REBUILDING
DIGITAL SPACES

The Newsmast Foundation helps mission-driven organisations create independent, ethical digital spaces through simple, affordable community apps. We believe communities deserve online spaces without ads, algorithms or data exploitation, spaces that reflect their values and support genuine connection.

Our goal is to make the open social web accessible to everyone, providing powerful tools without technical complexity.

We believe in ethical technology, open platforms and community-first design.

Community
first

We design everything around healthy, inclusive communities, not clicks, reach or advertising.

Independence & ownership

Organisations should own their platforms, their data and their relationships with their communities.

Open & transparent

We build on open-source technology and contribute to a growing ecosystem of independent digital tools.

Meet the Team

The Newsmast Foundation is a UK charity with a global team. Our shared mission to create better social media is guided and informed by our diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Michael Foster, Director & Co-Founder

Ex-director of Reuters New Media and FT.com, Michael’s decades of experience at the intersection of news media and tech during the height of the dot com boom has helped shape the Newsmast project and ethos.
Saskia Welch, Head of Community

Leading our communications, branding, and helping manage our projects, Saskia shapes how our Foundation is perceived by the public and stakeholders alike. Her background brings together journalism, design, and storytelling
Mariana Borges, Project Co-Ordinator

Mariana coordinates projects and supports community initiatives across the Foundation. With a background in digital marketing, brand and campaign management, she previously contributed to Newsmast’s early development and now helps deliver initiatives that support the Foundation’s mission.
Ben Parker, Editor

Ben creates and curates our Channels, surfacing sources from the Social Web and beyond for the Foundation and its partners. He is an international journalist and the co-founder and former CEO of The New Humanitarian. His background bridges media, technology and aid, including frontline emergency response work with the UN in Syria, Turkey, and Somalia.
Aung Kyaw Phyo, Chief Technologist

Aung oversees the technical direction across system architecture, technology choices, and engineering workflows. He works with teams to develop reliable, secure, and scalable digital platforms, focusing on practical solutions that meet both current needs and long-term goals.
Yu Nandar Aung, Project Manager

Yu oversees day-to-day project coordination, making sure tasks are clearly defined, assigned appropriately, and moving forward as planned. She monitors progress, spots potential issues early, and works with the team to keep projects on track and aligned with expectations.
Ye Myat Thu, Mobile Team Lead

Ye oversees mobile application development, from planning features to making key technical decisions. He focuses on building dependable and easy-to-use mobile experiences while keeping development practices practical and maintainable.
Artur Ekert, Trustee

As a professor of quantum physics at Merton College, University of Oxford and founding director of CQT, Artur joined the project to help ensure we stay on track to deliver a platform where academia is at the forefront of what we do. He’s a self-proclaimed aviation, water sport, and scuba diving addict who can often be found enjoying South African wine.
Jeff Streeter, Trustee

As a British Council Director, Jeff spent years travelling the world sharing culture, language and education with people from different countries and cities. Now based in Tokyo, he spends most of his time looking introspectively at literature and language on his thought provoking blog, English Republic of Letters.

Working with mission-driven organisations

Frequently asked
questions

The Newsmast Foundation makes tools for organisations who already have communities and want a better home for them. We work with charities, independent newsrooms and professional networks to bring people together in safe, healthy, independent spaces with elegant, user-friendly apps.
The open social web is a growing network of social media tools running on open-source software which, as a result, cannot be owned or controlled by big corporations.

These social tools – run by nonprofits, communities and sometimes individuals – work a bit like email: no one owns ‘email’, and you can send an email to anyone, no matter whether you’re on Gmail, Hotmail or Protonmail’s servers. Platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads are part of this growing network.

Our role is to help people engage in that ecosystem by packaging it within our user-friendly apps, so organisations can engage with open social without needing to understand the technical bits. This video, by filmmaker and open social advocate Elena Rossi, and this blog post by technologist and open social veteran Ben Werdmuller, are great resources if you want to learn more.
We help organisations build digital community by:
1. Building safe, independent and affordable apps with built-in open-source social media, allowing people to nurture ethical online community spaces
2. Creating educational content that demystifies alternatives to Big Tech on the open social web
The Newsmast Foundation is a UK registered charity (1205953), building and advocating for an open, ethical social media ecosystem. Our work is guided by three interlinked pillars:

● Technology – developing affordable, independent, no-code tools

● Advocacy – promoting awareness of the open social web as a public good

● Empowerment – helping organisations and communities own their networks and data

Our mission is to demonstrate that an open-source, independent model of social media is not only viable, but better for society.