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.

Haiti faced a crossroads when it was devastated by the 2010 earthquake. Digital Democracy had a team on the ground at the time, which meant the event shook me to the core as well. The Dd team sprang into action, contributing to humanitarian aid efforts to map where people were in need to help save lives.

Yet once Haiti disappeared from the headlines, the real work to rebuild the country began. In response to increased levels of rape post-earthquake, we worked to empower women as key actors in Haiti’s reconstruction with a commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative. This year we worked in Haiti to launch the 572 call center, the country’s first rape-response hotline (a sort of 911 for violence against women), connected to a secure database and interactive mapping system. Next we’re working to scale these solutions nationally.

Now I’m at a crossroads too. Over the past three years Digital Democracy has grown from an idea to an accomplished nonprofit. With Dd a sustainable organization, I’m ready to move on and am looking to explore opportunities that allow me to pursue innovative projects with larger enterprises. I’ll still be involved in Digital Democracy, in a guiding role to support the work of my co-founder Emily and our amazing staff.

Since Digital Democracy launched, I’ve been able to draft policy in Iraq, securely document crimes against humanity in Burma/Myanmar, develop an international education initiative, work with government heads and active citizens in the Caucasus, host trainings with Secretary Clinton in the lands that my family fled from, and speak at US Congress and at the White House. It’s meant the world to me to work on these initiatives with such incredible people over the past few years. When I biked across the US I learned that people can achieve anything they put their minds to. I’m excited to see what this new trip will teach.

Tune in to Bike Hispaniola to join my friend Rob Munro & me on the journey. Follow the blog, featuring a live map that updates our location, twitter feed, photos and more. Please ask us questions, share tips and ideas, and let us know of people and sights to see. I’ll be sharing stories and stopping by our partners’ offices in Port-Au-Prince to see the call center staff and further explore how technology can continue to make a difference in Haiti and around the world.

You can sponsor my 500 mile ride by contributing to Digital Democracy’s end of year matching campaign in honor of the trip. All donations will go to Digital Democracy core programming in Haiti and beyond in 2012 – not the ride itself – and be doubled by generous matching donors.

Happy holidays to you and thank you for your support over these years. I look forward to hearing from you and keeping in touch wherever my travels take me and where yours take you.

Sincerely,
Mark Belinsky

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 fun photos shot by party-goers in the photobooth, with automatic uploads thanks to Mifi. If you’d like a print of one of Jon’s images, please contact him directly. A professional photo makes a great gift for the holidays.

Huge thanks to Elizabeth Hodes Custom Cakes & Sugar Art, who not only contributed the best looking cake we’d ever laid eyes on, it was delicious to boot! Thanks to DJ iBeat & Will for spinning tunes and our excellent gang of volunteers who kept the party running smoothly. Thanks to Trader Joe’s for providing delicious snacks, Lucy’s Whey for the excellent cheese trays, Sustainable Party for eco-friendly supplies, and Bulldog Gin & Brooklyn Brewery for the great libations.

Finally, thanks to the great folks at Google’s Community Affairs Team for contributing a fancy new Google Chromebook to the cause. Thanks to raffle sales, tickets & donations party-goers were able to contribute more than $2,000 to Dd’s core mission to empowering marginalized communities, donations that are being doubled by generous donors.

We can’t wait to see where we are a year from now!

Digital Democracy is turning 3 this month! Come celebrate with us on 11/17 at the RH Gallery in TriBeCa, New York City. Bring your phone, try out new tools & learn more about how Dd is empowering marginalized communities to leverage technology to fight for their human rights. Get your tickets now! Early bird tickets are $10 and available until Sunday, November 6. Full price tickets online (and at the door) will be $15.

See you there to enjoy….

• DJ iBeat spinning for your dancing & listening pleasure
• Bulldog Gin & Brooklyn Brewery for the open bar
• Elizabeth Hodes Custom Cakes & Sugar Art for our custom-designed cake
• Lucy’s Whey for CHEESE

There will be fun to go around…

& you can WIN. Enter our raffle for a chance to take home a brand new Google Chromebook…

...thanks to Google's New York City office of Community Affairs

Play telephone, spread the word, and if you bring 10 friends you get a free raffle ticket. Questions? Email Biz at biz [at] digital-democracy [dot] org.

