Donating Time To Goodwill Projects?

jukal asks: "I am in the process of writing a proposal for co-operation between Openchallenge and UNITeS (United Nations Information Technology Service) which is 'creating a global volunteer programme aimed at bridging the digital divide between industrialized and developing countries'. Currently & traditionally contributing as a volunteer means relocating yourself to the developing country to take part as a project developer/manager/specialist. My proposal to UNITeS is, in short, will be that people could participate in such software projects via Openchallenge - while staying in their home country, on their spare-time and while keeping their jobs. The local team in the developing country would, after defining and creating requirements specifications post sub-projects as tasks to Openchallenge. All the contributions submitted to Openchallenge are published under an open source license. My question is: would you for example consider donating some hours to help a goodwill project - if you could do that from home. This is of interest to me, as I would like to be sure that the time we put into building co-operating with a big organization like UNITeS and others in the future. Is not wasted. There is this thread about 'Volunteer Work Abroad' - which is good reading related to the subject. But it did not quite provide me with the answer."

Comments

Retaliation?

[JaZz0r]

Neat idea, but IMHO timing is everything. I'm thinking that this might be in retaliation to yesterday's report of a Congressman trying to "outlaw" the GPL.

In my humble opinion...

[CommieLib]

This program has all the signs of being a typical United Nations money/time rathole. If anyone here has some personal experience with this group, please feel free to correct me.

Go work on some elderly person's house...do meals on wheels, or best of all start a computer job skills training program with your local government.It's been my experience that I can't save the world, but I can make a huge difference in a small people's lives.

Not for me

[Jack Wagner]

I have spent over $100,000 on my education which I payed for entirely out of my pocket. I have spent untold hours networking with mutant bozos who I normally wouldn't give the time of day to in order to help my business. I spend about 15% of my time learning new methodologies and honing my skills on a weekly basis to maintain my cutting edge portfolio.

With that in mind would anyone care to tell me why I should then turn around and offer up my services at no charge to some lazy organization that is unable to pull itself up by it's own bootstraps and support paying money for quality coders? Nobody offers me chaity in the real world and I don't offer any in return.

This smells like some underworld socialist program if you ask me.

Re:Not for me

[buswolley]

The charity you have recieved is on the backs of all the workers who sacrificed to build an economy that allowed you to go to school. No one works alone, and all you hard work alone would not have put you through school if there was no school to begin with.

.That is why we must help those in the third world country.