Blog

Today we’d like to introduce you to our second cohort of interns: Javier Guzman and Marcos Rodriguez. They, too, were wonderful additions to the Benetech community. As in the first session of our Internship Program, Javier and Marcos participated in various company meetings, brown bag lunches and other learning opportunities. They were also extremely helpful in assisting Bookshare with daily tasks, including proofreading dozens of student-requested picture books and updating metadata in Spanish, which allowed us to process and add many new titles to our Spanish collection.

Gerardo Capiel, Benetech’s VP of Engineering, and I were here in San Bernardino, Paraguay, as representatives of Benetech Labs. We were invited by the leaders of Fundación Avina to investigate how technology could be leveraged to help organizations provide essential services, like clean water and sanitation, to their communities in more efficient ways. It was the perfect place to do so, as the conference brought together community leaders and water managers to discuss shared concerns about the future of these services across rural Latin America.

Years of working closely with our Martus users have taught us that the projects our users pursue and the outcomes they are working towards can vary widely. In addition to large nonprofits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), our users include independent activists, local coalitions, members of small NGOs and many others. There is an incredible diversity within the Martus user community and wide spectrum of ways in which it uses Martus.

Somehow nearly six months have passed since our last-minute decision to attend the Taproot Foundation Global Pro Bono Summit. “Sure,” I thought, “what’s another 36-hour trip to New York and back?” In retrospect, I can’t believe we even gave it a second thought.

Benetech has announced the appointment of Enrique Piracés as the Vice President of its Human Rights Program. For more than 10 years, Piracés has worked at the intersection of technology and international human rights. He has applied his technical expertise and leadership to projects requiring a broad understanding of surveillance, circumvention, security and privacy, while also pursuing innovative applications of open-source technology for the human rights movement.