Thank you to everyone who’s donations will make this a special night! And feel free to check out these photos from our 1st Anniversary at OpenPlans and 2nd Anniversary at New Work City.

The past few weeks I have been spending time in Zucotti Park as part of the people’s microphone. Since tech-based amplification is banned, people have improvised, and together shout the words of whoever is speaking until it is loud enough so that everyone can hear them. That decision making is slow and laborious, while also beautiful and egalitarian.

“What do the protesters want?” is an oft-repeated chorus coming from mainstream media.

OccupyVotes is an open source approach to encourage participatory decision-making: collect & prioritize our ideas in an open, efficient & accountable way.

With around 10,000 votes in the first 36 hours of launching the site, it’s exciting to see the project taking off. It’s clear that this platform helps fill a void – people want to share their vision for demands for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Occupy Votes was built on the open-source All Our Ideas platform. Not only does it allow visitors to vote with the ideas they like best, it provides them a forum to submit their own ideas and see the votes by other users. As more people contribute their ideas, we look forward to taking a deeper look at the data to understand the differences between opinions from those voting inside Liberty Park, in other US cities, from different platforms and around the world. Stay tuned to find out what the data has to say about the decision making process.

It’ll be interesting to get deeper into the data to understand the differences between opinions from those voting inside Liberty Park, in other US cities, from different platforms and around the world. Stay tuned to find out what the data has to say about the decision making process.

Why did we choose All Our Ideas? Other platforms exist, including Google moderator. With that system, good ideas often get stuck at the bottom of the laundry list and tend not to rise, unless a troll forces an issue up. People don’t tend to scroll. Or trolls will upvote only the issues that they’re interested in, not the rest. This creates lopsided results. Plus, this tool is easy to use and visually clear. The user interface is itself more democratic in that way.

All Our Ideas randomly generates a pairing. As more and more people vote, the information can become statistically representative and truly reflect the interests of the group. Or points of disagreement. All of that information is available in the data, which is open and available. We’ll be publishing it in the interest of transparency.

We’re looking to gather volunteers to set up a voting booth in Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti Park) and engage people in the process of voting and presenting their specific demands. This site is an initial attempt to see if the tool speaks to people. Digital Democracy has had some initial successes with this with our friends in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, and I’m hoping we can take the lessons and open source tools we’ve been working with around the world to continue to support the marginalized, even in this country – the 99%.

We welcome your thoughts, feedback and – of course – your ideas!

Disclosure: All of the ideas on the allourideas site are currently seeded from unscientific polls that I’ve seen covered in a variety of media sources. Fast Company, CNN, WSJ & occupywallstreet forum, plus Michael Haack and Matt Taibbi. Additional ideas related to financial concerns have been added by users. Thanks to the Meetup team for providing their headquarters in New York City for the Occupy Together Hackathon where this project was synthesized.

Update: Check out this Mashable article which talks about the project – Occupy Wall Street Hackathons Produce Digital Tools and New Activists and on the All Our Ideas blog.

2 years, 21 countries, some revolutions and a lot of new friends – Digital Democracy is proud to launch our first annual report. The online version and PDF below are interactive, so feel free to click on links and pictures to hear to stories and read more about our projects.
Digital Democracy 2009-2010 Annual Report

With deep gratitude to our global community of supporters who have made this work possible, we are thrilled to launch our first annual report. Covering the period from November, 2008, when we incorporated under the auspices of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy until the end of 2010, when we filed for our own independent non-profit status, the report documents our work to empower marginalized communities around the globe, and the inspirational ways they are using technology to build their own futures. Special thanks to Bill Hopkins Media for generously donating our New York office, Drew Frist for the Dd logo, Zago who designed this Annual Report, our team, our funders, our advisory board and generous individuals like you.

