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Patti Hauseman stuck with her five-year-old Apple computer until it started making odd whirring noises and occasionally malfunctioning before she bought a new computer for Christmas — actually, a refurbished one.

How many people here could have easily fixed Patti Hauseman's old Mac? How many people here even need to consider the symptoms for more than two seconds in order to think of all the probable causes? Now think of all that waste. Now think of all those extremely grateful people you could help by volunteering your services. What if the computer breaks down, and mom and can't even afford to buy a used one? These are common problems with easy solutions.

Whirring noise and occasional malfunctioning. When the machine still worked, the hard drive might have been failing. A fan might have become clogged, and eventually seized. Many of us even like fixing these things (as long as we're not overwhelmed by relatives' requests). Of course, there's also teaching, installing OSS, donating hardware, and so on.

So, how to start? A few ideas:

• Idealist.org is an international posting board for volunteer and job opportunities.
• Freecycle is an international clearinghouse for people requesting and/or offering gratis goods and services.
• Volunteer networks like VolunteerMatch (USA), Volunteering Australia, Volunteering England, and so on make it very easy to match your skills and interests to active projects
• Local computer volunteer centers, such as InterConnection in Seattle, Washington
• Post a bulletin at your local grocery market. Many supermarkets and most community markets have notice boards for such things.

I started thinking about this a year ago when I was in a charity shop in Los Angeles. A man was buying his grandson a used computer, and the boy was so excited. The grandfather didn't know anything about computers, and the boy was just beginning to learn. This shop has an employee just for the computer section, but that's rare. The grandfather asked the shop assistant lots of questions while the enthusiastic grandson tried the demo PCs. The assistant helped them to find something they could afford, although many of the displays for sale had major defects, and some of the PCs were unnecessarily noisy. I still wonder what kind of computing experience that boy and his family have now.

I've used idealist.org and Volunteer Match for listing opportunities at some of the nonprofits I've worked at. I suggest looking there.

I've done volunteer work through the RedCross. http://www.redcross.org/ Like others have mentioned if you are just wanting to help a week at best you'll be digging ditches or sorting donations. Small things like sponsoring a blood drive or working the refreshment stands at a blood drive is very helpful and can be done short term.

They've got chapters all over the world so they may be able to hook you up with a foreign "office" for something short term. They are a great group to volunteer with year round and they give you a ton of options so you can find something that fits in your life.

You may also want to try http://www.volunteermatch.org/ I've never used them, but RedCross uses them as the backend for their volunteer search pages.

Most organizations will want more than a week commitment for anything more complex than grunt labor. Just like with a job, it takes time to ramp people up, and it isn't worth the effort on their part to do so for someone who is only going to be helping for a week.

For example, consider the task of setting up a new network. They will need to familiarize you with the current infrastructure. Then you can design, purchase equipment, and setup the new network. Finally, you must explain what you did to whoever will be maintaining the network. That will take more than a week, and it would be just as easy if the normal guy that maintains everything upgraded the network himself. If you can find a charity that just happens to be in the middle of an upgrade the week you take on vacation, they would be happy to have the extra hand, but that's unlikely.

For volunteer social work like counseling (and even some tutoring), most organizations like you to go though several days of training before hand. Even if your wife is more than qualified to do the work off the bat, they need to make sure you are both on the same page (not to mention the CYA aspects).

If you can find time in your schedule to volunteer a couple hours a week, you will find more volunteer organizations that are able to use your skills. There are websites where organizations can post for help they need, such as Volunteer Match or 1-800-volunteer.

I did a quick search and found http://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/index.html and http://www.volunteermatch.org/. I haven't used either, so I'd be curious to know if somebody here has and what the experience was like.

http://www.volunteermatch.org/ This site gets volunteers, non-profits, and corporations all together in one site to match everyone up with volunteer opportunities. You can browse by keywork and location.

You can use this site to find volunteer needs in your area by zip code and keyword.
http://www.volunteermatch.org/

http://www.volunteermatch.org/

In some cases these (award winning) sites might be useful. volunteermatch and meetup Good Luck.

I want to second this -- but on a more serious note. A great way to explore different careers is through volunteering. NetAid Online Volunteering has a database of organizations working in or for developing countries that are recruiting online volunteers. Local online (and offline) volunteering opportunities can be found at VolunteerMatch.

Volunteering is a great way not only to explore potential new career paths, but to also have something to put on your resume in employment gap years. Just remember that, like job searches, you have probably have to apply for several positions before you will find a volunteering opportunity.

What do you want to do? What topics or tasks are interesting to you? I'm a big believer in following your heart when it comes to pursuing a career, or thinking about a particular education path. A career counselor can help.

A great way to explore different careers is through volunteering, and if mobility is an issue for you as far as getting onsite to locations, then think about online volunteering. There are organizations that have opportunities for online volunteers that are totally tech related -- building an e-commerce site, constructing a database -- and that have very little to do with tech (researching topics, writing stories for newsletters, editing proposals, mentoring young people, translating documents, consulting, etc.).

NetAid Online Volunteering has a database of organizations working in or for developing countries that are recruiting online volunteers. Local online (and offline) volunteering opportunities can be found at VolunteerMatch.

