Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

I've been privileged to meet so many awesome social entrepreneurs around the world, doing fabulous work without much recognition (and often, even less funding). Jamila Hassoune is one of those social entrepreneurs, and we share a love for books and the power of access to books. We've been in touch for almost fifteen years, and I met her in person in 2014 when I was attending the diplomatic conference that resulted in the Treaty of Marrakesh. She's known as the Librarian of Marrakesh,  in recognition of her dedication to books and her role as Morocco's first woman bookseller. She leads Book Caravans into Morocco's rural regions to share knowledge, books and history with students and women. She just sent me the announcement of her new Book Caravan: The 13th book caravan Under the theme: The valorization of our heritage is a responsibility of our present and our future. Jamila Hassoune is pleased to announce the 13th Edition of the book caravan from ...

Guest post by  Betsy Beaumon, President, Benetech We are seeking visionary leaders to join Benetech in applying technology to advance the rights of disadvantaged people around the world. Technology is playing an ever larger role in increasing respect for human rights and delivering better services, and we have two rare opportunities to lead world-class tech-for-good programs. Benetech is hiring new Vice Presidents for our Global Literacy and Human Rights programs. You are the leader we are looking for if you see the combination of social good and businesslike management as the answer to pressing problems throughout the world. You are someone who dreams about using your management and leadership skills and love of technology for social impact, exceeding the bounds of what a regular for-profit business can do. You’ve come to the right place: Benetech. We are Silicon Valley’s deliberately nonprofit software company. Benetech is organized as a nonprofit, but run like a busine...

One of the joys of my role is meeting other social sector leaders: people with a powerful passion for good.  We learn from each other, and try to help each other when we can.  Jamila Hassoune Ten years ago, I started corresponding with a fascinating woman from Morocco, Jamila Hassoune.  Over time, I learned more and more about her work and background.  She was the first woman bookseller in Morocco.  Her love for books led her to create the Book Caravans: treks each April out to a village in the desert or the mountains of Morocco.  She would bring books especially for children and women, and conduct a couple of days of workshops on wide-ranging topics about enterprise, culture, history, poetry and books. Over the time I corresponded with Jamila by email, she started becoming better known in Europe.  One Italian book was written about her entitled the "La libraia di Marrakech," the Librarian of Marrakesh. Last year, I was able to meet Jamila i...

Last November, Mayrie ReNae, a beloved colleague and part of our Bookshare extended community, passed away after a battle with cancer. Mayrie was a Bookshare member, volunteer and staff person, who contributed hundreds of books to the Bookshare collection and provided invaluable guidance to our volunteer crew for many years. This week, in remembrance of her birthday, we are pleased to announce the creation of the Mayrie ReNae Annual Valentine's Day Scholarship . Through this scholarship, Bookshare will donate one new membership every Valentine’s Day to a person with financial need. Mayrie, who was blind, began working with Bookshare as a volunteer in August 2006 and earned her membership by scanning and submitting books to the collection. By the time she was hired as a proofreader and scanner in December 2008, Mayrie had played a key role in contributing more than 1,000 accessible books to the collection. She said her primary motivation when starting out with Bookshare was to ...

[Note: this is part one of seven posts on the Benetech Truths .] The world has big problems. We need fresh, original solutions that are better than the status quo. Technology has revolutionized business, but bringing those breakthrough developments to government, education and the nonprofit sectors can take 5, 10, even 15 years. It doesn’t have to be that way. We’re convinced that there are many innovative social applications of technology could make a 5X or a 10X or even a 15X improvement over status quo solutions. At Benetech, our team is committed to using technology to drive positive social change. We want to see technology serve much more of humanity than just the richest ten percent. We use technology to create products and projects that serve humanity where the market will fail to go because they offer modest financial returns. To create these breakthrough solutions, our team uses its skills to build upon the incredible talents and productivity of the larger tech community. We...

This Sunday while you're finishing off the Halloween candy, think about doing something for National Family Literacy Day. For Bookshare members, that can be as simple as downloading a new book from Bookshare , or sharing one you already have. The idea behind the day, sponsored by the National Center for Family Literacy is to promote family literacy. Sunday, really, is just another reminder that every day can be literacy day. And, we want to make sure every kid has equal access to the joys of reading! It's a well established fact that reading with your kids helps give them a lifelong love of books, for instance. So, put down the remote control -- and shut down the game consoles and set aside a few moments to read with a family member, a friend, a student -- or just by yourself. Then please share your experience on Bookshare's Facebook page . We're also sharing some of our favorite reads on Bookshare. So please come and join all the discussions. Happy reading!

We have a great addition to our leadership team at Benetech. Betsy Beaumon, formerly of BEA Systems and numerous other high tech roles (including founding her own social enterprise in the 1990s), has joined us as our new Vice President and General Manager of Literacy Programs. The press release on the appointment has much more detail. I'm particularly excited about Benetech's continued strengthening of our management team. Over the past couple of years, the growth of Bookshare has enabled us to bring on managers like Lisa Friendly, John Crossman, Reuben Firmin and Betsy Burgess. That's in addition to longer term Benetech leaders like Patrick Ball, Barbara Morrison, Jane Simchuk and Teresa Throckmorton. Having this kind of managerial bench allows us to take on new enterprises, and deepen and extend the reach of our current projects. For me, this means I can invest more of my time in imagining the future of Benetech. We're in an unusual position this year to still ...

One of the most exciting literacy social enterprises that I've run into is PlanetRead . Founded by Indian Institute of Management professor Brij Kothari, the first concept was same language subtitling. When Brij heard I was going to South India, he insisted I visit his team in Pondicherry. Planet Read added subtitles to Bollywood music videos. Hundreds of millions of people now see these videos, eager to learn the words of their favorite videos and becoming literate along the way. They have also done extensive measurements of their impact and see real progress on advancing literacy. Another example of scale, South Asian style! The team I met were working on multimedia literacy content as part of Bookbox, and were busy using Adobe products to deliver cool ways to learn to read. They first created original visual story content, and then added different languages. In addition to a print book, they have multimedia content that animates the characters and adds audio narration....

We recently had a meeting in Silicon Valley to celebrate the progress we're making with the Route 66 Literacy program. Gerry Davis, who is one of our board members was there and took some pictures, and I thought I'd blog them and share the moments. The main reason for the meeting was that Professor Karen Erickson was in town. Karen is the innovator behind Route 66, and it was a chance to have Karen speak to us and some of the key donors who made Route 66 possible. She heads the Center of Literacy and Disability Studies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Two local Silicon Valley foundations were especially noteworthy for supporting Route 66 at its earliest stages. The Severns Family Foundation and Special Hope Foundation both were enthusiastic about Route 66 and willing to take the risk that this effort would lead to a real effort to advance reading for people with developmental disabilities. Dave and Sharon Severns attended: the Severns family helped ta...