What about Participatory Grantmaking for the Digital Rights Community?

This post was written by 2019 IFF Community Development Fellow, Laura Schwartz-Henderson, as part of her fellowship.

It is time to have a more inclusive and comprehensive conversation about funding for the digital rights community.

Whether we like it or not, funding plays an essential role in enabling and structuring the possibilities for a diverse range of organizations in this space- CSOs working on public engagement and digital literacy, those developing more secure communication technologies, those training human rights defenders, and those working to empower marginalized populations in online spaces. While money is certainly not the only contributing factor to organizational success, we all know that greater levels of financial resources allow actors to hire staff, build audiences, diversify actions, take risks, innovate, and scale successful programs. Funding also structures who can participate in regional and international fora, who can speak for local communities, and whose voice is the most heard. And of course anything money-related also raises (sometimes uncomfortable) questions about privilege, power, and inequality. If you are lucky enough to be attending this year’s Internet Freedom Festival, think about how you are getting there. Who is paying for you, and where did that money originate from? Is your organization covering your travel under a line item within an existing grant budget? Are you using personal funds? Were you sponsored by the IFF or another organization? Where did this organization get their funds? How does the source of this funding impact you and your work?

Rarely Does the community have Open Conversations About Funding in an Inclusive, Participatory Way

Organizations, large and small, spend a great deal of their own resources (human, time, and financial) scanning the horizon for funding opportunities, drafting grant proposals, and seeking to match their own programmatic priorities and organizational needs with the administrative requirements and agendas of donors. However, this matching process is rarely one-to-one, and there is a constantly shifting and rather imprecise process whereby organizations mold programs to fit specific grant requirements while donors ideally seek to better understand how funding can serve needs, confront challenges, and capitalize on opportunities in a variety of contexts. Those CSOs that can expend these resources towards grant writing (largely in English), development-oriented activities and building the administrative capacity required to manage grants are often those that are able to bring in the most funds.

At the same time, donors have their own agendas as well as internal and external bureaucratic and political forces that determine the range of possible programs, organizations, and jurisdictions that can be supported and the processes for the provision of this support. Largely, agenda-setting and donor policy-making decisions are made exclusively by individual donors, and are determined by a combination of foundation boards, donor governments, program officers, and a variety of expert consultants. Broader conversations about how to make philanthropic dollars and aid more effective take place ad-hoc and within silos, with donor organizations occasionally meeting together at international fora or discussing challenges with particular grantees. Rarely do we as an entire community have conversations about the difficulties, opportunities, and operational challenges associated with funding and fundraising in an open, honest, inclusive, and participatory way.

Funding Issues are the Primary obstacle to Better Research, Advocacy efforts, and Collaboration Across Organizations.

Last year at the IFF, we presented findings from our research on the self-perceived needs, challenges, and constraints faced by digital rights organizations working around the world. Unsurprisingly, funding-related issues emerged as the primary obstacle cited by organizations to better research, advocacy efforts, and collaboration across organizations.

Structural issues related to funding were seen by respondents as largely dictating the types of issues organizations can focus on, incentivizing shorter term projects over more strategic goals and the longer term sustainability of organizations, prioritizing trendy “buzzword” oriented approaches to challenges, and creating what one respondent called the “scramble for funding opportunities” in which potential partners position themselves as competitors for limited funding rather than collaborators.

These challenges are echoed in the findings of the Global Forum for Media Development’s recent study on their members’ perceptions of the relationship between funding and the performance of the wider media freedom sector. Their respondents indicated frustration with short funding cycles, donor funding practices that often fail to cover operational costs and administrative needs, and low levels of consultation with local stakeholders in agenda-setting processes. A majority of the respondents to their member survey described “poor alignment between the sector’s needs and donor priorities” and “low donor understanding” (both at 56% of respondents) as the greatest challenges faced in the provision of funding (as compared to only 42% who described low aggregate levels of funding available as a major challenge). This indicates significant areas for improvement in closing the gaps between what is demanded by grassroots organizations for funding and what is supplied by donors.

