Our ED, Julia Keseru, will be leaving The Engine Room at the end of this year. Read her letter, as well as a letter from our board.
The Engine Room Board
Julia was at The Engine Room for eight years, and was the organisation's Executive Director from 2018 until the end of 2024.
Learning from co-leadership
We may have developed our current shared leadership model as much from happenstance and opportunity as we have from any specific plan, but over a year and a half into this work, we’re taking a moment to reflect.
Innovation is not for free
How can we continue experimenting with technology’s liberatory potential, without sacrificing too much?
Technology in the service of justice
How The Engine Room aspires to approach our own technical choices with an explicit focus on justice and anti-oppression.
Scheduled online fun, and other things 2020 has forced us to try
In-person time–especially at our annual, all-team retreats–is sacred for us at The Engine Room. This year was, obviously, different.
Where we’re headed – proudly presenting The Engine Room’s new strategy!
This is the first in a series of posts exploring our mission, vision, principles and priorities for the coming years. To read about the ways we’re trying to get where we’re going–how we’re implementing our new strategy–take a look at this post from Zara, our Deputy Director. A lot has happened since 2017, when we […]
What comes next? Building a resilient and accountable digital ecosystem
In the rush to convert to digital, we should keep a few important things in mind.
Supporting a global workplace in times like these
We’re sharing our employee emergency support package in case it’s helpful for other organisations in designing their own strategies.
From hype to nuance: Civil society and technology
What we’re looking forward to exploring in 2020 when it comes to civil society and technology.
Conserving resources in civic tech
A few months ago, I shared my thoughts on why I believe there is enormous potential in introducing more principled waste management techniques in the civic tech sector. I received valuable feedback on the piece and some clarifying questions, a few of which I thought would be worth sharing and answering.
Responsible by Design
A rights-based approach to designing, implementing and scaling best practices for the use of data could be leveraged beyond the civil society sector.
Responsible waste management in civic tech
Many of us already invest time and resources into minimizing our plastic consumption, reusing paper, or composting our food. But what about the digital waste we create in our work as nonprofits? Human rights defenders, transparency advocates, and many others working for the greater public good repeatedly design technology-heavy projects that cost a lot of […]
Embracing complexity is a must, not a luxury
In the intersection of technology and social change, diversity means that we need to embrace the inherent complexity that comes from the often dissonant voices and conflicting needs of the sectors we work in. These voices might seem mutually exclusive – sometimes downright contradictory – but they need to be heard and taken seriously.
Welcoming our new Sub-Saharan Africa partners to the Matchbox program
Today marks an important milestone in our Matchbox journey. We are thrilled to announce our three new Matchbox partners in Sub-Saharan Africa: the Anti-Corruption Coalition (ACCU) from Uganda, MSME-ASI from Nigeria, and Code for Sierra Leone (code4salone).
Excited about social change in Sub-Saharan Africa? We’re recruiting for a new regional lead for our Transparency & Accountability Team
Note: The application deadline for this role has now passed and we will no longer be accepting applications. The Engine Room supports social change organisations to make the most of data and technology to increase their impact. We’re looking for someone to join the Transparency & Accountability Team and lead our programmatic work in […]
Balancing Acts: Using Replication Sprints to Repurpose Technology without Ignoring Context
Diig.io is a lightweight tool for extractive transparency. The Engine Room and the Namibian Institute for Public Policy Research built together a data model and searchable platform of petroleum exploration licences in Namibia to power investigation and advocacy. From that experience, The Engine Room realised that the underlying data model and code can be useful for other organisations facing similar challenges — with the proper support. Through the replication sprint process, we built two new platforms with Citizens for Justice and Oxfam in Malawi and the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association, targeting mineral extraction in their countries.