History
Open Society Institute was created in 1993 by investor George Soros to support his foundations in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. On May 28, 1984 Soros signed the contract between the Soros Foundation (New York) and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the founding document of the Soros Foundation Budapest. This was followed by several foundations in the region to help countries move away from communism. In August 2010, Open Society Initiative changed its name to Open Society Foundations to better reflect its role as funder for civil society groups around the world. In 2012, Christopher Stone joined the Foundations as the second president. He replaced Aryeh Neier who served as president from 1993 to 2012. OSF has expanded the activities of the Soros Foundations network to other areas of the world where the transition to democracy is of particular concern. The Soros Foundations network has nodes in more than 60 countries, including the United States. OSF projects include the National Security and Human Rights Campaign that opposes detention of unprivileged combatants and the Lindesmith Center and others dealing with drug reform.
Read more about this topic: Open Society Foundations
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