Donors Recognize Need for New and More Collective Practices to Support Sustainable, Vibrant, and Diverse Media Ecosystems

Recently, I worked with the Center For International Media Assistance to interview a range of donors from bilateral aid agencies, multilateral bodies, and private philanthropic foundations to better understand how funders determine agendas around media support and understand their role in confronting the challenges facing media systems worldwide.

This research indicates that donors increasingly recognize that there is a need for new and more collective donor practices in order to support sustainable, vibrant, and diverse media ecosystems within increasingly difficult and complex contexts.

Across a wide range of donors, there is better understanding of the importance of moving away from project-based support towards funds for core organizational support and administrative capacity building. In addition, there is general consensus across donors regarding the incorporation of better consultative practices with local stakeholders in building donor agendas at the national, regional, and international level and encouraging larger collaborative networks of actors. While donors acknowledge organizational difficulties in reforming donor practices related to the distribution of funds and reporting requirements, there is also recognition that outcomes could be improved and administrative burdens reduced for local organizations through procedural reforms that make the process more flexible.

A New Window of Opportunity for the Digital Rights Community

This research suggests that perhaps there is a window of opportunity for our community to engage in more open and honest dialogue to better understand philanthropic demand (from practitioners and civil society), philanthropic supply (from donor organizations), and how to fill the gaps that exist between them within the digital rights sector. And why shouldn’t the digital rights community, a field that has embraced the ethos of bottom-up organizing, innovation through co-creation, diverse perspectives, and collaborative multi-stakeholder organizational experiments, act as a pioneer in opening up this conversation towards the development of more participatory and collaborative funding structures? Why shouldn’t the IFF, an organization focused entirely on supporting this community and making it more inclusive, serve as the platform for this experimentation?

IFF as Platform for Experimentation

This year at the IFF, we are hoping to open up dialogue on the impact of current grantmaking and fundraising practices and the ways we might collectively and constructively develop more equitable and effective practices for funding in our community.

One possible option would be to develop a participatory grantmaking model to pilot within the IFF community, working with one donor or pooling funds from multiple donors. Participatory grantmaking, also called community funding, activist funding, or peer review grantmaking, supposes that those closest to and most familiar with the challenges affecting specific communities should be the actors who collectively determine those solutions that are supported. Within a wider participatory framework, there are many ways in which donors have been seeking to bring non-grantmakers into the philanthropic decision-making process by including new voices on foundation boards or within advisory committees. However, participatory grantmaking more specifically builds processes that prioritize practitioner communities’ involvement in setting agendas, developing application processes, designing the guidelines for application review, making funding decisions, and reflecting on outcomes to guide future giving.

Supporters of participatory grantmaking tout that this kind of co-creative process not only makes philanthropy more democratic, transparent, inclusive, and empowering to community members but also can lead to more effective grant-giving through continuous feedback and input from those most affected. It is also a process that invites community members to contribute, and thus builds capacity for populations that have been underrepresented within philanthropic power structures to build skills related to philanthropic processes.

The Lafayette Practice, a philanthropic advisory practice, highlighted in its review of several participatory grantmaking funds that these projects evolve significantly over time and can be shaped distinctly and creatively by the communities they serve. If we are to involve the community in funding decision-making, perhaps perceptions of the funding process can be transformed from the “scramble for funding opportunities” into an essential and strategic component of the wider collective movement.

So how possible would it be to build such a participatory fund for our community? It sounds too good to be true, no? Participatory grantmaking has recently been explored by some donor organizations, including the Ford Foundation who commissioned an excellent report on the topic by Cynthia Gibson, but the model has rarely been adopted by traditional funders.