Societies are stronger when more people participate and along with the report, we also have a new promotional video to go along with it and help spread this message. Javier Saavedra is the editor with Steve Benjamin doing the graphics. All the footage is from our past two years in the field, either taken by us or our partners. We hope you like it:

Sincerely,
Emily Jacobi & Mark Belinsky, co-founders

Vote for our panels at SXSW

SXSW is shaping up to be a pretty exciting festival this year. Kudos to the awesome Baratunde who is going to give the opening keynote. This year we’re exploring the little discussed aspects of the implications of technology. How can it empower but also endanger people and what creative strategies are currently being pursued around the world? The second is about how women are drivers of change. Please check out more details about them below:

Panel:How To Not Die: Using Tech In A Dictatorship

A discussion about how technologies that are often built in the west are being used around the world in extremely dangerous situations. Often there isn’t an idea of how to protect individuals and their human rights when developing these tools, even when they’re being used by activists and changemakers around the world. So this will be concrete examples from Burma, Tibet, Liberia and Egypt.

Speakers: Mark Belinsky – Digital Democracy

1. Lhadon Tethong – Tibet Action Institute
2. Brian Conley – Small World News

Panel:Women Drive Change: Tech in the Global South

The use of technology by women in the Global South is growing fast! From Africa to South America to Southeast Asia, women in the Global South are using technology tools in new and creative ways with astounding results. Teen girls and senior citizens alike are finding the freedom to use technology to let their voices be heard, to foster an independent living, and to bring about revolution. We will talk about what this means for women, how their online personas might differ from real-world personas in societies where women have fewer rights, and where technology tools need to go next in order to meet their specific needs.

Speakers: Jenn Sramek –CivicActions

1. Kara Andrade – Ashoka
2. Zawadi Nyong’o – Africa Cancer Foundation
3. Emily Jacobi – Digital Democracy
4. Catherine Harrington – Women’s Learning Partnership

Panel:Is that the mobilenet in your pocket or…

Mobile phones are a game-changer in filmmaking. Is it good, bad or ugly for the industry? This panel brings together the people who let us film the bleeding edge of film.. from our pockets. I’m looking to host this panel as part of the film fest given my history in documentary film and recent experience speaking at SilverDocs and at the Tribeca Film Institute with BAVC.

Friends’ Panels: There are some panels being put on that we highly recommend checking out as well and giving some votes to. Here’s our list. Feel free to add your own in the comments! We’re excited to learn what else is out there.

Panel: Internet Power: After Cyber-Optimism and Pessimism

Description A year ago one could have had an honest argument about whether the Internet was increasing the power of the oppressor or the oppressed. Events in Tunis, Cairo, Daraa, Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing have shown that it can benefit both and that the effect of digital technology on power will be complex and contradictory. What are we to make of freelance hacker orgs, transparency activists and covert cyber war?

Speakers: Chris Bronk – Rice University

1. Richard Boly – Office of eDiplomacy, U.S. Department of State
2. Mary Joyce – The Meta-Activism Project
3. Ron Deibert – University of Toronto (Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, Citizen Lab)
4. Patrick Meier – Ushahidi

Panel: Africa, Tech & Women: The New Faces of Development

2010 is the year that Africa will finally connect to the global undersea cable network powering today’s broadband internet traffic. How can Africa use the arrival of this high speed super highway to it’s advantage? What impact will broadband communications have on Africa’s development? Are we looking at Africa 3.0?

Speakers: TMS Ruge – Project Diaspora

1. Ebele Okobi-Harris – Yahoo!
2. Liz Ngonzi – New York University Heyman Center for Philanthropy & Fundraising
3. Isis Nyong’o – InMobi Africa
4. Milly Businge – Kikuube Village Council

Panel: How to Run a Social Site and Not Get Users Killed

Facebook helped foment an uprising. Twitter kept the world rapt as revolution unfolded. But for all of their benefits, the use of social networks often puts activists–in Egypt, Syria, China, or even the United States–at great risk. Your privacy policy and terms of use, as well as how you enforce them, could mean life or death for an activist (or an ordinary user) using your site. What can you, the social media company, do to help keep your users safe?

