We Need Your Help - Participate in the Community Health Report
Our team will be publishing the first ever Community Health Report examining the psychological wellbeing of the internet freedom and digital rights communities. Lead by our researcher, Selma Zaki, this report will:
Provide a snapshot of the health and wellbeing of the human networks working on internet freedom and digital rights throughout the world, with the goal of raising awareness about the challenges they are facing.
Help our team design self-care and psychosocial support services that directly address the community’s most pressing needs, which will range from workshops to one-on-one support.
To help us with this tall order, we need you to donate 7 minutes of your time to take the following survey:
In English: https://digitalrights.community/survey
In Spanish: https://digitalrights.community/encuesta
We are not collecting names or identifiable information, and your responses will only be shared in the aggregate. We would appreciate your help forwarding this survey to others, as we are hoping to collect a minimum of 250 responses.
The report, which will be published this Spring, will be based on the results of the survey, as well as one-to-one Interviews we have already conducted with individuals representative of different regions and disciplines.
Helping Community Leaders Make Better Decisions
The Community Health Report comes at a critical time following the historical impact that COVID-19 has had on our lives and our work. We hope the report will deepen our understanding of the mental health, sustainability, and community engagement challenges we face. Ultimately, this landmark report will help leaders of digital rights and internet freedom activists, organizations, and networks make better decisions for our future. In addition, we hope this report will also:
Raise awareness about the current psychosocial needs of community members
Surface new opportunities to better engage underserved and underrepresented communities
Illuminate how disparate communities are connected and identify lines of commonality across cultures, regions, and digital rights disciplines.
Community Snapshot & Services
In addition to the research Selma is conducting, Sandra Ordonez and Trinh Nguyen will also provide a summary of their experiences in the last year serving the internet freedom and digital rights space in a community management capacity. This will include important community milestones, stories of pain, joy and solidarity, and thoughts on how to move forward collectively. By doing this, we hope to share the knowledge we have gained working with community members throughout the world on a day-to-day basis.
We are most excited about the potential this opens up for our team to better design programs and services that directly speak to the psychosocial needs of both the individuals that make up our space, and the networks they are part of. We believe that more than ever that these needs, if left unaddressed, will negatively impact our work.
About our Community Health Researcher
Selma Zaki was referred to us by trusted community members because of her training as a psychotherapist, her experience with activist networks, and her commitment to furthering mental healthcare in community development. Selma’s goals as a mental health professional, an academic, and a social justice advocate is to initiate change on an individual and a collective level.
Based in New York City, Selma provides therapy services in private practices and community health centers. In addition, she has experience in conducting qualitative research and has been published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology for studying the experiences of gender amongst Arab American Women. Selma was also involved in community organizations in Lebanon and founded “Lezem,” an organization whose mission is to address the unmet needs of the Lebanese community.
What brings her clinical, research, and community development experience together is the firm belief that healing, growth and advancement begin in spaces that foster open communication and encourage in-depth understanding.