Funders with Participatory Experience can Help

However, several organizations participating in the IFF this year have experience distributing funds via participatory processes. FRIDA, the Young Feminist Fund, was founded in 2010 to put funding decision-making “into the hands of young feminists themselves as agents for change” to “shift traditional power relations between funder and grantee”. FRIDA currently supports over 200 young feminist led organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus, Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and the pacific. “The Wikimedia Foundation’s Grantmaking Program is the largest international participatory grantmaking vehicle in terms of the level of participation from community members and the funds distributed. The foundation has adopted the ethos of Wikipedia in that, just as anyone can become a Wikipedia editor, anyone can make a proposal to the foundation. The peer review process includes an intentionally diverse 54 community members and more than 1,000 participants. The process has evolved over time, and offers space for flexibility and experimentation, with a metawiki called Idealab that serves as a proposal incubator for people to get community feedback and support in turning ideas into full proposals.

Share Your Feedback with Us at the IFF

In our session at this year’s IFF, Understanding Global Funding Needs, Challenges, and Practicalities, we hope to engage in discussion about these issues and bring representatives from donor organizations, those with experience in participatory grantmaking, and practitioners together to envision how some of these models could be replicated for the IFF community.

As part of this endeavor, I’ve also built a ‘curated’ schedule below for those interested in attending sessions that relate to community development, philanthropy, diverse voices, and participation. Please, if I’ve missed any sessions that you think are relevant to these topics or if you have any questions or insights to share, feel free to email me at laurash3nd@gmail.com and/or come to our session on Tuesday!

Laura’s picks for ‘From the Bottom Up’ IFF Sessions:

Day 1: Monday, April 1

Let’s talk about local capacity

Time: 02:45–03:45 PM

We (implementers, donors) are investing a lot of energy in developing local capacity, however, sometimes instead of strengthening we are damaging it. Or, at least, don’t invest in effective local capacity, but invest in something less useful then it could be. So how to develop local capacity? How effective local capacity should look like? Let’s have an informal talk on this, share our experience, exchange ideas and, maybe, find a better way to develop local capacity.

Support for Journalists Under Attack: What can you bring to the table?

Time: 04:00–05:00 PM

This session is a follow up to sessions organized by CPJ, IWMF and TrollBusters in 2017 and 2018 to identify and find solutions to the incessant harassment of female journalists that impacts their work and safety. The organizers of this session have secured a grant from the Knight Foundation to identify existing support service providers and to connect those resources to female journalists under threat. This may include, but is not limited to: training; digital hygiene assessment; threat assessment and response; one on one direct support clinic; and other direct interventions to support female journalists online. During the session we will build a coalition to provide their services and organizational support as part of this initiative.

Organizing without the internet: an intergenerational conversation

Time: 05:15–06:15 PM

What can we learn from the from the civil rights movement, the anti-colonial revolution, the struggles of the Dalit women, the #BlackLivesMatter struggle, and #NoSocialMediaTax movements? We will bring together all of those that participated in these struggles together to share tips about organizing offline and online. During this conversation, we will curate tools people used to organize before the internet like other than zines, flyers, posters, and tools they used to gather millions to the streets. We will also h

Towards dissident technologies: mapping the routes of technology production to imagine futures in common

Time: 05:15–07:15 PM

We conceive technology as an assemblage of materialities, norms, flows, actors, practices, territories, bodies, and subjectivities: something inextricably related to what we are, think and feel. In many indigenous and non-urban or alternative communities, the respect of nature, the attachment to the land, the preservation of memory and traditions, shared goals and a strong organization are crucial to surviving.

However, these imaginaries are not compatible with the dominant and corporate technological rationality that takes advantage of people’s lives and environments and produce narratives that separate the land, the people and their affections. For these communities, digital colonialism, the datafication of the self, and the capture of life produce poverty, exclusion, the loss of natural resources, and, in some cases, death. In this workshop, we would like to analyze the implications of digital colonialism in our quotidian lives and in relation to our traditional cultures.

