Civil society faces significant challenges in information ecosystems in Latin America and the Caribbean: various communities still struggle with exercising their right to information; inequity in access to reliable internet and digital technologies has continued to affect many, especially in rural areas and forest territories; dis- and misinformation have become common; and anti-rights actors have been using information technologies to attack and undermine the work of activists.
All of this combined with upcoming elections in 2024 result in an increasingly challenging context, which has propelled our team to start a project aimed at contributing to a healthy and robust information ecosystem in Latin America and the Caribbean.
As part of the project, we have been talking to organisers, activists and journalists about the challenges we’re facing in the information ecosystem and opportunities we identify for action (you can read how some of those conversations went here and here). We are also offering free tech and data support to individuals or groups who are working for social justice in Latin America and/or the Caribbean, especially those who:
- advocate for access to information for their community (or for other groups that might not have access to the information they need), work to fill information gaps in their community, help people access crucial information about their rights, or work to spread quality information on topics that are often targeted by disinformation campaigns.
- work to build healthier and more robust information ecosystems, whether it’s through media education projects, running small news and media outlets, working on local journalism or alternative media, organising community-driven information initiatives, or disseminating critical information to their communities;
- are monitoring or researching how their community is impacted by info disorder, and/or and figuring out creative ways to strengthen our information ecosystem.
With the above in mind, our support is open to communicators, civil society organisations, community organisers and activists working on a variety of issues, including gender justice, sexual and reproductive health and rights, racial justice and anti-racism, climate and environmental justice, indigenous rights, disability rights, economic justice, human rights and more.
If you’re a part of a social justice organisation working in the region and would like our support with using tech and data, we would love to collaborate with you! Click the button below to schedule an introductory call with our team.
Learn more about our work
The Engine Room is a non-profit organisation with a distributed global team of experienced and committed activists, researchers, technologists and community organisers (some of whom are based in or have significant experience working in Latin America).
We partner with groups whose work confronts power imbalances, injustice and rights abuses and support them in using tech and data in ways that meet the needs, politics and principles. Since 2011, our team has worked with more than 700 organisations of all sizes, from different corners of the globe, to strengthen their tech and data strategies.
As part of this project, we are offering two types of no-fee support partnership: Light Touch Support (LiTS) and Intensive Support (Matchbox). We personalise our support to serve the needs of each partner, and our work can include things like:
- Strengthening technical intuition: We can work with your team to strengthen your technical intuition, aptitude for navigating the nuances of working with tech, and ability to balance the opportunities and challenges tech brings.
- Project design and implementation: We can support you in designing realistic, sustainable and impactful projects to address complex challenges in your context, while incorporating data and technology into your work.
- Community building and connecting with fellow organisers in safe ways. In our conversations with organisers and activists, the need for building more alliances and collaboration among actors working to strengthen the information ecosystem has been highlighted as a priority. We can support you in finding the best tools to connect with fellow activists and organisers.
- Responsible Data: If there is data missing in your context that would be crucial to your work and the people you’re working with, we can support you in coming up with a plan for collecting and managing it responsibly! We can also work together to establish a responsible and streamlined process for retaining, archiving and deleting data you use.
- Digital care and digital resilience: We can work together to support your organisation’s ability to protect yourself from – and respond to – digital security threats, to ensure the wellbeing of your team, and to adopt infrastructures that respond to your needs and contexts.
Documenting your work and building your digital archive: We can support your organisation with creating tech/data processes for digitally documenting your work.
If you’re interested in learning more about how we can support your work, you’re welcome to schedule an introductory call with our team, where we’ll share more about how we work and we’ll explore together possibilities of collaboration. The call can be in English, Spanish or Portuguese, depending on our team’s availability and your preferences. If you prefer, you get in touch with us via hello[at]theengineroom.org.
You can also learn more about our work by:
- Exploring our blog, where we share insights and updates from our past and current projects.
- Checking out our collection of key questions about tech and data for social justice organisations (available in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish).
- Reading about our project to contribute to a healthier and more robust information ecosystem in Latin America and the Caribbean: here, here and here.
Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash