FUNDACIÓN CIBERVOLUNTARIOS

“CITIZEN EMPOWERMENT TROUGH

THE SOCIAL USE OF ICTs”

Fundación Cibervoluntarios www.cibervoluntarios.org

2012

 

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Fundación Cibervoluntarios: citizen empowerment through the social use of ICTs

 

1. THE “CIBERVOLUNTARIOS” FOUNDATION

Fundación Cibervoluntarios (Cybervolunteers Foundation) is a non-profit organization made up of social entrepreneurs whose vision is to use new technologies as a means for social innovation and citizen empowerment, i.e. we want to increase the rights, opportunities and capabilities of each person within their environment, through the use of technological tools and applications within their reach. To achieve this goal the Foundation focuses its mission in “ensuring that all people are alike the opportunity to access, learn and use new technologies in order to overcome the digital divide, eliminating social gaps and promoting the knowledge society.”

We started our workout in November 2001 and, after 3 years as an Association; in 2005 we became a Foundation under the protectorate of the Ministry of Culture of the Spanish Government (National Register of Foundations number 674, assigned on the basis of Royal Decree 532/2004 of 17 April).

We have been working for more than 10 years with a main goal: to empower people through the social use of ICTs.

The goals of the Foundation are:

1. To encourage the adoption and use of ICT by citizens, NGOs and institutions. 2. To promote a responsible and appropriate use of the contents, services, tools

and access to Information Society and Knowledge. 3. To promote the creation, training and mobilization of a technological

volunteer: the cybervolunteers. 4. To create social awareness: to generate positive social and cultural attitudes

towards the importance of new technologies for the development and advance of society.

5. To remove any barriers which prevent knowledge and the use of new technologies, especially the physical, social and cultural ones.

6. To encourage participation through ICT and the responsible use of these tools among the youth.

We direct our action to groups of people at risk of socio-digital exclusion because of lack of material or economic resources or other reasons. And we manage to adapt the use of technological tools and applications to alleviate this social gapas at different levels, such as employment, social relations, health, participation… A challenge, 11 years of work that without going any further than last year received from the hands of the Prince and Princess of Asturias a recognition for “the creation of new forms of participation and social innovation in support of groups at risk of exclusion”, and the economic and social recognition of Google.org, for being one of the entities that are changing the world, the first and currently the only organization recognized with such merit in Spain.

In the last four years our action focus is being extended to Europe and Latin America, where we already have representation in Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil. We are also planning to open an office in Mexico.

 

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Fundación Cibervoluntarios: citizen empowerment through the social use of ICTs

 

2. WHO ARE THE CYBERVOLUNTEERS

Fundación Cibervoluntarios counts on around 1.500 Cybervolunteers, curious and proactive persons, willing to learn, with a passion for sharing and enthusiastic about ICTs, who offer part of their time and knowledge to teach other people the possibilities of ICTs in a useful and simple way, through both online and offline courses, talks, workshops, events…. The Cybervolunteers are social change agents, conscious of the power that new technologies have to generate social change and empower people. We use technologies from a social perspective and contribute this way to eliminate other gaps through awareness, information and training, with either face-to-face, online or tailor-made lessons, in order to satisfying the needs of each individual or social group with which we work. To do this we conform and adapt a variety of applications, tools and technological contents to the social, professional, educational and cultural needs of each of the groups for which technologies represent the distinctive feature that helps them to empower themselves; this is to say, to increase their capacities and opportunities within their environment.

So our actions are highlighted by social innovation, by the use of new tools to solve old problems in a different way, because new technologies should not create more gaps, but to help eliminate the existing ones

Through our initiatives we develop a vital connection between local and global information society. Our way of contributing is always innovative and creative when detecting and directing the needs and demands existing within our scope, because we are close to the situations of our immediate environment and therefore, we are aware, close to the solutions. We direct our action to groups of people that may be excluded from information society for reasons of gender, age, professional and social environment, lack of time, knowledge, skills, motivation and/or material or economic resources, such as people with disabilities, elderly, women, youth, crafts workers, people of low educational level, volunteers from other NGOs ... among others.

The Cybervolunteers want Internet to be the means to not only stop creating new barriers in Society, but to eliminate the existing ones.

 

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Fundación Cibervoluntarios: citizen empowerment through the social use of ICTs

 

3. AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS Thanks to our contribution to integration and empowerment through technology, we have been awarded with a grant from Google within their program “Google Gives Back”, which provides grants to support causes that they consider particularly important in different fields, being technology one of them. We are very proud of being the only Spanish Foundation awarded with one of these grants in 2011. More info available at http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/givesback/2011/

Cibervoluntarios foundation has been also awarded the honorable mention of the 2011 State award to Social Volunteering, “in recognition of his great volunteer work, generating new forms of participation and innovation in support of people excluded from society”, thanks to our pioneering commitment since 10 years ago for the social use of ICTs through the technological volunteering. The award has been handed over by their Royal Highnesses Prince and Princess of Asturias, at the National Volunteering Conference held at La Coruña (Spain) on the 1st December 2011.

II Award for Citizen Affairs, for the development of Socio-Digital Center Program, an award granted by the (Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade of the Spanish Government in 2007 and delivered by the former Minister Joan Clos.

For more info please visit:

Website: http://www.cibervoluntarios.org

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cibervoluntario

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cibervoluntarios

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/cibervoluntarios

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/cibervoluntarios

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113164064238947880102/posts