Through participatory methodologies and the support of different visual materials, we will map the routes of technology production and locate our place in that network of relationships, resources, narratives, agents, territories, bodies, and subjectivities. We will frame these flows within a socio-technical system that includes the extraction of minerals and the effects on the land and territories, energy consumption (in transportation, manufacturing and packaging, data centers, cryptocurrency mining, end users, among others), labor exploitation and labor rights in the ‘maquilas’, technological dumps, and affectivity. We want to intervene those routes: How can free technologies contribute to building narratives that are significant for indigenous and non-urban or alternative communities? How can we imagine other futures, where free software development is closer to indigenous, non-urban territories, bodies, and subjectivities? How free technologies contribute to decolonize ourselves and our territories? From these traces, we will create alternative narratives based on the ethics of free technologies.

Day 2: Tuesday, April 2

Understanding Global Funding Needs, Challenges, and Practicalities

Time: 09:45–10:45 AM

This session seeks to build on research collected, presented, and extended through the IFF in previous festivals (2017, 2018) on the needs and challenges of the digital rights community in producing impactful, sustainable, and collaborative research and advocacy for digital rights and internet freedom outcomes.

In 2017–2018, the Internet Policy Observatory conducted a survey of 79 digital rights organizations from around the world to better understand the bottlenecks to collaboration and perceptions of how campaigns could be made more strategic, localized, inclusive, and impactful. The challenge most noted by respondents in this survey related to the way in which donor organizations’ grantmaking and funding procedures and policies structure the possibilities for effective long-term planning and coalition building for the field. Organizations noted that the topics of interest within calls for proposals tend to be those that are most relevant within Western contexts, but might be less appropriate or necessary in country contexts where internet penetration and media literacy remain relatively low.

One of the most mentioned funding-related obstacles to greater strategic collaboration around national and regional media-related issues was the competition over funds, what one respondent called the “scramble for funding opportunities,” in which potential partners position themselves as competitors for limited funding rather than collaborators.

Organizations also cited funding instability and seemingly capricious donor priorities as incentives for organizations to focus on short-term projects rather than broad, long-term commitments and ongoing collaborative ventures. These and other concerns that this research brought to light make clear the importance of considering the architectures of global media funding and the ways in which localized expertise can be better understood and incorporated into funding priorities and procedures.

To expand upon these findings, we are seeking to engage in a new phase of research specifically focused on understanding the challenges digital rights organizations face related to finding, applying for, and sustaining funding, as well as potential remedies for these challenges via collaboration and discussions between donor organizations and NGOs. We seek to structure this IFF session as a conversation where digital rights activists can share their experiences and challenges related to funding, and also to discuss current best practices for engaging with donor organizations.

Securing Mutual Aid: Building and Nurturing Platforms for Collective Action

Time: 11:00–12:00 PM

This session seeks to illuminate community lessons and potential pathways for increased mutuality, inclusion and resiliency within and between distinct projects with similar goals. Crabgrass and Pursuance are two collective action toolkits with significant overlap in their objectives and methods.

Crabgrass has a decade of experience working to facilitate secure collaboration within and among human rights and social justice communities, while the Pursuance Project is preparing the first release of a new platform for secure, scaled coordination. We are working to build a world where logs are no longer possible. Join the technologists, designers and dreamers making the next wave of open source collaboration — one which bridges projects, technologies, and communities through communication, collaboration, and mutual aid. We will discuss how these visions and experiences are constrained by the realities of the ecosystem in which we work but also how radically-minded, community-oriented projects can better equip human rights defenders with the tools they need when they coordinate their efforts.

Creative Comms: Novel Tools for Communicating

Time: 12:15–01:15 PM

Room: Flyover Back

Sneakernets, blackout-resilient offline messaging, or bouncing messages over existing services. There are many creative approaches and unique challenges to passing messages via unconventional means. This workshop will show participants how to use tools to pass encrypted messages from phone to phone without using the internet, and how to utilize hidden chat services to use Signal in new ways. We will discuss the benefits and tradeoffs of using these creative approaches to communication, and how new technologies will change the landscape of surveillance-resistant communication over the next few years.

Beyond Rough Consensus: Lessons from the Community Consultation on the Future of Global Voices

Time: 04:00–05:00 PM

Room: Sky Room

The session will share lessons and provide insights for other community-driven organizations that may want to adopt elements of a Community Council model for consultation on strategic directions for the organization or collective.

