Meedan is a global technology not-for-profit that builds software and programmatic initiatives to strengthen journalism, digital literacy, and accessibility of information online and off.
We develop open-source tools for creating and sharing context on digital media through annotation, verification, archival, and translation.
Meedan’s seven core values reflect our operating principles, organizational culture and best practices as a team. We developed them with all our staff during team retreats and online conversations and seek to embody them in our daily work both within the organization and in the broader professional world.
Meedan operates globally and thinks globally. This includes working in and with underrepresented countries and regions, especially in emerging economies. While our organization is headquartered in California, our staff and partners operate in a number of different latitudes and time zones.
Empathy is in a sense the base value at Meedan. To practice empathy we must have semantic, political, and ideological modesty and a deep respect for context—this occurs naturally in global systems where in the course of our collaborations we recognize and constantly bump into the fragility and contextuality of meaning.
We believe in designing with, not for, whether that’s designing a new initiative from the ground up or supporting a partner in their existing work. Collaboration requires holistic thinking and multistakeholderism, and we make active contributions to the global journalism, fact-checking, human rights and technology communities. Healthy communities are the byproduct of good collaboration.
We encourage diverse thinking and diverse teams and recognize at the same time that with diversity can often come competing viewpoints. The tension that arises from diversity is not only inevitable, it is also desirable: it avoids the comfort of a single viewpoint that leads to narrow understandings and narrow experiences.
We value measurable impact, using both quantitative and qualitative metrics. Our work is more than words—we want to effect change for the benefit of others. Meedan team members are self-reliant, proactive agents who understand and buy into the overall organization direction, and we take responsibility for the organization’s overall success and commitment to deliver impact.
In everything we do, we try to embody awesomeness in all its forms. We take pride in our work and in our individuality as people. That could mean an occasional “Fancy Friday” or Mario Kart tournament, or just being excellent to each other in drop-in virtual coffees with staff and partners.
The meaning of a word is found in its use. We began as a language technology project grounded in a desire to show the linguistic contextuality of media narratives and build empathy. We have remained committed to the idea that our software should do a better job of holding, documenting, explaining, and sharing digital and semantic and linguistic contexts.
We value strong work ethic and as a fully remote organization, we depend on our team members to be reliable, accountable for their work, and self-disciplined. We expect them to be dedicated to our mission and focused on always giving their best to help make positive, systemic change in the world.
We strongly support and encourage showing kindness - this is at the center and heart of everything we do. This goes past affirmations or a nice word here and there. This may mean pulling an all-nighter to help a colleague on a huge project, or having a tough conversation. Kindness is not always soft and can take extra time, but our work must always be grounded and modeled in kindness.
Meedan commits to delivering a high quality of service to the people with whom we work and who use our products and services. We expect Meedan team members to be an integral part of the commitment to support the mission and needs of our external relationships.
At Meedan, one of our major priorities is transparency and accountability to our stakeholders, including our audience, supporters, and the general public. We are committed to providing clear and accurate information about our funding sources, including any potential conflicts of interest, and openly disclosing our financial statements. Our funding partners or sponsors do not have any influence or control over the content we produce. We do not engage in practices that could compromise the accuracy, independence, or transparency of our work.
