Digital Democracy is a values-driven organization. These are our core values and how they guide our work.
Self determination and autonomy
We believe all peoples have the right to determine their future for themselves. In our technological work, we prioritize solutions that increase the self-sufficiency of our partners and reduce their dependency on us or other outside organizations. We are opposed to the legacies of colonization, neo-colonization and the superiority of Western world views.
We believe in the principles of Free Prior and Informed Consent, and recognize our partners’ intellectual property rights.
Accessibility
We believe in creating open source technology and contributing to open source libraries. Our tools are free or inexpensive, and we look for affordable technology for our partners which is hardware agnostic and cross-platform. We create easy to use, flexible and multilingual tools, adaptable to local cultures and contexts, which our partners can use to collect, manage and take action on information they gather.
Collaboration
We value collaboration and believe that as part of wider teams and networks we can contribute to greater positive change. No one person or organization can ever accomplish everything. We see our work as part of an ecosystem of organizations and individuals and prioritize projects and technologies that enable collaboration. Read more about our partners.
We create our tools in close collaboration with partner communities and organizations ensuring that the technology responds to their needs rather than vice versa. We involve our partners throughout the design, development and evaluation process. We believe that when we design with communities that generally do not have access to technology tools we create solutions that work for broader user-groups.
Social and Environmental Justice
We are doing this work because we care deeply about people and the future of the planet. We recognise that different forms of oppression are interlinked and we believe that social and environmental justice can almost never be separated. As we have seen so clearly from our work, it is often the most marginalized communities who are also on the frontlines, facing both the biggest environmental challenges and human rights abuses. We believe the best way to address these threats is to follow the lead and direction of our partners and support their efforts to advocate for their own rights to address both social and environmental injustices.