Benetech Receives Google Impact Award Grant to Make Secure, Open Technology Advancing the Field of Human Rights

Benetech is one of select U.S. nonprofit organizations to receive seed funding under Google.org’s Global Impact Awards program. Google.org has awarded Benetech the seed grant for the development of secure, open technology tools to advance human rights abuse research and action.

Google.org’s Global Impact Awards program extends seed funding to entrepreneurial nonprofits “to bring innovative tech ideas to life and test their potential for scale.” With its $800,000 seed grant, Benetech will lead a human rights technology and data consortium and advisory committee to devise technical requirements for a comprehensive human rights information platform. It will also develop open source prototypes for testing in the field. This project will serve social justice groups, civil society organizations, journalists, activists, and researchers.

“We are thrilled to have Google’s support in this project,” says Enrique Piracés, Vice President of the Benetech Human Rights Program. Human rights actors increasingly rely on diverse and new information streams, yet they have no sector-specific toolsets or protocols to help them manage their information, share knowledge, and protect the data they collect. “With Google’s generous support,” notes Piracés, “Benetech will map out the path forward towards a secure, open source platform for the collection, annotation, analysis, and preservation of multi-format evidence and testimonials by human rights actors, which will empower them to leverage that data to advance their goals.”

“It is clear that technology has a major role to play in the flow of human rights information,” said Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org. “The power of an open source platform is something we know well at Google, and we are proud to support this critical research to advance human rights initiatives around the world.”

About Google.org
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