We invest in people who have a strong vision and dare to be different!
2018
YEAR IN REVIEW
2018 spurred a heightened sense of time and place at the Foundation. It has been 10 years since we launched the current fellowship model and we are starting to see the cumulative impact the programme has had. Looking at the present social and economic context, we asked what our future intervention(s) should look like to meet evolving challenges.
This year we were thrilled to have worked with Honorary Stewards Sunil Abraham and Shari Steele to select 3 new Fellows: Jenny and Karla (March intake), and Andrew (September intake). Their work is already at the periphery and pushing the boundaries outwards on our thematic interests, by taking us from open access to the biological commons, from open as a tool to crypto currencies as a means, and from open hardware to distributed manufacturing.
We also now have 3 intakes of Fellows who have completed their fellowship 5 years or more ago. In 2017 we started to reflect on the impact of the fellowship on them, their impact on the world, and their cumulative impact as fellow Fellows. We specifically wanted to know what contribution, if any, our funding has made towards building the more equitable future we imagine.
The use of open educational resources in the classroom is becoming more common every year, at every education level and across many education systems.
In Intellectual Property Rights a growing network of funders require open access publishing for research and/or open licences for other output.
Access to ubiquitous, affordable telecommunication technologies continues to grow worldwide, including the now self-sustaining Rhizomatica, a community owned and operated mobile phone network in Mexico, being replicated elsewhere in Latin America, which we expanded on in our telecoms journey
In each of the thematic areas we have supported, we have seen a substantial shift. Shuttleworth Fellows have and continue to make a positive, constructive contribution well beyond their active fellowship. And for each of these Fellows this fellowship has made a substantial difference in their ability to do so.
While these areas no longer need our direct contribution - other, often better placed, funders and institutions are now driving continued positive change at scale - investing in individuals working at the experimental edge of emerging issues is still the best use of our available resources.
This realisation lead us to Fellowship Forward. The future is built by people. People who see further than those around them, who experience the world slightly differently, and who understand that they can help shape this world, for good or bad. For the forces for good to succeed, in any field, they need support to strengthen their ability to create the change they wish to make, and they need time, now and into the future, for their efforts to bear fruit as a contribution to change.
Where this past year was one of introspection, the next one will be about looking outward, expanding our exploration of themes and partnering beyond our current sphere. We look forward to learning a great deal and welcoming an engaging new wave of Fellows in September 2019.
Year in
THINKING
Our year in thinking reflects the pause we took for introspection and the re-commitment we made to articulating our approach to supporting social change.
Johnny West & OpenOil: Refining the Extractive Industry
His success is not just good news for oil-producing developing nations and their citizens, but also for openness, transparency and the balance of power. In an industry hidden behind a veil of secrecy, smoke and mirrors, Johnny and the OpenOil team use and translate existing information to increase awareness of...... >>
Esra'a Al Shafei & CrowdVoice: Amplifying the Unheard
As a Bahraini civil rights activist, she was our first Fellow from the Middle East, giving the Foundation an opportunity to explore the potential of open through a different lens. And the overall theme of her Fellowship - giving prominence to the important voices of dissent in regions where human...... >>
Daniel Lombraña González: Human Stories in Citizen Science
But most importantly, he has broken citizen science free from its box. Once the preserve of hard research, Daniel has taken a crowbar to open up crowdsourcing and made it accessible for a range of diverse people and fields, from researchers through to volunteer citizen scientists. The story of PYBOSSA,...... >>
Steve Song & Village Telco: A Foundation in Telecoms
Steve’s project developed into the Village Telco initiative, using open source software and low cost wireless mesh technology to build affordable community telephone networks, without the need for mobile phone towers or landlines. Village Telco remained an ongoing commercial concern until 2017, but our investment in Steve continues to provide...... >>
Sean Bonner: The Seismic Necessity of Safecast
Born 18 months earlier as a reaction to the multiple meltdowns of a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Safecast has made significant progress in enabling people to gather and view reliable, verified environmental information on a highly localised level. Over the last few years, Safecast has collected the largest ever...... >>
Rory Aronson: Cultivating FarmBot
This was an idea that promised to be part of the solution to the problems of quality, scarcity and security of food. With corporations enjoying increasing control over our food supplies and the potential damage from climate change on crops of the future, society needs solutions. FarmBot has the potential...... >>
Kathi Fletcher & OERPUB: Connecting OER
How can real human beings - teachers, for example - author, remix and share material with others when the OER toolset was almost impenetrable for non-technical people? In the early days of OER, anyone wanting to create and remix open textbooks needed reasonable knowledge of markup language, complicated models and...... >>
Fellowship forward
Over the past 6 months we have dissected every aspect of this model, from recruitment to alumni, from Fellowship highs to Fellowship lows, to really understand the value and effect of every component. We have examined the arc of the programme over the past 10 years, Fellow by Fellow as...... >>
Welcome Andrew
Shari Steele, the Honorary Steward for this round, has selected Andrew as an exceptional candidate with tremendous potential to improve people’s lives - particularly those suffering greatly in disaster relief areas. The Foundation team are delighted to offer Andrew a warm welcome to the Fellowship Programme. We look forward to...... >>
Adam and Astra - New Alumni
Adam Hyde began his Fellowship with a keen understanding of the problems lying at the heart of the scholarly publishing process and an idea that promised to solve them. Science and research are key to the advancement of human knowledge. But it can take months - or even years -...... >>
Shari Steele: Honorary steward September 2018
Shari is a respected advocate for the Internet freedom movement and served as executive director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Tor Project. She brings decades of experience in a breadth of fields including law, education and business, and has a keen understanding of nonprofit operations and foundation-level funding....... >>
Welcome Jenny & Karla
We’re delighted and excited to award Jenny Molloy and Karla Córdoba-Brenes places on the Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship Programme. Our Honorary Steward, Sunil Abraham, has chosen two exceptional candidates who offer a creative, innovative and open vision for a better world in two distinct areas: the future of the global bioeconomy,...... >>
Luka Mustafa - New Alumni
Luka’s idea was Koruza, a 3D-printed, low-cost wireless optical network built to provide last-100m Internet connectivity to individuals and communities in high-density urban areas. As he takes the next steps in his professional career, he can look back on an extraordinary fellowship and a range of exceptional achievements. His work...... >>
Year in
PEOPLE
Together with our Fellows we focus our support on ecosystems where openness can make a substantial difference in creating a more equitable world. Move your mouse cursor over a Fellow or an area of focus for a breakdown.