Speakers: Jillian York – Electronic Frontier Foundation

1. Mathew Ingram – GigaOm
2. Kacem El Ghazzali – none
3. Danny O’Brien – Committee to Protect Journalists
4. Sam Gregory – WITNESS

Panel: Social Change Film: Strategy+Transmedia+Evaluation

our job is not done once the film is complete. In fact, in today’s media landscape, early strategic thinking, transmedia collaborations and entertainment evaluations are critical components to increasing the impact of film’s for social change. They can help you reach a larger audience, amplify your message, connect with your audience, understand what worked and what didn’t work and bring in additional funding

Speakers: Debika Shome – harmony Institute

1. Shaady Salehi – active voice
2. Lina Srivastava – Lina Srivastava Consulting LLC

Panel: Social Design Fractals

What would Coca-Cola taste like if if the company improved the labor standards in its factories? What kinds of software would Microsoft produce if it made its CEO-to-worker pay ratio more equitable? When we think about socially responsible design, we tend to think in terms of physical tweaks to products and supply chains, meticulously calculating carbon footprints and life cycle analyses and whole-life costs. But ultimately, thanks to the fractal nature of complex systems, there may be less of a need to calculate than we think – changes made in the marketing or operations or human resources departments will inevitably manifest themselves in product development.

Organizer: Stephanie Gerson – Purpose

Panel: Better Food through Open Data Standards

There is an explosion in the number of services created to help people make better choices about how we produce, consume, and interact with food. Challenges related to the accuracy and completeness of data hamper the rate of innovation. A panel of leading food, data and technology doers shares their initial framework for an open standard for reporting, recording and sharing food information.

Speakers: Anthony Nicalo – Foodtree

1. Niles Brooks – Clean Plates
2. Danielle Gould – Food+Tech Connect
3. Chacha Sikes – Code for America
4. Britta Riley – Windowfarms

SXSW2012 panel picker data visualization

If you’d like to see more about what SXSW is all about, see above for an interactive dataviz on what the focus is this year.

Community Additions:

Panel: Your iPhone Is Political: Mobile Democracy

Thanks to Katherine Maher for suggesting this panel.

By 2014, more of us will access the Internet with mobile devices than with desktops or laptops. Android phones, iPhones, iPads and other mobile devices are quickly becoming our primary gateways to the Internet. Everything we do online — the ways that we produce news, organize our communities, and communicate with each other — will increasingly depend on access to these devices and the broadband data connections they provide. Meanwhile, wireless companies are seeking to determine what content we can see and how we can access it.

Speakers: Josh Levy – Free Press

1. Nilay Patel – Thisismynext…
2. Parul Desai – Consumers Union
3. Katherine Maher – World Bank

Panel: Recognize This! Ethics of Mobile Face Tagging

Thanks to Sam Gregory for suggesting this panel.

With the ready availability of social media, digital databases of ID photos, high-resolution cameras and free, powerful face recognition software that can run on smartphones, we are entering into an unprecedented shift in the visual privacy of everyday people. Technology that was once the domain of authoritarian states, is now being put to use by the hottest tech startups, who often lack the capacity or capability to consider the broader cultural impact. What right do people have to control personal images in a socially-networked age or to be visually anonymous in a video-mediated world?

Speakers: Sam Gregory – WITNESS

1. Harlo Holmes – The Guardian Project
2. Bryan Nunez – WITNESS

Its an honor to be invited to speak at the White House . Its especially exciting to see an administration that understands the power of youth and works to pull in our voices.

The White House was pulling together 20 “awesome” youth leaders to discuss the future of international foreign aid. The conversation was between us, the head of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) Raj Shah, and the internet. It was broadcast live on the White House website, with a realtime conversation happening on Facebook and on Twitter, hashtag #USAIDyouth.

For instance, in the Middle East, almost 65 percent of the regions’ people are youth. In many places, they’re stuck under oppressive regimes and increasingly frustrated by the lack of positive prospects for their future. In Egypt and Tunisia, this came to a head. Politicians around the world took notice. The US government is starting to realize that despite its large foreign aid packages, youth were not involved in the decision-making nor in the reception of this aid, despite being a majority of those affected by it.

A 48 starred flag, painting of George Washington, an eagle, and the golden chandelier lent the air of authenticity to remind me that this building has stood for hundreds of years and that this conversation can, at its best, change the course of history. 20 eager youth, experts in the fields of environment, health, security, and technology all sat with intense looks in their eyes. The groups varied from Truman National Security Project, National Center for Global Engagement, 350.org, Americans for Informed Democracy, Bamyan Media, The Millennium Campus Network, and others. We were ready to take up the challenge.

