Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Elaina Todd, an environmental planner who develops social marketing campaigns with the nonprofit conservation group Rare, is profiled in our most recent case study for Benetech’s Miradi software. Miradi, is used by nature conservation practitioners around the world to design, manage, monitor and learn from their projects. The free and open source software, which is a joint venture between Benetech and the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) , guides users through a series of step-by-step interview wizards, based on the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. Elaina is using Miradi to develop and monitor her “Pride” campaign which addresses the social and economic factors that create environmental threats to Guam’s coral reefs. Rare’s Pride campaigns are two-year marketing initiatives that shift the attitudes and behaviors of people living near endangered areas to engage them in conservation efforts. Rare has embedded core Miradi functions into their standardized marketin...

Guest Beneblog by Megan Price I recently had the opportunity to present several of HRP’s projects to the local San Francisco chapter of the American Statistical Association (SFASA). Despite an audience of fellow statisticians, I chose to focus my talk more on the research questions and challenges posed by our work in human rights and less on the nuts and bolts of our statistical methods (though I did include a few equations and Greek letters!). Specifically, I presented the audience with the following questions: Were acts of genocide committed against the Mayan people in Guatemala? How many Kosovars were killed between March and June 1999? How much did Hissene Habré know about political killings during his presidency? Did high-ranking officials within the Guatemalan National Police know about Edgar Fernando García’s disappearance? As I told the audience, for those who like to skip to the last page of novels, the answers are 1) yes, 2) approximately 10,000, 3) a lot, and 4) we’re not s...