We are excited to share that over the summer we teamed up with Humanitas360 and the University of São Paulo’s CoLab for Development and Participation (CoLab) to launch a second pilot phase of Promise Tracker in Brazil. Throughout the remainder of 2016 we’ll be working with a range of civil society partners to develop case studies on the use of Promise Tracker in different cities and explore new methodologies for assessing impact.
Over the past year and a half, we had the opportunity to work with Nossa São Paulo and organizations across the country that make up the Brazilian Network of Sustainable cities to develop and test first version of the Promise Tracker tools. In a series of workshops, we collaborated with local groups to gather feedback and pilot monitoring campaigns around the infrastructure and service issues they considered most pressing.
As Promise Tracker is adopted and used beyond these initial workshops, we are interested in better understanding whether the tool is useful to local groups and the extent to which it helps them achieve their goals. We’ll be working closely with CoLab to document ongoing monitoring initiatives and develop a participatory framework for supporting organizing groups in assessing their own objectives, learnings and progress.
CoLab comes to the project with a background in research and development of technology tools to promote open knowledge, access to information, transparency and participation. In recent years they have developed projects including Caring for My Neighborhood (Cuidando do Meu Bairro) — a platform for mapping and monitoring of city budgets — and the Open Official Gazette (Diário Livre), which provides digital access to public sector information in open and accessible formats. Building on these experiences, CoLab is excited to explore ways to increase knowledge transfer amongst participants and develop a better understanding of how civil society organizations and grassroots movements can make use of civic tech platforms.
Through this process we’re excited to bring together researchers, social organizers, funders and developers and to learn from the experience and strategy of civil society groups and think critically about how we design and implement new technologies for social change. Check out the initial work monitoring school lunches in Pará and we’ll be posting ongoing updates on the Promise Tracker site.