Volunteering is a great way not only to explore potential new career paths, but to also have something to put on your resume in employment gap years. Just remember that, like job searches, you have probably have to apply for several positions before you will find a volunteering opportunity.

I was going to suggest NPower, but there also some decent websites out there that list opportunities. Two of note that I know of are www.volunteermatch.org and www.idealist.org. I'm working on a volunteer project that I found on the latter.

If you are in a U.S. city there is probably also a non-profit organization that essentially finds volunteers for other non-profits. Here in Seattle it is called Seattle Works and there are a bunch of them throughout the U.S. that are all related. They are a good source for volunteer opportunites of any kind. Good luck and godspeed.

• GeekCorps for international stuff
• TechCorps for American stuff (maybe just California, I don't remember)
• VolunteerMatch to find all volunteer opportunities around the world, some even virtual over the Internet

I'm glad that two people noted that they are volunteering -- it's a great way to keep yourself busy in the time you aren't looking for a job, to make connections that could possibly lead to a job (or a spouse, who knows), and most importantly, it's a way to do something positive with your time. If anyone else is interested in exploring volunteering, contact your local volunteer center, search through www.volunteermatch.org and, if you want to volunteer from your home or work computer, check out www.netaid.org/ov.

IdeaList is globally-focused, and has an expanded mission to provide information beyond volunteering -- there's a database of events, a database of skills offered by volunteers, information for paid work, etc. It's a little harder to find online volunteering opportunities, but they are there, and the number of them grows regularly. I'm not sure how much screening of organizations or opportunities there are.

NetAid offers an online volunteering service, managed by the UN Volunteers program, and its focus is international: all opportunities are in support of organizations working in or for communities in developing countries, and volunteers are recruited from all over the world. Also, all organizations and opportunities are pre-screened, to ensure that the organizations are legitimate and that the opportunities are appropriate.

There are other volunteer matching services serving single countries -- Canada, the U.K., Australia, Spain, Chile... a google search should lead you to these relatively easily.

Netaid.org

Pearls of Africa is run entirely by online volunteers who research and develop programs, solicit donations, and run a children's resource library in Uganda geared toward disabilities. Moy traveled to Uganda in November 2001 with the United Nations to open the library.

World Computer Exchange , based in Massachusetts, relies on virtual volunteers in its mission to bring computers to schools in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Since it was founded in October 1999, the organization has helped 676 schools and almost 256,000 students go online, says Tim Anderson, president and founder.

VolunteerMatch , which links volunteers with more than 23,000 organizations offering about 40,000 volunteer opportunities, is helping that cause, says Jason Willett, director of communications. Since 1998, nearly one million people signed up for an opportunity through VolunteerMatch.

As well, there are online mentors like NetMentors , which offers online career development for teenagers. It serves as a virtual career counselor with expertise on 70 different careers. With about 800 mentors, the group has counseled 1000 students entirely through its Web site.

Here are a couple of volunteer posts that might appeal to some Slashdot readers. You don't have to be local to do these. (We don't even have an office.)

SCN gets picked on a lot by policy wonks (and policy wanks), researchers and people looking for an example of community networks, so you'll have a chance to use your Unix-troglodyte personality to keep us universally loved.

We're starting to design a new network, which probably will be based mostly on Linux. If you're better at it than we are, you're welcome to help with this, even if you've just seen a postcard of the place.

- Rod Clark, webmaster@scn.org
Seattle Sites of the Day
Seattle Community Directory

• Unix System Administrator

  Unix sysadmin:
  Expertise in some of these areas (or Unix in general): SunOS, Solaris, Linux. Unix security. PPP, dialup. Sendmail, SMTP, IMAP, Majordomo. DNS, Web domain hosting, Apache modules. C, Perl, PHP, SQL, DB support. Usenet.

  Use your system administration skills to make a difference for thousands of people and hundreds of nonprofits and community groups in Western Washington. Administer our network, improve and expand our communications services to the community. Support specific areas of the network or do overall troubleshooting. Work from your own home or office, in whatever hours you have available. If possible, attend a monthly SysOps meeting.

  Lead or senior sysadmin:
  Build a team of qualified system administrators to support a planned new network. Establish good practices, reliability, current standards. Assure SysOps team's responsiveness to program needs. If possible, participate in the design of the new network.

• Webmaster / Project Manager

  SCN is seeking a technical webmaster for our Web site at www.scn.org. This individual will support our web editors and the many community groups' Web sites hosted on SCN. Work with the system administrators to improve Unix software support for the current site and migrate to a new system within the next 6-12 months. Many maintenance projects, upgrades and other technical challenges are inherent in this position.

  We are looking for someone who has at least 2 years of experience running comparable or larger sites. Prefer at least one year of project management experience, excellent process methodology, and a sincere desire to help the community. This individual will be part of our Executive Committee, and must report progress and contribute to overall planning and problem solving at an Excomm meeting each month.

Actually, the reason we didn't start domestically is that there's a ton of good work being done in the US. If you're interested in the problem of wiring K-12 schools, we think very highly of Techcorps. They do terrific work bringing knowledgeable techies into local schools. If you're interested in other groups that are working on domestic digital divide issues, or you're interested in volunteering, check out VolunteerMatch which provides an excellent db of organizations and opportunities.