NetHope was founded on the premise that we achieve much more by working together than any one of us can accomplish working alone. Now with 11 years of hard work, growth and inspiration, we are even more confident that we were on to something special.
With continued support for our partners and friends throughout the past year, NetHope has been able to blaze trails as a changemaker, be a catalyst for collaboration and accelerate the empowerment of women and girls in areas or roles where they are underrepresented. We thank them for believing in our mission.
Let’s see how we, together, made the world a better place in 2012:
Payment Innovations
Humanitarian organizations have already begun to explore how technology can manage payments and resources, and this year NetHope extensively worked to help build the ecosystem and foundation to support a cross-sector move toward electronic payments, and away from physical cash. Leadership from NetHope and USAID brought together governments, donors, international nongovernmental organizations and private companies to form the Better Than Cash Alliance – a group committed to making the operational shift to non-cash payments.
Just last month, NetHope partnered with Visa to further drive this effort with the creation of Visa Innovation Grants, which will award a total of $500,000 to non-profits that champion innovation, implementation and adoption of electric transfers.
Open Humanitarian Initiative
NetHope has long realized that communications is the lifeblood of emergency response, but this year our Emergency Response initiative looked beyond information and communication technologies to look at how keeping data in silos hinders relief efforts. The Open Humanitarian Initiative (OHI) pushes for a faster cultural shift within the humanitarian realm towards openness, an ideal younger digital natives already embrace. As our Emergency Response Director Gisli Olafsson said in a reflection post on Superstorm Sandy, “we cannot afford to wait for that generation shift to occur because lives are at stake.” Since OHI encourages leadership-driven collaboration, participating in more joint efforts and sharing information upfront, more time can be spent on coordination and strategic planning to better deliver aid.
Gisli’s incredible work and vision for emergency response and preparedness earned him a spot as a finalist in this year’s Microsoft Alumni Foundation’s prestigious Integral Fellow Award. Way to go, Gisli!
Cloud Services Initiative
NetHope continually strives to provide innovative ways for our member organizations to collaborate with each other, partners, supporters and the broader humanitarian community. This year, the NetHope Cloud Services Initiative worked with our members to design and develop a space to discuss challenges, search for cloud solutions, collaborate together and find resources for implementation; the goal is collect stories of positive impact driven by ICT solutions and better prepare the sector at large for future opportunities.
NetHope Global Member Summit
NetHope held its 11th NetHope Global Member Summit at the world-class Microsoft facilities in Redmond, Washington to connect, collaborate and innovate around ‘Mobilizing the Cloud’. Over 200 participants from member organizations, supporters and the NetHope team attended to tackle big topics like scaling innovation, cloud solutions, looking beyond mobile, big data and working together. The Summit is just more proof that strong bonds and robust technology have the potential to push development further, towards bigger impact and better efficiency.
NetHope Academy expansion
The NetHope Academy’s story in Haiti captured our attention for the past few years, but the Academy reached even bigger success this year as the program expanded to a whole new continent – Africa! The NetHope Academy proudly graduated students in Kenya and Rwanda, a class that is more than two-thirds women. The program plans to continue training the next generation of IT professionals in Haiti, Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa, as well as eventually extending opportunities to youth in South America and Asia.
Women’s TechConnect
To further help girls and women pursue careers in technology, NetHope developed a program to connect young women – 1:1 – with female IT professional mentors. Leveraging our member organizations as well as our corporate supporters, mentors work to increase recruitment, retention and success of women in the technology sector workforce by sharing ideas within the program’s growing online community and championing one another’s growth and leadership development.
The Women’s TechConnect program officially launched at the Grace Hopper Celebration in October to a crowd of 3,600 female technology professionals from 54 countries.
Our work is far from done, but we are happy to share some of this past year’s highlights, which were only possible with help from our friends and supporters!
If you’d like to contribute, your support can:
To join in with the NetHope community and periodically hear from us on program updates and our positive impact throughout the world, add yourself to our official list of supporters ››
Best wishes to our member organizations, supporters and partners for a peaceful and joyous holiday season.
