needed, our emphasis is supporting Haitian participants’ ability continue fostering innovation to address the challenges facing their country.

Finally, we are grateful and indebted to all the sponsors and partners who make the Hackathon possible, both for supporting the event and believing in the vision of a Hackathon in Port-au-Prince in the first place. From our founding sponsor the Abundance Foundation to co-hosts ESIH (École Supérieure d’Infotronique d’Haïti) and KOFAVIV, partners Solutions, Geeks Without Bounds, Openflows, Openbox, and sponsors UNHCR Innovations Arca Foundation, Channel Foundation, Knight-Mozilla Open News & Tropo.

Follow #HaitiHack this weekend to join the activities virtually!

Please check out our official press release and additional information below. Tune in tomorrow (Friday, Jan. 18th at 12:30pm ET) for a livestream presentation of the winning projects, at knightfoundation.org/live.

What is Remote Access?

The goal of Remote Access is to adapt existing hardware & open-source software tools to the specific needs of communities living in remote areas – those living on the front lines of the struggle for land, resources and agency over their lives. Our approach is to bridge the gap between innovative organizations developing cutting edge tools/applications and vulnerable communities who desperately need to elevate their voices. Combining existing tools into a mobile “Swiss Army Knife,” Remote Access will streamline the process through which users collect, manage and share information, empowering them to be in charge of their own information as they document pressing human & environmental rights abuses.

Why?

Many human rights abuses and environmental crimes continue unchecked for a simple reason: they go unreported and unnoticed in the world’s most fragile ecosystems and hard to reach places. In remote areas with limited access to technology and communication, communities are particularly vulnerable to threats to their lives & environment.

Technology advances – cheap digital cameras, handheld GPS & modern mobile devices and applications – have opened up tremendous opportunities for empowering communities to document environmental and human rights issues. However, many existing tools are too complex, do not work in a disconnected environment, and lack a bottom-up approach that empowers vulnerable populations to collect, control & disseminate their own data.

But within the burgeoning technology community there was an eagerness to transform the country, and a commitment to doing so as a community. And so when, as part of an informational meeting with members of the Myanmar Bloggers’ Society and Myanmar Computer Professionals’ Association, Mark and I mentioned BarCamp, a kind of technology “unconference” increasing in popularity elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the bloggers and computer programmers got excited about the potential for this kind of conference to engage the local tech community. Mark and I were excited by their excitement: Pulling off a BarCamp in Burma seemed unlikely, but we were learning that not everything in the country was as black and white as it may have appeared from the outside. The potential BarCampers were clearly dedicated, so we spent some time discussing the merits and challenges of BarCamp (can you really pull off a conference where most of the schedule is determined the day of?), connected them to BarCamp friends in Bangkok, and headed back to New York City, full of thoughts and questions about the complex realities taking shape in Myanmar. Many of these were ideas we were careful not to talk much about for the past few years, in the interest of protecting people’s security and privacy. But we had reasons to feel cautiously optimistic about the trajectory of the country, in no small part due to the amazing spirit of the people we met. Their dedication to working for a better future, despite the odds, encouraged us to believe that something more was taking place, underneath the surface of this beautiful but politically-fraught country.

And then, something astonishing happened.

After a few initial hiccups, and questions over the merits of planning a BarCamp, the volunteer organizers gained momentum, and scheduled a BarCamp for January, 2010, despite the threat of events being shut down due to elections scheduled for later that year. Merely scheduling a BarCamp was an impressive astonishment, but in the weeks leading up to the actual event, as I watched from afar, something incredible happened – more and more people registered, creating a snowball effect, and driving the number of BarCamp Yangon participants higher than any other BarCamp in the world – ever. In the end, 2700 registered for BarCamp Yangon 2010, and estimates raised as high as 3,000 participants total.

Fast forward three years, and a core group of organizers – plus scores of volunteers – have been diligently planning for BarCamp Yangon 2013 – the best one yet. I’m one of a couple dozen foreigners privileged enough to attend, and, in true BarCamp style, I’m looking as forward to what I’ll learn as what I’ll give. BarCamp Yangon has become deservedly famous in the intervening years, from breaking the world record on BarCamp to Aung San Suu Kyi’s opening address at BarCamp 2012. But the real essence of the event isn’t about breaking world records or speeches by Nobel Peace Prize Winners. The real essence of BarCamp is how thousands of people can come together and collaboratively plan an event in real-time, the skill-sharing that happens, the friendships that are made.