For many years, Global Voices relied upon rough consensus to make decisions about profound changes within our community, the world around us, and the technologies we use. Over the course of our 13-year history, our community had grown too large for successful community-wide discussion over email or messaging platforms. To address our persistent challenge in organizational decision-making and ensure opportunities for diverse voices within our community, we built a deliberative body called the Community Council to debate complex strategic questions and discuss issues that affect the entire community.

We convened this group over a period of two months for the purpose of advising on our future. By expressing their preferences and opinions on four substantial questions about our values, how we organize ourselves, how we work, and how we find resources, this Council has helped us build a roadmap for our future. The model has proven to be an important way for a community-driven organization comprised primarily of volunteers to have a say in the organization’s direction. Building projects and initiatives that take community interests and priorities into account requires consultation, outreach and ongoing support for participants. The Council has helped us articulate and gain community support for changes to our organizational structure and mission.

The IFF in context: The transnational social movement for digital rights

Time: 05:15–06:15 PM

Room: Theater

Did you know that the IFF community is part of a broader social movement for communication rights that spans the globe and even predates the internet? This session will explore the digital rights space’s past, present and future through a discussion of technology’s role in activism, the movement’s strategies, successes and failures, and how the IFF itself fits into this picture.

Day 3: Wednesday, April 3

Teaching Community Technology

Time: 09:45–11:45 AM

Room: Sky Room

How can we evolve our use and development of technology to be rooted in mutual aid? In this session participants will dive into the Teaching Community Technology Handbook, a guide to developing accessible and meaningful technology education through popular education practices and workshops. If you get excited by education and love sharing your knowledge and skills with techies and non-techies alike, this session is for you!

Help at the border. Identifying needs and personas of the Venezuelan migrants for improved targeted support

Time: 09:45–10:45 AM

Room: Think Tank

It is estimated that the exodus of Venezuelans to the rest of the countries of America can reach four million people by the end of 2018 (13% of the population) according to the Center for Justice and International Law (Cejil).

These figures are unprecedented anywhere in the world. For example, in Syria six million people left in a period of four or five years. The figures estimated by Cejil along with other organizations such as the Jesuit Refugee Service indicate that by September 2018 there were two million Venezuelans in Colombia, half a million in Peru, another half million in Ecuador, 120.000 in Argentina and some 30.000 in the Dominican Republic.

This reality makes it increasingly necessary, among other actions, to deploy aid networks in border areas that allow coordinated action by people and organizations but, how to help? Who are the people who are emigrating? What are their needs? What is their level of risk? To help with the answers to some of these questions members of the Venezuelan organization Con-nexo carried out a research work in which they interviewed many of the organizations that are currently offering support in the border area of ​​Cucutá and municipalities of Táchira state (border with Colombia) to know first-hand the profile of the migrant and the type of help that is required.

The result of the research is shown through the design of personas where their needs are also linked to specific activities that would be convenient to carry out in the field of Human Rights, physical and digital security, resilience, among others. Our goal is this session is to share with the attendees these results hoping to motivate more organizations to join the attention of these areas and be more effective with the help they offer thanks to knowing first hand what the groups needs are. Finally, although the work done identifies Venezuelan migration, we believe that it can be replicable and comparable, in some aspects, with other areas of high migration.

Digital Bodies: The landscape of Threat, Opportunity and Resistance for Queer & Trans Activism

Time: 11:00–12:00 PM

Room: Think Tank

The current political moment in the U.S. and globally is defined by the heightened criminalization of queer and trans people of color, women and migrants, growing nationalism and fundamentalism, and shrinking space for civil society and organizing.

Surveillance and states’ increasing use of technology to control public narratives puts organizers at risk while creating additional movement obstacles. Astraea has embarked on research in key geographies around the world to: understand the baseline conditions for technology use, governance and access; explore the dynamics of internet freedom, digital security and surveillance; map the communications and digital organizing tools being used by organizers and the role of digital advocacy and online community-building in their movements; and identify opportunities around technologies and communications tools that activists can use to mitigate threats and further their work.