Many of the ideas bouncing around the room seemed to agree that there was a need to fund the best and most innovative groups, not the ones that were just the best at writing applications and getting funded. The tension is how to do that successfully while doing large-scale support and making sure that they money trail is transparent and trackable.

There’s also an interesting tension in the perception of this aid to the American people from which its coming. Recent debates about cutting the US economy have targeted wings of the government such as this foreign aid. It’s not surprising why, when the average American sees it as consisting of 20% of their taxes. The reality is that it accounts for less than 1%. There’s not much room for innovation when under fire.

It’s important to be able to see how investments in science, technology, education and math (STEM), as well as green technology, are going to have a positive impact on our own economic prosperity in addition to those people working their way out of poverty around the world. But for the innovative and impactful ideas, it’s the youth who are closest to the new solutions and can help usher them in with the right support.

We all went to the White House, and were excited and honored to have been invited, but not for the photo op, but rather to make some changes. I’m encouraged by the dialogue but hope that we’re able to.

Please see the video below and visit the USAID YouthImpact site for more information about the initiative.

Dennis Cahillane

Dennis Cahillane, Software Developer, writes open-source software to accomplish Digital Democracy’s goals. His first project for Dd was creating a secure gender-based violence database for use by our team in Haiti. His duties include information security, using PGP, SSL/TLS, and all available technologies to prevent remote exploits and attacks. Dennis is a lifelong Linux enthusiast and evangelist. He attended Indiana University, where he studied Math and Physics, and founded a Green Party student group. He then attended The University of Chicago Law School, where he studied intellectual property law and marriage law. While in law school, he clerked for a legal clinic aiding residents of low-income housing, and volunteered for the Obama ’08 campaign. After law school, Dennis practiced IP law in California, using his technical skills to analyze network routers and web-based recommendation engines. He enjoys traveling and has visited five continents. Follow him on Twitter LinuxFan2718 & PGP

Meredith Hutchison

Meredith Hutchison, Graphic Design & Photo Curation Intern, designs material for DD’s Project Einstein. She has worked as a photographer in Democratic Republic of Congo, building local media capacity in Kala Refugee Camp in Zambia, and is currently part of a consultant team evaluating land management and governance in Cairo. She is finishing her Masters in economic and political development at Columbia-SIPA and studied comparative literature at the University of Pittsburgh. Meredith is a steel-town girl proudly hailing from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Follow her on Twitter: @Merehutch

Ada-morena daCosta

Ada-morena daCosta, Development & Communications Intern, assists the Director of Development with research, database management, correspondence, and other administrative functions. Ada is a student at the Graduate Program of International Affairs at The New School University (Summer 2011) concentrating in Media and Culture. As a member of the Association of International Development (A.I.D.), she played a leading role in organizing the first Food Security and Human Rights conference at The New School. She is currently creating a collaborative media project about Reel-Lives, a film-education workshop for marginalized, refugee and war-affected youth in hopes of demonstrating the significance of youth media programs and their relevance to human rights.

Ada has a passion and a knack for learning foreign languages– her most recent conquests are in Serbian and Arabic. She is interested in the intersections between communications, technology, human rights, social entrepreneurship, and development in post-conflict settings. She aspires to become a Communications Consultant. Follow her on Twitter: @Mangoleira

Phil Knerr

Phil Knerr, Software Development Volunteer, is contributing to our work in Haiti by assisting with a database project called Haiti Reporter that we’re implimenting and creating the ability offline syncing. Follow him on Twitter: @PhilKnerr

Participating in BarCamp Haiti was a welcome experience, but more exciting was that all of the six presentations were given by Haitians, one by three of women representing Digital Democracy’s partner, the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV), and all in their 20s.  Their presentation sent shock waves through the crowd as they shared their work to leverage technology for empowerment, and improved coordination, response, and information for prevention of sexual violence in Haiti.

