Committee for Democracy in Information Technology (CDI)

This is the first of a case series on Social Entrepreneurship written in collaboration with the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. The Comite para Democratizaçao da Informática (CDI) was a non-governmental, non-profit organization founded by Rodrigo Baggio in Brazil in 1995. Its mission was to set up schools to teach computer skills to low-income communities so that slum residents could begin to move into the mainstream of society and improve their prospects. CDI used computers and the Internet also as teaching tools to promote understanding of basic human rights and notions of citizenship. By July 2003, eight years after the opening of the first school in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, CDI had 789 schools in 11 countries. More than 460,000 people had received training in these schools. Rodrigo's idea had been so successful that he and his team were wondering how CDI could grow and broaden its scope without sacrificing quality or losing sight of its original objective. The case analyses CDI's social franchise model, its financially self-sustainable replication and the challenges facing Rodrigo and his team to manage the rapid growth.