Our work
Build. Educate. Empower.
GenBridge strengthens community capacity through technology. There are three distinct pillars to what we do, and each starts with communities that already organize themselves.
Build
Develop technology solutions that respond to real community needs.
We build practical tools that community networks can run themselves, and we build them with the people who will use them. We also help organizations keep essential systems running through outages and staff changes.
Erta is a GenBridge project under this pillar. It gives neighborhood volunteers and community networks the situational awareness agencies have, without handing agencies a list of residents. It is built with local networks, collects the minimum, and shows every rule behind every ranking.
Educate
Equip communities with the knowledge and skills to use existing and emerging technologies.
Sessions for tenant associations, mutual aid networks, congregations, parent groups and community organizations. Topics include:
- How to check whether information is real, in an emergency and on an ordinary day.
- What automated systems and AI tools do, and what happens to information put into them.
- How to ask whether software was involved in a decision about you.
- How to write a simple technology and data policy.
Sessions are built with you, run alongside your staff, and leave materials your organization can use again.
Empower
Give communities a meaningful role in shaping the technologies that affect them.
We believe communities should not simply use technology; they should have the knowledge, tools, and power to shape it. What we learn with communities informs public comment and policy on how new technologies are used on them. Rules should arrive with the tool: disclosure up front, and a way to contest decisions.
Working with partners
Every organization we support is one that could not have bought this work. Funders, agencies and companies make it possible. See how to partner →
How we work
Capacity, not dependency
Every engagement leaves documentation and a trained person inside the organization.
Sized to the organization
Frameworks built for institutions with legal departments do not transfer down. We write for the conditions that exist.
Evidence from the front line
Our research starts with what community members and frontline staff actually do.
Claims we can support
We describe what we have done and do not inflate credentials.