Access Innovation Prize 2012 Recognizes Costa Rican Facebook App · Global Voices
Jenny Cascante Gonzalez

On December 10, 2012, non-profit organization Access.org announced the winners of the 1 Annual Access Tech Innovation Prize Awards. The awards intended to convene initiatives from across the world that applied communication and technology while addressing issues that are important to their community.
The contest was divided into five categories, and besides receiving a monetary reward, winners have the opportunity to be part of ongoing collaboration and integration with Access.
The contest received hundreds of applications from different parts of the world, as the organizers explained:
Across the five categories, we received over 300 applications from 66 countries, and finalist projects stood out for their impact, likelihood, innovation, and measurability.
Costa Rican digital advertising agency BigWebNoise was announced as one of the winners for its online platform FueraJustoOrozco.com [es] (“out Justo Orozco“), sharing the award with other three finalists in the category ‘Access/Facebook’.
BigWebNoise describes the app in the Access blog:
In June 2012, an ultraconservative congressman in Costa Rica became president of an internal entity created to defend Human Rights. His votes subsequently vetoed draft bills that were key for the establishment of civil rights. At BigWebNoise, a digital advertising agency, we developed an online Facebook-integrated app- FueraJustoOrozco.com- in order to channel the population´s widespread backlash against the congressman. In only two weeks, fifteen thousand people “put their faces” to demand his resignation… nearly the same amount of votes that put him in Congress in the first place. We intend to turn FueraJustoOrozco.com into an easily customizable and intuitive open-source application; one that can be replicated, used freely and for free by organizations and social movements in support of causes that require mobilization, peaceful protesting and visibility anywhere in the world.
Netizens from all over the world followed the awards ceremony through Twitter. Such is the case of Andrew Rasiej (@Rasiej), who tweeted from New York:
@Rasiej: At the #techprize12 [event] organized by @accessnow I am struck by how many great new faces are joining battle for #HumanRights online
Neal Ungerleider (@nealunger) also expressed emotion with his tweet:
@nealunger: Just stopped by @accessnow #TechPrize12. So many good tech-4-human-rights projects being worked on
You can find more tweets on the awards ceremony and on the different winners in each category under the hashtag #TechPrize12 and on the @accessnow Twitter account.