It is an honor and privilege to be here in Yangon for the next few days to finally experience the magic of BarCamp Yangon in person. Follow along via twitter, and let me know what you most want to know from my time here!

The report, led by New York law professor Molly Land and sponsored by the World Bank Institute, examines the question of how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can effectively promote the implementation of Human Rights. Highlighting three case studies, the report looks at the use of tools like mobile phones and social media by human rights advocates in Kenya, the Dominican Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although new technologies have been heralded for their impact in activism and government, Philip Alston explains that there has been “little sustained work…by the human rights community as a whole to apply existing technologies or to study their potential uses and problems.”

The #ICT4HR report begins to bridge that gap by clarifying the key opportunities and challenges of ICT4HR, and offering recommendations to address risks associated with incorporating ICT into the fight for human rights. After four years working directly with communities to develop their digital literacy, Dd has no doubt about the potential power of ICT4HR. With the release of #ICT4HR on Human Rights Day 2012, we at Dd are both celebrating our successes in helping to make voices heard, and reflecting on the hard work yet to be done. Check out the #ICT4HR report and video and help us continue to spread the word.

Our partners tell us collaboration with Dd has made things possible that they once considered impossible. 

Things like: 

• Hosting the largest Barcamp in the world in Burma/Myanmar.
• Building & running the 1st 24-hour hotline for sexual violence in Haiti.
• Using data to protect survivors of rape in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.
• Making the first phone call from a remote community in Chiapas, Mexico to get news on eviction threats.

For the rest of the year you’ll hear directly from Dd partners about the POSSIBILITY you help us create. Join the Conversation: Send us your thoughts & questions via Google+, Facebook or #DdPossible on Twitter.

Hear directly from our partners in Haiti in this video.

Check out the photos of our celebration of #DdPossible & 4 years of Digital Democracy from New York in November.

Make it possible: Help Dd continue to work with communities by making an investment in Dd today. We will thank you here to show our <3.

Your tax-deductible contribution will make an immediate and profound impact. 

Dear Friends,

Over the past weeks, a powerful storm impacted Digital Democracy’s partners & team, in both Haiti and New York City. From flooded tent camps in Port-au-Prince to millions without power on the Eastern seaboard, the storm’s wind and rain forged a deadly path that connected our seemingly disparate communities.

The reality is that extreme weather events resulting from climate change connect us all. A storm that devastates southern Haiti can also flood the NYC subways. Rising food prices as a result of the summer’s drought in the Midwest will affect economic markets around the globe.

As Americans head to the polls next week, I’m struck by the size of the questions we currently face and the opportunities we have within and beyond electoral politics to shape our futures. In such times of uncertainty, the task before us is to combine our talents, resources and wisdom to collaborate on our vision of a future where all people are able to influence the decisions that govern their lives.

For the Dd team, that means we’re learning from our partners in Haiti and focusing on the intersection of environmental and human rights. Natural disasters connect us all but they impact marginalized communities most urgently. We believe that to fulfill Dd’s mission to empower marginalized communities, we cannot ignore how climate change further isolates the most vulnerable members of societies around the world. That is why we are so thrilled to be investing in a new initiative in 2013. Remote Access focuses on building tools that allow remote, vulnerable and indigenous communities to better collect and share their data on human rights & environmental threats.

Hurricane Sandy reminds us our survival depends on our on and offline social networks. I hope you will read more about the way our Haitian partners responded to the storm (in two parts published by the Huffington Post: Part 1 & Part 2) and continue contributing your talents, ideas and resources to co-creating the future where we all wish to live.

In gratitude & solidarity,
Emily Jacobi
Executive Director

• 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 Hackathon in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, inviting local and international developers & designers to address these questions. Focused on supporting the life-saving work of Haitian women’s organization KOFAVIV, the hackathon will help them expand their services to survivors of rape & gender-based violence across Haiti.

