About Us
In May of 2007, The More Than Tomorrow Project (a not-for-profit organization with no political or religious affiliations) was initiated in an effort to provide communities in the developing world with access to information and communication technologies, as well as associated competencies (see our Executive Summary and History for further details). The organization’s guiding principle was the belief that if we partner with people, especially people in poor, under-served areas, and provide them the cutting-edge tools with which to enhance their lives, we can initiate a new dynamic. We can create a space for grassroots innovation to emerge in ways that no outsider could ever have predicted or imagined (for more information, see our Mission and Vision, as well as our Values). In short, we open up the future to everyone.
Soon thereafter, during the Summer of 2007, working in partnership with two Indian-based non-governmental organizations, five More Than Tomorrow volunteers from the New York Metro area—with ten computers in tow—traveled to Northern India and helped to establish two computer learning centers in the state of Himachal Pradesh (HP). In addition to providing each community—through a co-investment model—with hardware, software, and a well-developed curriculum, our organization recruited, trained and funded each center’s instructors. While in India, we also engaged in community organizing and resource building, learning much more from our partners than we taught.
The following Summer, three volunteers worked to establish two more community learning centers; one each in Himachal Pradesh and Haryanna. Not long after, a fifth center was created in Andhra Pradesh. Soon the size and the scope of the project grew to include the distribution of computers to low-income individuals and families in the United States, as well as the provision of basic computer literacy instruction and computer repair courses to unemployed and underemployed individuals in the New York Metropolitan region.
Today four of the six computer learning centers our organization helped to establish are entirely community-run, and provide computer access and education to over one-hundred students.
From these humble beginnings, The More Than Tomorrow Project continued to grow, collecting dozens of computers, raising thousands of dollars, and generating an infectious excitement among its volunteers.
With time, several mis-steps, as well as a period of critical monitoring and evaluation, our organization reflected on the entire process. We recognized that while the benefits of access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) are worthwhile ends in and of themselves, what a majority of the people we are serving need more than access to ICT is access to income. The question our organization then asked was “In what ways can we create income-generating projects through the access we have provided?” For the answers, we did not have to look any further that the villages we were working in—locally made handicrafts which could be marketed and distributed via the internet, and the opportunity to develop a hybrid brand of village tourism and service-learning targeting the socially-conscious foreign traveler.
Mission and Vision
Values
History
For More Information...
Executive Summary