Digital Democracy

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 [...]

It’s an exciting week for Digital Democracy. One of our key Haitian partners is in New York, and we’re attending two conferences. Mark is in Budapest attending Google’s Internet at Liberty 2010 conference. I’m in NY, representing Digital Democracy at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting. CGI is built around commitments – every single [...]

This week we welcome to New York one of our key Haitian partners, Eramithe Delva, a courageous advocate and founder of Kofaviv, one of the leading Haitian grassroots women’s networks. Eramithe traveled from Haiti yesterday for the first time to speak at a full day program today on Haitian Women and Girls co-sponsored by the [...]

On this episode of DdTv Emily Jacobi and Abby Goldberg travel to Port-Au-Prince, where they are invited to meet with organizations working on creating a mechanism to streamline methods of protection, documentation and service provisions for women around gender-based violence. While there, Emily and Abby meet with local women leaders and conduct a photography training [...]

This past Wednesday, Digital Democracy attempted an experiment in direct diplomacy.  We brought together 75 people at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) for “In their own hands: Live video exchange with Haitian women 6 months after the earthquake.”  We were joined at ITP via skype by my project partner, DigiDem Co-Director, Emily Jacobi, our translator [...]

I’m in Port-au-Prince, Haiti for the next week to follow-up on the great trip Abby Goldberg and I took this spring. I began my trip distributing cameras for the Life In A Day project – the first user-generated feature film. I’ve also been distributing photos from our workshop in April and I ferried some films [...]

This week the U.S. Senate votes on a $60 billion supplemental aid bill for Haiti. Our work with Haiti helped bring together a coalition of twelve U.S. Senators to take up the issue of sexual and gender based violence in Haiti and ask that funding be earmarked for the protection of Haitian women and girls. [...]

Abby and I just returned from an inspiring and full week in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. We couldn’t have done it without your support, and we’re thrilled to announce that, thanks to a donation we received this week, we have met our fundraising goal of $7,500 for the trip! Thanks to all the donations, we were able [...]

Tomorrow morning Abby and I travel to Port-au-Prince to focus on the needs of Haitian women. On our trip we have two objectives, and we need your help to meet them. Investigating how technology can be leveraged to protect women and girls from gender-based violence. Conducting media trainings with women and leaving them with equipment [...]

In Haiti, a second humanitarian crisis is unfolding: Haiti’s women are under siege from increasing insecurity, which has grown steadily since the earthquake devastated the country in January. Facing violence and rape, Haiti’s women operate within discriminatory legal structures which prevent them from accessing aid and taking an active role in their country’s redevelopment process. [...]