Made possible thanks to the Abundance Foundation and ESIH (Ecole Supérieure d’Infotronique d’Haïti), and with facilitation of Willow Brugh of Geeks Without Bounds, the Hackathon is focused on developing tools to help scale the impact of our current systems in two areas, resulting in outputs that will dramatically improve the work of our partners.

WHAT ARE THE GOALS OF THE HACKATHON?

1) EXPAND THE 572 CALL CENTER TO NATIONAL SERVICE
Last fall, KOFAVIV launched Haiti’s first Emergency Response Hotline for Gender Based Violence (GBV). In May, 2012, the hotline transitioned to 24 hour service and currently provides women survivors of violence free access to information on services for medical, legal and psychosocial care in Port-au-Prince. In order for the Call Center to serve national clients, operators need easy access to a map of resources outside of the Port-au-Prince area.

Output:
•  Build a web platform to map/aggregate information on service providers throughout the country. Skills in SMS, GIS, and Drupal are especially useful.

2) BETTER VISUALIZE DATA
Since 2010, Dd has worked with local partners to develop a cloud-based database to digitize information on incidents of violence. The system currently includes 50+ points of data on over 1,000 reports of rape and domestic violence in Haiti between 2010 and 2012. KOFAVIV is seeking to improve their ability to use data to advocate for increased security for Haitian women & girls.

Output:
•  Identify new trends in existing data and develop creative ways to visualize data for advocacy and outreach. Skills in design, big data, and community engagement especially useful.

HOW CAN YOU GET INVOLVED?

If you or someone you know has skills in the following and would be interested in participating, please submit an application here (bit.ly/PaPhack). Specifically, we’re looking for participants skilled in:

• Drupal
• Front end design
• Graphic design
• Dynamic code
• Dataviz
• Big data
• Mapping / GIS

Participation in the Hackathon includes travel, lodging, food and transport in country. All logistics taken care of by Digital Democracy. Sponsoring an international participant ($5,000) covers the cost of that participant plus helps cover the overall costs of the event. For some exceptional candidates, partial or full scholarships may be available. For more information on participants, please email Haiti Program Director Emilie Reiser – Ereiser(at)digital-democracy(dot)org.

2. Spread the word!

Help us promote the Hackathon – share this link with folks who you think would be a great fit.

3. Become a Sponsor!

Help make the Hackathon possible. We are looking for additional financial and promotional sponsors. To discuss potential sponsorship, contact Executive Director Emily Jacobi – ejacobi(at)digital-democracy(dot)org.

Along the way we’ve learned that it’s not enough to connect remote & vulnerable populations with new technologies – we often work with them to adapt & tweak these tools to fit their needs. That’s how we realized the important role that tool-building plays in achieving our mission to empower marginalized communities to use technology to fight for their human rights.

We’re thrilled to share a proposal we have drafted for a new initiative called Remote Access. Remote Access is an initiative to build a mobile reporting platform for remote & indigenous communities to document environmental and human rights issues – from oil spills to political violence – and engage with a global audience. Read the full proposal on the Knight News Challenge website, and get in touch with your ideas, questions & recommendations on how we can best collaborate to meet the needs of remote & threatened populations around the world.

Jocie was referring to the systems we — Dd and KOFAVIV — have built together that, upon my first visit to Haiti, I was seeing with my own eyes: the 572 Call Center and KOFAVIV database.

The database secures case information for each survivor of sexual violence who comes to KOFAVIV. It allows them to track cases and care from medical, legal and psycho-social providers. It also allows them to track trends, create reports and analyze the data they have about each case without jeopardizing the safety of the victims.

The Call Center runs 24 hours a day, providing resources to anyone who calls 572 and serving as the only emergency response system for sexual violence in Haiti.

A grassroots women’s organization started by poor women in Port-Au-Prince, KOFAVIV — the Commission of Women Victims for Victims — has worked for almost a decade to serve survivors and empower the community to address rape, and sexual and domestic violence. Jocie was acknowledging the societal glass ceilings that prevent them from accessing tools to streamline work, create new jobs and advocate for change through dialog with police, the Haitian government and international players like the UN, USAID and US Congress. Except, now, with these systems, that is exactly what KOFAVIV does. The once impossible has become possible with technology access and training.