This research feeds into CommsLabs, a global emergent and participatory design initiative that interconnects holistic security, technology, media, strategic communications, grassroots innovation, and healing and resilience. By strengthening activists’ expertise and networks in these strategic areas, CommsLabs builds movement capacity to confront closing civic space and defend the freedom to organize. It is an innovative, future-forward movement-building strategy that tactically embraces the role technology can play in both the repression and advancement of freedom.

In this session, we will share key insights from three digital landscape mappings we have conducted in the past year, drawing connections across political and movement contexts in the United States, India, and Central Asia and Eastern Europe. In all three geographies, social movements are under attack by state and non-state actors alike, with queer and trans activists on the frontlines of both attack and resistance. This session will share critical knowledge about the particular vulnerabilities that queer and trans activists experience on the digital terrain, and identify how technologists and funders can better support their resilience and resistance.

Community of commons: open and free access for strength and development.

Time: 12:15–01:15 PM

Room: Flyover Front

Promoting visibility of community builders by exchanging experiences on community development and the importance of communication (amongst the community, and also as an outreach tool) as a means of advocacy, awareness and strength building for social movements, activists and underrepresented communities.

Psychosocial support for human rights defenders

Time: 12:15–01:15 PM

Human rights defenders working in repressive countries often suffer psychologically from the situation they are in. Besides the pressure and stress inherent in the environment, they also often experience depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

This poses a problem when supporting/training these individuals or networks, as depression and trauma negatively impacts the ability to learn and act rationally, in some cases to the point where working together becomes problematic.

Further compounding the issue, many human rights defenders also suffer from a lack of access to effective medical and psychiatric care. This session focuses on showing practices of self-help and mindfulness techniques suitable for human rights defenders and people working in pressing environments. The participants will learn how to reduce inner stress and to better cope with sudden events of external pressure.

Liberation Practice Session #1: Power, Oppression and Intersectionality

Time: 02:45–03:45 PM

What does that buzz word intersectionality really mean? Can I participate in this new era of woke politics and oppression olympics? In a world where our oppressions are stratified, it’s apparent that we need strategic practices that examine power, privilege, and oppression.

This session sifts through the ways these buzz words truly manifest in our personal and political lives, and participants will leave with actionable items to address interpersonal, institutional and internalized oppression. — —

Hosted by Sharmin Hossain, the host and Community Health lead for the 2019 Internet Freedom Festival! Sharmin hails from the busy streets of Queens, New York. A Bangladeshi queer Muslimah, Sharmin works as a Network Coordinator at the Social Transformation Project, helping facilitate just transformation across social justice organizations. She designs and leads trainings for leaders focused on organizing, advocacy skills, leadership development, and issues connected to health, rights, and justice. A graduate from CUNY Hunter College, Sharmin founded the Bangladeshi Historical Memory Project, a political theatre initiative reconciling histories of trauma and displacement. She is also a digital security trainer with Equality Labs, supporting activists to adopt safe practices in their digital lives and organizational culture.

Response to digital attacks: regional networks and resources

Time: 04:00–06:00 PM

In this interactive session DDP will facilitate a space in which: a ) members of regional rapid response networks share hands-on practical information about response after digital attacks b) those who have worked with communities at risk or were under attack themselves share their stories and needs. It is both a space for sharing knowledge as for connecting with each other about experiences in different regions and different risk groups. At the end of the session,

• participants should have a better understanding of the threat landscape; what are trends of different kinds of attack responders see happening worldwide as well as regionally;
• participants have improved knowledge on what entry points are for response in different regions
• participants have shared experiences and formulated needs Methodology: 1. The session will start with an introduction of the regional rapid response networks for everyone (max 15 min). The new and updated DFAK is presented as a really good place to go if you are in need, a really short walk through. Representative(s) of the regional networks will present themselves and discuss *shortly* 3 observations of the digital threat landscape in their region. 2. Break out session: Where do I go in my region? For response to a specific community at risk? (60 min) Groups organised by region can get more information on responders and entry-points in that specific region, and resources are shared.