KOFAVIV is a grassroots women’s organization working in Port Au Prince and one of Digital Democracy’s partners in Haiti. Their 3000+ members throughout the country and 60 community outreach agents make them a key force in the battle against sexual and gender based violence in Haiti. Dd has been working with KOFAVIV for the past year and most recently, we have focused on the launch of a new database and call center, which will improve data collection and create digital records that can automatically generate more detailed and specific reports for use by the Haitian government, donors, and advocates to address the epidemic of sexual and gender based violence in Haiti. Importantly, these files will be housed in a secure, virtual database, which cannot be destroyed in future disasters.

The event took place at Canne à Sucre, a small “national park” maintained in great condition – an anomaly in Port Au Prince. Still, the BarCamp symbolized a promising new trend in Haiti rebuilding with a new generation of Haitians ready to innovate for change and take the reigns of their future. Plus, unlike the UN meetings, where French and English exclude the majority of Haitians who only speak Kreyol, this Barcamp was bilingual in Haitian Kreyol and English (with many conversations taking place in French, too). It was a best practice worth examining and modeling after.

The morning session began with a presentation by a young man from Cité Soleil, one of Port Au Prince’s toughest neighborhoods, about Open Street Maps Haiti (OSM)– an online platform that uses GPS coordinates to enable citizens to map their communities. OSM was a critical tool in the humanitarian response post-earthquake, beginning with the search and rescue period, and was later used to map other types of risks and resources, including voting sites and Cholera.

Like many of his fellow presenters that day, he reiterated throughout the presentation how technology is “changing his life” and something “anyone can learn.”

Then came our three KOFAVIV ladies. Wismide introduced KOFAVIV’s work and spoke about the photography and video trainings with Digital Democracy that have helped women from her community share their perspectives with the national and international community. Elmita followed with an explanation of the Fanmpale/Women Speak blog, created for women to be able to share their photos and begin blogging about their realities. She described the blog as “a place where women can talk about social problems, problems with democracy, and their lives” and “interact with the national and international community.” She related the story of her 5-year-old cousin who came into the Center after being raped by a 14-year-old neighbor while her mother was at the hospital, and her personal experience of using the blog as an outlet to share her story. In her words, “I didn’t know what to do so I wrote a post to show the international community this is not something that just affects women but also affects children.” She invited the audience to visit the blog and shared the importance of comments from the international community to let them know people are listening.

The presentation ended with Fania, a high-energy member of the new Dd team at KOFAVIV working on the new database, who talked about the human rights dossier that the agents currently use for intake and how the database will replace their paper intake process. “I and my fellow presenters are responsible for the human rights reports that come in and for creating monthly and annual reports,” she said. “The new system will help communicate with national and international groups working to address gender-based violence and rape in the camps by providing better and more regular information.” She ended by sharing next steps in the program and plans to establish a small call center to help reach more victims.

After the KOFAVIV women, a journalist and communications officer at the International Migration Office (IOM) spoke about their work to leverage new media to provide Haitian citizens with an outlet for sharing their realities. He emphasized how “internet and communications technologies – new and old – enable us to communicate what we are feeling, what we want, and what we need.”  Tools like community radio, Internet, T.V., newspapers, and a website, CitizenHaiti, provide a space for this information to be aggregated and shared with Haitians as well as an international audience. He said: “It’s our voice – it’s the voice of Haiti, for everyone who doesn’t have a voice.”

Steven Bruno presented a USAID project called “HIFIVE” (Haiti Integrated Finance for Value Chains & Enterprises) that encourages the growth of mobile financial services in Haiti. He discussed the problem of cash payments in Haiti as well as the long distances some must travel – on average 4-5 hours – to access financial services. He shared two projects that won the first round of competitions and have since launched new programs – Digicel’s “Tcho Tcho Mobile” and Voila’s “Ti Cash,” and the new focus of their program in looking for ways to bring these activities and their impact to scale.

The following presentation was about Radio Boukman, a community radio program that works with radio stations to leverage Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and other social media to reach new audiences and spread information among Haitians and to the world. He said that Radio Boukman hopes to expand their program to rural areas but that Internet access and speed pose complications to program growth. He hopes to develop media centers in these harder to reach areas and closed with his feeling that “thanks to the internet we can access free tools that can help us reach rural areas and the world at large and I believe these tools can not only help us communicate but also develop as a nation.”