Over the last two years, Digital Democracy has worked with women from KOFAVIV and other organizations in Port-Au-Prince. I also have worked with Dd for just two years. I remember when our team raised funds to take the first set of digital cameras to Haiti. They met with women including Jocie & KOFAVIV under tarps in the yard of BAI to participate in the first photo trainings. Leaders of the organization were still living in tent camps.

A couple weeks ago, I got to the KOFAVIV offices. Along with our full staff, our board and Marquise Stillwell of Openbox, a Dd champion & supporter, we spent one week in Port-Au-Prince.

We visited the KOFAVIV offices and met the technical team that is now running the systems we built together. We met the women of KOFAVIV and FAVILEK who participated in photo trainings in 2010. We met the leaders of Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and saw their backyard where our first photo trainings took place. We visited Place St. Anne, a tent camp that remains in Port-Au-Prince where families are still living, and met those families and the women who lead many of them, women and children who have been victims of sexual violence, including members of KOFAVIV. We met with the Digicel Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the largest mobile phone carrier in Haiti and provider of the 572 short code. We met with representatives from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) doing a variety of projects throughout Port-Au-Prince.

In the context of our largest program, we stood witness to the complexity of a beautiful place, the progress of our collaborations and work there, reviewed and evaluated our work to date and made big decisions for our next steps as an organization. We were humbled and inspired.

We’re excited to share the plans and prospects that lie ahead for Digital Democracy following the Board’s recent meeting in Haiti. The Board has outlined directives for programming in three categories: Direct Implementation, Tool-Building & Local-to-Global Engagement. The plans outlined mark significant growth for Dd. We are eager to share this overview of what lies ahead and invite you to join us in making it all possible!

(1) Direct Implementation: Digital Literacy, Digital Organizing & Digital Citizenship programs with direct partners, Internationally and Domestically.

(2) Tool-Building. To date, Dd has supported partners with tools that exist, and built custom systems to respond to specific needs (such as the Database or Call Center in Haiti). Based on our growing expertise on the user needs of marginalized & remote communities, we’re going to take a more pro-active approach to tool-building in collaboration with open-source technologists. See our proposal for Remote Access which outlines our vision for adapting existing mapping & data collection tools to be used by our partners fighting injustice in remote areas.

(3) Local to Global Engagement: While Dd remains small, nimble & focused on a few key issues and partners, part of our mission is to share what we’re learning with a broader audience. So, we’re excited to work with you and other communities around the globe to build bridges across geographic divides, share the lessons we’ve learned, and empower communities beyond our immediate partners. We will do this with events, writing and speaking on our work. Stay tuned…

Where will we be working? Haiti, Chiapas, New York City & beyond.

>>> Due to the strength and success of the phases of our program, we plan to wind down our work on the ground in Haiti by the end of 2012. For the rest of the year we’ll focus on fully transitioning the 572 Call Center & database system to local ownership, mapping national resources for gender-based violence and comprehensively documenting the scope of our work in Haiti and lessons learned.

>>> Digital Organizing in Chiapas. Based on the success of our pilot digital literacy trainings this spring, we are planning to begin phase 2 of our work there. We will be returning to the Lacandon Jungle to engage in a longer-term mapping project focused on environmental sustainability and dialogue between indigenous villagers & Mexican authorities.

>>> We are bringing our work home. Building from past projects with the New York City Department of Education and high schoolers in Indianapolis, we are excited to have a green-light from the board to explore possibilities for a domestic Dd program. We’ll keep you posted as we meet with the coalition fighting Stop & Frisk in NYC, opportunities working with youth on data literacy in Newark, NJ and partnerships with other marginalized groups in NYC.

>>> New Partnerships: We will continue bringing our process and expertise to support the work of other great organizations. New opportunities will be filtered through the intake process approved by our Board.

Get Involved. Have ideas? Something above resonate with your passions or interests? Want to be a lead investor in this work? Drop us a line at info [at] digital-democracy [dot] org.