giving voice to underrepresented, emerging groups
Emerging Communities Programs
The Digital Rights field is subject to access and representation issues, which lock out individuals from communities experiencing the most acute forms of surveillance, censorship, and digital threats, from strategic conversations and knowledge. This phenomena puts activists, journalists and human rights networks across the globe at risk by impacting their ability of these communities to build needed capacity; and resulting in less efficient strategies and tools coming out of the digital rights community.
Our Emerging Communities Program is a a collaborative initiative to tackle these issues, and ultimately increase the leadership of at-risk, vulnerable communities in the Digital Rights Field, and enhance their capacity, so they ultimately better protect themselves. Through this program we provide a host of educational, networking, accessibility, inclusivity, and wellness services, as well as important customized resources and services based on their needs.
The emerging leaders program consists of:
Digital Rights Global Concierge Desk
Throughout the year, the CommUNITY team provides emerging communities with a variety of services based on their specific needs and requests. This is crucial, considering the difficulty they face being onboarded to the digital rights field to obtain the knowledge, connections and expertise they need to keep their communities safe from censorship and surveillance. Serving as a type of Global Concierge Desk or onboarding ramp, Team Community provides a range of service to emerging communities seeking such as:
connecting individuals to important nodes in the digital rights community, such as funders, rapid responders, tool developers and digital security trainers
bringing global attention to specific campaigns or important developments they need help promoting
providing training or educational opportunities to fill a knowledge or skill gap
providing support to help solve a specific problem they want help with, as well as connecting them to resources or expertise that may be useful.
Many thanks to the following organizations for supporting our work
The Diversity & Equity Program
The Diversity & Equity Program helps us give voice to underrepresented groups and tackle those issues related to equity and community health within the digital rights community. We use funds collected to:
Tackle those issues that make participation in events like the Internet Freedom Festival difficult for underrepresented groups by funding their travel and providing travel and visa support.
Hire diversity and inclusion professionals and therapists that can create educational opportunities and tools, such as Allyship Workshop and Code of Conduct training, to help shift the culture of the digital rights community to be more diverse, inclusive and equitable
Provide very limited financial support to the most vulnerable community members who need financial assistance to solve a specific problem that they can’t obtain support any place else.
We are currently raising funds for our next global gathering! reach out if you are interested!
Emerging Leaders Fellowship Program
A unique program designed to improve the skills of emerging leaders working in the Internet freedom field. Through an open call for proposal, 10 fellows are selected and provided with one-to-one mentorship and coaching, as well as:
Expert-lead training on Internet issues and challenges that most impact their communities, such as online harassment and new tech like facial recognition.
Skill training on things such as digital security to keep their communities safe.
Network development, connecting them to Internet decision makers and influencers.
Psychosocial support to effectively deal with diversity issues in tech, such as imposter syndrome.
Space for thought leadership, so they can share the needs of their communities with decision makers.
This program is on hiatus until we are able to recover from COVID19 impact
In the past, this work was supported by :
“Team CommUNITY creates spaces where diverse communities feels included, represented, heard and respected.”