What is The MERL Tech Initiative?
The MERL Tech Initiative supports the responsible design, use, and governance of digital technologies and digital data to achieve better outcomes for people, communities and societies. As digital programming and tech-enabled MERL become the norm, we believe it is important to focus on ensuring that digital tools and approaches add value, support equity and justice, and avoid doing harm.
We implement programs and provide advisory support in five key areas:
- Convening diverse and inclusive communities that explore and responsibly use technology to enhance the effectiveness of MERL and improve programmatic impact.
- Democratizing knowledge, access, and skill-building opportunities related to new and emerging technology applications and approaches for MERL and digital programming.
- Advising funders and implementers on responsible tech-enabled programming; tech-enabled MERL; data governance, policy and practice; online safety and digital safeguarding.
- Developing public goods related to ethical innovation, responsible use and governance of technology and digital data, and digital safeguarding.
- Influencing the wider sector to adopt fair, equitable, ethical, and rights-based approaches to the use of technology and digital data, with attention to potential benefits as well as possible individual, group, organization, and society-level harms and unintended consequences.
The MERL Tech Initiative is an LLC that works with a core group of collaborators in the above areas. Our sister organization Technology Salon is a 501c3 that receive grant funding.
Who are our core collaborators?
The MERL Tech Initiative’s core collaborators hold deep experience in holistic MERL and digital programming. Our expertise includes digital strategy, digital transformation, data governance, data privacy policy and practice, design research, trust and safety, safeguarding, digital risk assessment, gender, youth, digital inclusion, and social and behavior change communication (SBCC). Contact us to chat about working together!
Individual collaborators
Cathy Richards is a technologist who helps activists, organizations, and other social change agents make the most of data and technology in order to increase their impact. She is The MERL Tech Initiative’s operations lead. She teaches Metrics & Data Visualization at SVA, is a co-founder at Pueblo CoLab – a collaborative that creates tech and data processes for the social sector, and has also worked at GitLab and Keystone Accountability.
Christopher Robert has been developing software for the MERL Tech Sector for over a decade, including the creation of SurveyCTO. His company, Higher Bar AI, provides a wide range of AI adoption support services, from experimentation and evaluation of proofs of concept all the way through to continuous monitoring of deployed solutions for safety and efficacy. Chris and the Higher Bar AI team combine a strong facility with the new GenAI technical stack with a keen interest in safety, impact, and security.
Dr. Emily Springer, one of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics™(2024), is an inclusive AI advisor and algorithmic literacy trainer for social impact professionals. She specializes in sociotechnical understandings of AI, end user research and testing, and AI strategy and risk mitigation. Through TechnoSocio Advisory she offers Ethical AI bootcamps and custom training. Her consulting focuses on digital and gender in the agriculture and education sectors and she now serves the Tech-Facilitated Gender-based Violence (TF GBV) team at UNFPA. Previously, at a Microsoft partner, she built automation solutions for enterprise clients and, as a sociologist, trained graduate students in Development Practice and Social Justice. As a member of the International Association of Algorithmic Auditors, she is eager to ensure AI benefits all peoples.
Isabelle Amazon-Brown is a digital development consultant and human centered designer focused on the design, development, evaluation, and growth of digital social impact products, youth, gender, sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR), and education. Issie has researched the effectiveness of digital social and behavior change communication (SBCC) programming and advised organizations on digital work with hard-to-reach communities. She developed the Safer Chatbots guidelines and AI model for UNICEF and led an evaluation of WHO’s use of chatbots for COVID response and multiple AI and non-AI chatbots for users in vulnerable settings.
Linda Raftree has worked at the intersection of community development, gender, youth participatory media, rights-based approaches and digital development since 1994. She’s been exploring the responsible use of digital approaches and digital data for the past 15 years. Linda is a well-known expert on responsible data policy and procedures, digital safeguarding, inclusive digital approaches, safe tech-enabled programming, digital SBCC and MERL Tech. She leads sector-wide convenings on these topics through The MERL Tech Initiative, which she founded in 2014, and the New York City Technology Salon which she started in 2011. Linda is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP & CIPM).
Sarah Osman is a behavioral scientist and cognitive psychologist with two decades of experience in international development and social and behavior change interventions. Sarah has worked in the areas of health, migration, peacebuilding, children’s rights, education, and business and human rights, to deliver bespoke and innovative solutions. She is a member of the Behavioural Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) network. Sarah focuses on the strategic use of AI, and recently built the SBC Technique Selector GPT in November 2023 to help project designers easily identify evidence-based behavior change techniques.
Zach Tilton is an evaluation consultant with experience in peacebuilding evaluation, youth-focused evaluation, participatory and collaborative evaluation, meta-evaluation, evaluation synthesis, technology- enabled evaluation, AI-enabled evaluation, and evaluation capacity development. He is active with the EvalYouth Global Network and various evaluation associations. Zach’s field experience spans North and West Africa, South East Asia, and the Pacific with over two years of development experience in rural communities. He is currently finishing a PhD in evaluation and has been using NLP as a core tool in his work.
Organizational Collaborators
iMedia Associates, is a UK-based international media and communications company led by Nicola Harford, that promotes innovative approaches – increasingly via digital platforms and AI – to tackling communications challenges presented by conflict, fragile governance, ill-health and poverty. We deliver and disseminate high-quality advisory, research and analysis to our clients and partners. Our network of associates facilitates skills-building, knowledge-sharing, and local ownership to enhance communications resilience and create lasting social and behavioral change.
Tech Legality is a women-led consulting company founded by Emma Day and Dr Sabine K Witting. They work with governments, UN agencies, technology companies, and (I)NGOs to ensure that technologies are deployed and governed in a way that protects and respects human rights, centering the needs of children, and vulnerable and marginalized communities. Tech Legality also leads the Community of Practice on Technology and Human Rights which aims to provide a collaborative space for members to discuss trust and safety topics from a human rights perspective.
The Technology Salon hosts intimate, informal, in-person discussions among information and communication technology exerts and international development and humanitarian professionals to tackle tough topics in a safe space that sparks opportunities for cross-sectoral learning and new partnerships. Salons also serve as sounding board and focus group discussion opportunities for emerging topics in ICT4D and social media for social change. Technology Salon is The MERL Tech Initiative’s non-profit (501c3) partner for managing grant funding.
Contact us to chat about collaborating!