Tolerance & Human Rights
The Change We Seek
We work toward a world where Tolerance and Human Rights win over discrimination and persecution. Intolerance has prevented untold numbers of people from living life to the fullest, from war-torn regions to the streets of cities or rural enclaves in the industrialized world. Practicing tolerance, understanding diverse points of view and respecting religious and political beliefs are essential to the world of peace and prosperity that we envision.
Benetech uses technology innovation and business expertise to solve unmet social needs. Leveraging the resources of Silicon Valley, it creates solutions in many fields, including character-to-voice reading, landmine detection and monitoring software. Programs include Bookshare, the world’s largest accessible digital library of scanned material, for the vision disabled and Route 66 Literacy, a web-based program that enables anyone to help adults learn to read and write.
The Afghan Institute for Learning (AIL) provides education to 235,000 Afghan women and children and has impacted 7 million Afghans through teacher training and workshops on human rights, women’s rights, peace, and leadership.
WITNESS puts video cameras into the hands of human-rights activists and is an international resource for the media. Gillian Caldwell used its undercover cameras to investigate the Russian mafia forcing women into prostitution. WITNESS pioneered a site for human-rights video and helped stop the conscription of child soldiers in the Congo. Its video also helped the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights rule that the expulsion of Kenya’s Endorois people from their ancestral land was illegal.
Institute for Development Studies and Practices (IDSP) Pakistan is a National Institution provides schools that impart skills for community leadership. So far, 1,200 students graduated from six different types of practice-based courses. Twelve ISDP Senior Fellows (six are women), who had no prior experience in development, have worked on development projects up to $1.3 million.
International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) helps improve countries’ legal systems. It identifies legal leaders capable of sparking reform, collaborating with like-minded government ministries to seek consensus for change. It provides support through partnerships and communities of conscience and joins them under the umbrella of its online defender portal.
Visayan Forum Foundation empowers trafficked women and girls in the Philippines and works for decent domestic work. Its integrated approach to intercepting the women, then supporting them, includes partnerships with law enforcement, source communities, transit authorities and transportation companies. Its Step Up program teaches life skills, entrepreneurship and IT skills to victims of trafficking. About a third of its graduates now have good jobs and a third are furthering their education.
Friends-International helps prevent child abuse. Its model has been established or replicated in 12 countries. It has two key programs: ChildSafe, which involves local leaders and tourists in prevention, and The Street Children Network, which makes services available to street children.
Tostan has helped abandon the practice of female genital cutting (FGC) and child marriages in five African countries. It has taught human rights to more than 200,000 villagers. Tostan’s approach has been integrated into international strategies, including 10 U.N. agencies and 5 governments. In Senegal, the government has adopted a National Action Plan that calls for using the human rights approach pioneered by Tostan to end FGC by 2015.
