September 7th, 2010 about

The digital age and online social networking provide a new opportunity for building alliances and connecting across all borders and continents – geographical, economic, political, cultural and religious – to improve the lives of people living in marginalized communities. The United Nations and the European Union are founded on this belief that alliances and trade agreements between countries will prevent wars and that dialogue between citizens is essential to helping them adjust and thrive in an inhospitable world.

The key to creating these alliances is information: the ability to contribute information, to receive it, and to use it to make informed decisions about governments and things that impact people’s daily lives. For this reason, freedom of expression and access to information are essential to building vibrant and tolerant democracies. Those who do not have information are isolated from local, national, regional or global participation. This participation is essential for democracies because the more citizens participate the more they are able to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems with the goal of safeguarding their fundamental rights.

The consumption, creation and dissemination of information should not be inhibited by the lack of technical skills. Tools should be as accessible as the open societies they help to build. This is the main objective of InTheFieldOnline: to provide a software framework upon which anyone can change any component of a mobile-powered information system so that an organization or individual with minimal technical skills can use it to make information accessible to their communities.