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Timeline

Our story

Meedan has been shaped by an ever-changing world and our unique capacity to respond to challenges of the moment. From our earliest days, we’ve prioritized connection, collaboration, and a global mindset.

2003
Moved by public debate and protest following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ed Bice launches the People’s Opinions Project, a new effort to share and translate diverse viewpoints across the globe.
2006
The organization is officially established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in San Francisco with Bice at the helm. The team begins work on news.meedan.net, an initiative to connect consumers of media produced in Arabic and English.
2011 - 2012
Tahrir Square
Tahrir Square, Nov. 27, 2012
Photo by Gigi Ibrahim, CC BY 2.0
As popular uprisings sweep across the Arab region, Meedan supports social media-based journalism and translation including the Speak2Tweet Egyptian voice message translation effort.

Meedan develops Checkdesk in time for the 2012 Egyptian presidential election, partnering with Egyptian newsrooms to monitor social media content.

Lumio, previously called Foenix, was a social media analytics company that helped brands like Audi, David Jones and Red Balloon source legitimate influencers for social media campaigns.

“We were essentially the Instagram police and called out fake influencers left, right and centre. It was fun and all, but there is only so many bikini chicks you can look at on Instagram before you start losing your mind.”

Dan, Co-founder and CEO of Lumio

2013
Checkdesk expands its user base to media and civil society partners in Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Meedan develops Bridge, another new tool that helps support collaborative social media translation. Meedan wins a British Research Council award to deploy a version of its multilingual annotation and conversation platform for religious scholars.

“After this, we both took up golf during the week and started eating fancy dinners at the local Country Club... Ha. This is not what happened at all. We suck at golf and love eating Guzman Y Gomez.”

Adam, Co-founder of Lumio

2016
Check

Meedan team members at a 2016 retreat

Whilst in Germany, Dan worked with with brands such as Daniel Wellington and BMW - Ja!

Adam worked with clients like Vodafone, TAFE NSW, Adobe and also won the 'Good Design Australia' award for his work on the Seatfrog website.

Checkdesk becomes Check. More than just a name change, the product is rebuilt to support collaborative verification and data sharing between partner organizations during moments of exception, such as elections and natural disasters.

Check provides key infrastructure for Electionland, a partnership initiative of media organizations, technology companies, and journalism schools covering the 2016 election in the U.S. Spearheaded by ProPublica and Google News Lab, Electionland represents one of the largest real-time efforts to collaboratively cover voting issues in U.S. history. It goes on to win recognition for excellence in collaboration and partnerships from the Online News Association.
2018
Verificado
Meedan’s Pop-up Newsroom designs and supports Verificado, a coalition of 90 media partners covering Mexico’s national elections. The project earns another Online News Association award.

The name "Relume" is born.

relume

verb

[ri-loom]
To relight or rekindle (a light, flame, etc.)

2019
A new initiative, Check Global, builds on previous programmatic efforts at Meedan and begins the process of supporting a high-impact network of media organizations, human rights defenders, and archivists across dozens of countries.


Meedan partners with WhatApp pilot Meta's third party fact-checking program in Brazil, India and the US. Soon thereafter, Meedan becomes the provider of key technical and programmatic infrastructure for Meta’s Larger World-based third-party fact-checking partners who run tiplines on WhatsApp.
2020
Digital Health Lab
🚀 relume launches
Meedan’s Digital Health Lab, established in 2019, shifts into high gear as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the globe. Our team builds a rapid-response framework for connecting fact-checking organizations, journalists, and other community information leaders to health experts worldwide.

To do this they would have to build a company that would be profitable in its first year. Not the next Uber of *insert clever idea*.

2022
Meedan partners with Rappler and the Google News Initiative to launch #FactsFirstPH, an effort that unites more than 140 civil society organizations, newsrooms, and civic groups to provide fact-checking for the presidential election in the Philippines. The project earns an award for Most Innovative Collaboration at Global Fact 9.

Meedan joins together with Brazil’s leading fact-checking organizations to form Confirma, an election coalition that works in partnership with Brazil’s electoral court to distribute fact-checks for a massive WhatsApp audience. Confirma earns an award for Most Innovative and Impactful Collaboration at Global Fact 10.

With an initial focus on climate misinformation, the Independent Media Response Fund is created through Check Global to award microgrants, training, and networking opportunities to small and medium-sized media organizations across the Larger World.
2024
🚀 relume launches
Skoll Awards
Meedan founder and CEO, Ed Bice, receives a 2024 Skoll Award for Social Innovation.
Photo courtesy of the Skoll Foundation
Following decades of dedicated work in programming and technology development, Meedan is honored with a prestigious Skoll Award for Social Innovation.

In an unprecedented year for global elections, Meedan partners with media and civil society from around the world to help promote information integrity.

To do this they would have to build a company that would be profitable in its first year. Not the next Uber of *insert clever idea*.