These are resources for different kinds of response: digital (trainers/responders, infrastructure/tech etc) as well as suggestions where one might find psychological and legal support. DDP will prepare a rapid response resource guide participants can take with them per region together with the responders. We do a ‘change over’ half way so people have the chance to go to two regional /community response workshops. (Optional: Second Break out session: share and connect (30 min) In our experiences it is very valuable for people who have experienced digital attacks to be able to share with others. If there is enough time we could make this a part of this workshop; to honour that need and give people the possibility to personally connect) In smaller groups people get the space to share threat and response experiences. What stood out for you experiencing an attack or trying to respond to an attack? What were the hurdles you encountered looking for the right response? What was successful? We would like each of the groups to consist of people from different regions to enable connections. Each group is facilitated my a rapid response network member. ) 4. Report back to the whole group; and a short burst of loud disco music and small glitter-response packages for all to let off steam. (15 min) Notes: — DDP is facilitator but the session will be done by the regional rapid responders. We will do the organisational tasks; we will facilitate in the background. — This workshop can als be split in two sessions: one session about which threats are seen in different regions, and one part focussing on response, if the IFF thinks this is useful; — We are open to any ideas to make this workshop fit specific needs of the IFF community. What we want to offer is a space and experts, and a safe, open space, best structured to learn and exchange knowledge and experience. For example: if there is need, we would be very interested in making one of the break-out groups discuss response to LGBTI communities at risk or response to online harassment. The regional response network has a huge diversity of experience that can be harvested; depending on the needs we can shape this workshop to best fit the most urgent needs. Facilitators: Depending,on,the,needs,of,IFF,we,would,like,to,invite,specific,responders,join,this,session.,Organisations,include,working,in,Latin,America,Central,Asia,MENA,East,Africa,(eg.,Frontline,Defenders,Fundacion,Acceso,LGBTI,network,Russia,Access,Now,MLDI,for,legal,response,etc).

Day 4: Thursday, April 4

Marco Polo: Finding One Another

Time: 11:00–12:00 PM

Room: Think Tank

This session focuses on methods for connecting tool teams and users. Within this session we want attendees to be exposed to practical activities and methods for discovering and communicating needs and co-creating solutions. In addition, we will showcase stories and insights gained by our team and other teams working directly with communities on the ground and with development teams.

“Chilled” long-term engagement with organizations for digital security help

Time: 11:00–12:00 PM

Room: La Factoria

Over the years we’ve tried many different formats on supporting civil society with digital security. Trainings, security audits, personal consultations, technical support etc. Lately we’ve been trying new approach of “slow” organizational support (you can call it chilled :)) which includes all of this components, but set smaller goals and expectation from the beginning. And it seems to be working the best! We want to share our experience on how our work developed and how now during long-term work with organization we manage to embed digital security in the work, not trying to embed their work around digital security.

Cryptorave: together we stand, divided we fall

Time: 12:15–01:15 PM

Room: Flyover Back

CryptoRave (https://cryptorave.org/en/), is an anual event run since 2014 in São Paulo, Brazil, is the largest free and open cryptoparty in the world: in the latest edition about 4000 people circulated in more than 24 hours of activities related to security, cryptography, hacking, anonymity, privacy and internet freedom. Inspired by the global and decentralized action of cryptoparties, which aims to spread the fundamental concepts and basic software of cryptography, Cryptorave is organized on a voluntary basis to guarantee a truly independent event, with a donation policy, in which all expenses are covered by voluntary contributions. The collected resources are used only and exclusively for the realization of the event. Cryptorave transcended various stigmata about security, privacy and tools previously restricted to the “nerd”, “hacker”, and activist world, expanding the discussion to a much wider, more inclusive and diverse audience, to raise awareness and educative purpose, whether through lectures and workshops or through documentaries, films and various other artistic and cultural range of activities. Despite this awesome accomplishment, unfortunately, there’s a possibility to do not occur in the next year due to Brazil political situation: an extreme conservative right wing direction. In this session, we have two main goals: to share our methodology, challenges and efforts to accomplish the Cryptorave and, at the same time, think and build with the audience, this worldwide community of activists and experts, alternatives to keep on spreading the knowledge, tools and, tips of privacy, autonomy, anonymity and cryptography for (not only) but mainly to Latin American countries who are experiencing difficult times in terms of digital resistance and autonomy.

