Between May and July 2026, The Engine Room collaborated with the Guardian Project to research how Indigenous communities and other at-risk users across Latin America use Butter Box, a tool designed to generate a local Wi-Fi network and allow access to content, apps, maps and an internal chat, without an internet connection.
Part of our work with the Cybersecurity Assessment Tool(CAT) involves creating spaces where communities and organizations can learn more about digital resilience. We recently hosted an Ask Us Anything: Cybersecurity Edition session, where community members shared questions and experiences from their work. This FAQ brings together some of those questions with practical guidance to help organizations strengthen their digital resilience.
Data storytelling can help you advocate for your beneficiaries, secure funds for additional projects, and measure impact on the community.
How to identify when it’s time for a change, how to choose tools that align with your evolving needs, and strategies for smooth transitions.
We reflect on the questions and challenges that social justice organisations approached us with in 2023.
Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to gather, manage, analyse and visualise spatial and geographic data
Tips for better calls in low-connectivity situations
Research on the use of chatbots in humanitarian and civil society organisations.
Last year we kicked off a project examining chatbot use in humanitarian work, with support from the IFRC and UNHCR. In this post, we share some of the key learnings for humanitarian organisations that emerged from our research.
Over the decade that The Engine Room has been providing support and conducting research, we’ve explored this question of how, in practice, different digital technologies can augment the work of humanitarian organisations.
Earlier this year we started a new project to examine and strengthen our digital resilience. In this blog post, we’re sharing some reflections about the new tools our team is testing out!
Ethical considerations for conducting open source investigations for human rights advocacy or legal accountability.
Rsearch findings and practical advice for human rights documenters.
Our team has supported hundreds of social justice organisations to use tech and data. One clear trend we’ve seen over the years is a consistent interest in building online communities.
Introducing new platforms and tools is a challenging process for many organisations, but there are steps you can take to make it smoother.
What to consider before building a tool from scratch.
A resource for human rights documenters, tool developers and funders.
How The Engine Room aspires to approach our own technical choices with an explicit focus on justice and anti-oppression.
Working with the Legal Advisory Information Center (LAIC) to explore ways in which data and technology could give access to justice to underserved communities in South Africa.
Learnings from our work with CELS reconceptualising and publishing an exiting database of cases.
Tips and tools for weathering the work-from-home part of this storm.
This year, we researched how digital tools are re-used in the UK charity sector.
We partnered with the Open Society Justice Initiative to research how legal empowerment actors worldwide are using technology to give people information about the law, connect them with legal advice, and provide them with legal services.
One way to hit the needed balance of ambition and practicality is by starting with the basics: understanding and defining the problem you want to address.
At The Engine Room, we believe in collaboration and sharing resources to build technology. Reusing existing tools is a great way to develop solutions that are tailored and affordable, immediately useful and sustainable.
We see a lot of organisations looking for support with a technology project. The majority we see fall short of addressing project needs and don’t tap into the power of sharing and collaborating.
This post was originally published on the Making All Voices Count blog.
We worked with Robin Pierro to create an introduction on using satellite imagery for human rights monitoring.
We created Alidade – an interactive guide that helps social change organisations ask the questions that can help them decide what kind of technology tool would fit with their project.
Messaging apps are the fastest growing form of digital communication ever, with smartphone ownership rising rapidly around the world and messaging becoming many people’s favourite way to communicate. But what does this mean for humanitarian organisations? Our new research report, produced in partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the messaging […]
Launching our new scoping study on the use of technology tools for human rights documentation