The last presentation was a “Twitter 101” for an audience that was largely unfamiliar with the tool. Jean Bernard Pierre [@bernard1804] spoke about Twitter as a means of instantaneously finding and spreading information, not only online, but through SMS, and to share radio and T.V., for example. In his words, “for me, Twitter is radio, tv, audience.” He used the example of Obama using Twitter during his presidential campaign to reach new audiences. Pierre was tweeting throughout the day, and told the crowd “Twitter can help anyone with their work and projects.”

Though there were many highlights of BarCamp Haiti, the most meaningful for me was to witness the praise and encouragement for the KOFAVIV women, and to watch the younger participants in their first real networking situation, as they spoke to their fellow presenters as well as representatives from UNICEF and JPHRO (founded by Sean Penn).

For me the greatest moment was when one of the BarCamp organizers expressed how happy she was to have the KOFAVIV women present.  She shared a story about when “one Haitian staff member of a local technology group had explained that ‘women are lazy’ when asked why there were not more women working in technology in Haiti.” She said she thought that the BarCamp already helped to dispel that misconception. Moments later, Jocie (Dd’s local project coordinator who joined later in the day) told me the same organizer had also expressed her enthusiasm about KOFAVIV’s presentation, and then gave me a high five and said, “Haitian Women are Starting A Revolution, a Tech Revolution!” They already have! Jocie arrived in the United States on Wednesday, for the first time, with KOFAVIV co-founders Malya Villard and Eramithe Delva to testify at the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in Washington DC this Friday, March 25th, about protection for women living in camps.

As always, I was and continue to be so impressed by the tireless work and dedication of our team, our partners, and especially KOFAVIV, and their agents now working to develop a cutting edge process for information collection, response, and prevention of gender based violence by empowering the women most directly affected by this problem. As we are seeing across the world, the combination of belief in the power of people to make change, tireless work and dedication, and the use of new technologies and social media are making a difference.

Let’s hope that these revolutions are not only for democracy in Northern Africa and the Middle East, but also for women in Haiti, and beyond, seeking empowerment and protection of their basic human rights, even when they have long been ignored.

The idea for Digital Democracy was inspired by the courage of Burmese monks, human rights workers and advocates fighting for positive change in their country. Yet it is clear that the idea of Digital Democracy is much greater than any one people, country or struggle.

Over the past two months we have been both humbled and inspired by the people-powered movements for change throughout the Middle East and North Africa. These demonstrate the power of collective action, and also the way that new tools are being used.

From Tunisia to Egypt, these very vivid examples of people using technology for democratic engagement demonstrate the core values of our organization. They also come at a fitting time.

For the past six months we have been asking ourselves questions about the broader goals of our organization, and how Digital Democracy can have the greatest impact. These questions were all part of a strategic planning process led by the brilliant thinkers of Helsinki Group. They have engaged our staff, advisors and leaders in our field to explore what exactly Digital Democracy is, and what our growth and future might be.

Thanks to the guidance of Helsinki, invaluable input from our advisors and other mentors, and the dedication of the Dd staff — who until this point have been volunteers — we have emerged with a honed vision of our values & future.

Our Mission:
Digital Democracy empowers marginalized groups with technology to build their futures.

Our Vision:
A world where all people can meaningfully participate in decision-making to build stronger and more prosperous societies.

We plan to do this in two ways:
1) Dig deep to build long-lasting partnerships – and the capacity of our partners – continuing our work in 3 primary theatres:

·      Countries with repressive regimes (like Burma/Myanmar)
·      Countries suffering the after-effects of natural disaster (like Haiti)
·      Post-conflict transitioning states (like Guatemala).

2) Continue to partner with local groups in new places as tech experts, researchers and trainers. The focus will be building grassroots capacity, promoting civic engagement, & further understanding local definitions of democracy.

Our Theory of Change:
We believe change does not come from technology, but from how people use it. Our programs focus on a cycle we have identified:

Digital literacy, digital organizing, and digital governance are the three components critical to creating a state of “digital democracy,” where all people have the ability to participate in a meaningful way in the decision-making that impacts their lives.