This article was taken from the August 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Technology is the activist's new weapon, playing a role in the Arab Spring, the Haiti earthquake response and the London riots. But it's not just Facebook and Twitter that empower local changemakers -- increasingly they are building tools through their own startups or social enterprises.
The Omidyar Network, which funds such startups, and the UK Department for International Development, with Wired's support, are running a conference in London on 13 November in which these issues will be explored in depth (further details from Katyhaile@timebased.co.uk).
Here are seven startups spurring social change.
Felipe Heusser
Smart Citizen Foundation, Chile
Hatched in a London pub in 2008, the Smart Citizen Foundation is the brainchild of its executive chairman, Chilean lawyer Felipe Heusser. His primary concern while working for the Chilean ministry of foreign affairs was thinking of ways to increase Latin American citizens' access to public information. So he decided to start a non-profit to do just that. "When we started two-and-a-half years ago, technology still wasn't seen as a tool for change," says Heusser, 32. "We wanted to use tech to access more information, to aggregate and gather citizens to promote a cause, to examine tonnes of financial and political data -- our added value was technology."
The foundation's recent tools include a Smart Access app, which lets citizens submit anonymous freedom-of-information requests to specific government agencies and compiles all responses into the Inspector of Interests, an open database that publishes MPs' public assets alongside how they vote, and reveals conflicts of interest.
It also produced the Citizen Balloon, an iPhone tied to a helium balloon that live-streamed a bird's-eye view of the Chilean student protests in July 2011. "I heard from my friends in the States that the same iPhone balloon was used in the Occupy Wall Street movement a few months later," says Heusser. The NGO's next step: wider Latin American and Caribbean domination.
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Jennifer Pahlka
Code For America, US
Jennifer Pahlka wants the US government to work like a lean startup. "The spirit in the tech-startup world is iterative -- start fast and experiment constantly," says Pahlka. "I want that spirit to infuse government." In January 2010, Pahlka, now 42, quit her job to found Code for America (CFA), a non-profit that connects civic hackers with city administrators to solve local problems. The flagship project is the fellowship programme, in which 26 skilled coders take a year off from their jobs to help urban bureaucrats. CFA coders have worked with ten cities, including Boston, Seattle and Chicago. They have created 20 mobile and web apps for issues such as education, street art and transport. All data sets, software and APIs are open source. Rather than pit technologists against government, "we want to find innovators within administrations," Pahlka says. "We want to make it unacceptable to do things the old way."
Swati Ramanathan
ipaidabribe.com, India
Swati Ramanathan started out with a lofty goal: to eliminate small-scale corruption in India. "What bothered me is having to pay bribes for basic services such as a driving licence," she says. On August 15 2010, she launched ipaidabribe.com, one of ten projects run by Janaagraha, the non-profit she manages with her husband in Bangalore. The idea was to crowdsource data on bribes -- which cities and departments are most corrupt, how much people pay. "We wanted to analyse the anatomy of corruption," says Ramanathan, 48.
With over 16,000 reports, ipaidabribe.com is now used in every major city in India, and has been adapted in Kenya and Pakistan. "Next, we want to create a global online coalition against corruption," says Ramanathan.
Esra'a Al Shafei
MidEastYouth, Bahrain and the Middle East
Esra'a Al Shafei doesn't trust any government in any part of the world. "Whatever they claim, they will never care as much about transparency and open data as citizens do," she says firmly. So instead, she started a blogging network to amplify diverse voices in the Middle East and north Africa. From its origins in Bahrain, the network quickly spread into other nearby countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey and Tunisia. "We don't want to promote any single ideology -- just listen to what the youth are talking about," says Al Shafei, 25. "Religion, gender, politics, we want nothing to be underground." The platform includes crowdvoice.org, a base for the writings of activists all over the world. MidEastYouth has also launched MidEastTunes.org, a discovery engine for underground Middle Eastern musicians; an LGBT-story-exchange platform called ahwaa.org; and an iPad app tracing the history of revolution in the Middle East and Africa. "My passion is access to information," she says. "Ignorance can be deadly."
Oscar Salazar
Citivox, Mexico
"Social media is a noisy place," says Oscar Salazar. "It's hard for decision-makers to follow the conversation." Salazar's solution is Citivox, a data-analytics startup that scrapes social network and government data, then analyses and visualises it for government clients so that they can overhear what citizens are saying. "People are constantly complaining about community issues on Facebook and Twitter, so we just separate signal from noise," says CEO Salazar, 34. The for-profit startup, which launched with $300,000 in September, has worked with 15 government representatives -- including the government of Mexico, Yemen election officials and the chamber of commerce in Bogota. Clients pay a monthly fee for access to analysis and Salazar says he will reach profitability by year-end. Citivox will soon move into the consumer space by launching an online advice and information exchange for citizens. "We want to empower every citizen to start improving his or her community," he says.
Svitlana Zalishchuk New Citizen, Ukraine Founded on the eve of the January 2010 presidential election in Ukraine, New Citizen is a hub for 56 Ukrainian non-profits. "The idea was to unite the efforts of many civic actors to enhance citizens' influence on politics," says founder Svitlana Zalishchuk. "By communicating and collaborating via new media, we became visible to politicians." The 29-year-old former TV journalist, who previously worked for Ukraine's deputy prime minister, says simple tools such as Google Groups became critical for her cause, along with popularity on Facebook, Twitter and big Russian social networks. In preparation for this October's parliamentary elections, New Citizen launched the Chesno or "Fair" movement. The idea, borrowed from a similar campaign in Romania, involves assessing all electoral candidates against a set of criteria, and asking officials to disqualify those who do not meet the criteria.
Two political parties have already signed an agreement.
'Bosun Tijani
CCHub, Nigeria
The Co-creation Hub works to help technology accelerate social change in Nigeria. "Tech can improve healthcare and education, help farmers and engage citizens in governance," says 'Bosun Tijani, the CEO and founder. Tijani has built a centre in Lagos which houses locals with innovative ideas. "We have a community of creative professionals whom we encourage to look for issues at the bottom of the pyramid," says Tijani, 34.
CCHub then connects the entrepreneurs with investors, who can mentor and fund ideas. The programme supports 21 ventures, and has worked with the Indigo Trust and the World Bank to provide seed funding. CCHub is also mapping innovation clusters in Lagos so the government can support them.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
