The Few, The Proud, The Geeks

You may have read about Geekcorps before on Slashdot. They're a bunch of good people doing a bunch of cool things, and it was high time we wrote something about them so that everyone can know what's going on. Click 'Read More' below to read about Geekcorps, and how you can help them push back the digital divide in developing countries.

Ethan Zuckerman, one of the founders of Tripod, felt that he wasn't getting as much as he wanted out of what he was doing. He knew from personal experience that a lot of people had achieved personal gain through the Internet, and wanted to donate money or time to a good cause, but couldn't find one that fit. So, along with now-program director Elisa Korentayer, Ethan decided to form Geekcorps, as a way to take burnt-out techies to developing countries, bringing their expertise to places that desperately needed it. Ethan assembled a team of technical gurus -- and international development specialists -- and started gathering funds to make his dream come true. His strategizing and monetary legwork is about to bear fruit: Geekcorps pilot program is beginning this year in Ghana. The Ghana program demonstrates the Geekcorps approach in a nutshell: the group will dispatch techies from the United States and Europe to developing countries to work with local small and medium for-profit enterprises. They're targeting countries with enough infrastructure to use the Internet for commerce, but where that opportunity goes largely unused.

The six techies to serve in Ghana will work with six businesses that work with information technology, whether they turn out to be cyber cafes or small manufacturers that want to get online. In return for providing these services, Geekcorps will ask each business to commit to social responsibility and community engagement. Geekcorps would ask, for instance, that a cafe offer access services for low and/or free rates to members of the local community. The specialists chosen for the program, likewise, are expected not only to help out these start-ups, but also to provide information technology training for the local community.

Zuckerman recognizes that Geekcorps isn't the only organization to do this kind of work; also in the works is a global database of techies who would be interested in volunteering for their program, so techie volunteers can be farmed out at no cost to other governmental and community-building projects. While there is only so much that Geekcorps can do, they understand that by keeping information free and taking the time to do it right, the benefits will be much greater.

Linux and other Free Software products have been extremely popular in developing countries, for their adaptability and low hardware requirements as much as for the absence of per-seat licenses. Is Geekcorps dedicated to using Free Software solutions? I asked Elisa Korentayer, one of the Geekcorps founders and international specialists.

Elisa: We're pretty dedicated. We're a big fan of Open Source, and we're a big fan of taking advantage of free software. The aspects of the Internet that are incredibly conducive to non-profit, saving-the-world kind of attitudes, we're really into that. Think about it -- What we're doing in human terms is very similar to what Open Sourcing is. We're going into a country and we're saying 'We're going to offer you services, but we're going to ask you to give those services to other people.' We're going to say 'You can have access to this, but you need to provide that access to other people who didn't have access before."

Elisa provides a startling example of the scale of the technology divide developing countries face:

Elisa: One of the sad-but-true facts right now is that the United States government has set a goal to have a computer in every school, in every library, and they're about 90% of the way there. The goal that the United States has for developing countries is for everyone to live within one day's travel of a telephone.

Geekcorps is looking for volunteers to build these solutions in developing countries. However, if you can't get three to four months off of work to volunteer in Ghana, there is still a good opportunity to work with Geekcorps in your off-time back in your local neighborhood.

Elisa: A lot of the other stuff we're thinking about in terms of taking advantage of the Internet is that we hope to have an open channel for our volunteers in Ghana to communicate back to volunteers at home, so other techies can log in from wherever they are to help those in the developing countries."

Companies worldwide claim to make the Internet and computers more accessible, but Geekcorps is getting out there and doing it this summer. Geekcorps needs time, effort and rampant volunteerism, and the opportunity for Open Source and Free Software enthusiasts to get involved is there for the taking.