Harness the Potentials of Art and Playful Practices

Time: 02:45–03:45 PM

Room: Gallery

Artistic and playful approaches to technology carry enormous potentials for critique, empowerment, participation and community engagement.(1) Art pieces and interactive performances can make otherwise obscure and abstract sociotechnical processes and concepts tangible and relatable to non-specialists through the mediation of artists. The session will start with an interactive performance, and continue into a showcase of how art and playful approaches such as LARPs and rituals can increase understanding of and engagement with critical perspectives on technology, power relations and digital rights. We will showcase our own examples of techno-magick rituals and performances from the group How to Quit (2,3) as well as provide other interesting and illustrative examples from international artists. We wish to spark and inspire a conversations with the participants on how to use the power of visual and performing arts as well as playful interactive approaches to engage new communities in the internet freedom space. Reference: 1. https://medium.com/techfestival-2018/art-is-the-key-that-unlocks-digital-literacy-87a31c0496d0 2. https://artweek.nu/en/program/workshop-how-to-quit-digital-stresstest-mindful-computing/ 3. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bkrp3neA1ik/

Money, the problem: Financial sustainability of open source projects

Time: 02:45–03:45 PM

Room: Flyover Front

Some go out with a bang, some die silently, some follow a thoughtful sunset strategy — open source projects end, and money often plays no small role. This is a solidarity session for those steering open source projects that are (sometimes) struggling with funding. We hope to together explore underlying issues, create space for peer-to-peer advice, consolidate points on what we and others can do to improve the status quo, and discuss how we can take back the meaning of sustainability. As a German compound noun would have it, this is a Opensourcentwicklerselbsthilfegruppe.

Day 5: Friday, April 5

Building Global Worker Solidarity Among the Digital Rights Workforce

Time: 02:30–03:30 PM

Labor rights are an important part of human rights. As technology has changed and surveillance become normalized, the digital rights and privacy communities have strived to show how digital rights and labor rights intersect. However, despite this recognition and advocacy for labor rights for others, the human rights industry has proven to be hostile to labor rights for its own workforce. The slew of issues affect everyone in this industry. Fellowship and project-based funding keeps people in precarious employment status where personalities and ‘cultural fit’ can be excuses to keep people out. How and whose labor is valued prioritizes people from certain geographical areas and perpetuates economic inequality for marginalized communities in our spaces. Despite knowledge of toxic employers and issues of discrimination and sexual assault in the workplace (not all of which have been discussed publicly), employees have no recourse and donors or others with influence are not stepping in to make the situation better. While we might not be able to create a global union, we can follow the guiding principle of worker solidarity and find ways of supporting each other and promoting better labor rights. In this session we will have a conversation on labor rights focused globally. This will hopefully be the first of many conversations to both uncover labor rights violations and work to improve them.

Rooted in Community: Detroit Digital Stewards

Time: 04:00–05:00 PM

Room: Think Tank

Through the Equitable Internet Initiative we work to ensure that more Detroit residents have the tools to leverage digital technologies for social and economic development. We do this by fostering the development of community rooted technologists, those who have the desire to build, design and facilitate a healthy integration of technology into people’s lives and communities, allowing them the fundamental human right to communicate. In this session, our Digital Stewards, community technologists and neighborhood leaders trained in the technical and community organizing skills necessary to redistribute Gigabit Internet connections, will share how they — through the practice of common ownership, environmental and digital justice, openness, and skill building — bring their communities online.