Deadline: May 12, 2023

Internews is looking for open-source digital safety and security software teams interested to participate in a fully funded program aimed at supporting teams’ strategic planning and sustainability. 

Building on Internews’ work under BASICS (Building Analytical and Support Infrastructure for Critical Security tools), our new project SUSTAIN, Sustaining Safety Tools with Analytics, Insights, and Networking, aims to make open source digital safety and security tools more stable, secure, and user friendly.

Internews does this by investing in improving the sustainability of tool teams who would benefit from strategic support in planning, strengthened capacity, and reliable resources. The project is broken down into two parts:

• Improving tool teams’ long-term sustainability: SUSTAIN will tailor sustainability strategies for participating tool teams. Internews will support their implementation by matching tool teams with expert consultants, drawn from diverse end-user communities, to build out sustainability plans and provide localized insight into specific challenges and needs.
• Strengthen tool teams’ understanding of end-user needs through privacy-respecting analytics. Tool teams will be trained on the Clean Insights methodology and supported to start-up its implementation. Clean Insights is focused on answering key questions about user usage patterns without enabling invasive surveillance of all user habits. It provides methods for user interactions that are ultimately empowering instead of alienating.

Tool Team Participation and Benefits

• Open-source tools will be supported in developing long-term Sustainability Action Plans.
  • Each tool team will be partnered with an expert consultant to support development of Sustainability Action Plans and provide additional support throughout the project.
  • Mentors and expert consultants will help tool teams achieve milestones identified in Sustainability Action Plans.
• Creation of sustainable pathways for at-risk communities to participate in tool development.
• Lessons learned and best practices shared among a dynamic group of like-minded tool teams, implementing partners, expert consultants, and mentors.
• Access and induction to ethically derived, privacy-respecting user insights via the Clean Insight methodology.
  • Clean Insights will work with each selected tool team to implement the Clean Insights methodology within the context of tool team goals and development priorities.

About You

• Are you a tool team that responds to specific digital safety and/or security needs?
• Do you have a clear and defined Scope of Work (SOW)?
• Is your tool widely used by at-risk populations or developed in the “Global South”?
• Does your tool have potential to be adopted long-term usage?
• Have you taken concrete steps to strengthen their sustainability?
• You can designate a focal point to support program activities and reporting.
• You have the bandwidth to mentor and support expert consultants joining your project.

If this is of interest, then please input some key information below so we can assess whether your tool is a match for the project and determine how we can support.

Selection Criteria

Click here to read the selection criteria.

Deadline: May 12, 2023

In partnership with Guardian Project and Code for Science and Society.