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.
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.
In recent years, the possibilities of what can be achieved with human rights fieldwork and advocacy has expanded as the worldwide use of mobile phones has increased and significant advances have been made in Internet and mobile technology. We’re excited to share that our Human Rights Program has been awarded a two-year, $2.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) to realize some of those possibilities.
Our neighbors at Palo Alto Online have featured our CEO, Jim Fruchterman, in their “First Person” video series. The series includes one-on-one interviews with locals who are making a difference in the community. In the conversation, Jim describes the journey that led him from studying engineering at Cal Tech to the founding of Benetech. He also talks about how while most companies focus on developing technology that will generate big profits, Benetech, as a nonprofit, focuses on developing technology for social good.
This post originally appeared as part of an online debate about How Big Data Can Have a Social Impact, which the Harvard Business Review Blog Network hosted jointly with the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship and was reposted on Jim Fruchterman’s Beneblog. Big Data is all the rage in Silicon Valley. From Facebook to Netflix, companies are tracking and […]
