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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."
Donating geek time to charity is something that I have been pondering for quite a while... if I decide to write a piece of software for my favorite church, can I deduct the fair market value of that software on my taxes? Likewise, were people to contribute to an OpenChallenge project, would they be able to similary write-off the fair market value of that time?
This situation brought itself to bear a few years ago, when I learned that a friend of mine was donating not only his time, but also hard $$$ for server space for his favorite charity. What, if anything would he be able to write-off? He uses the server for other projects, so not 100% is for the charity.
Any accountant-geeks out there?
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WWJD? JWRTFM!
We have found that the various city, county, and private organizations are willing to bend over backwards to work with us. Bear in mind, I am not talking about a purely altruistic venture on my own firm's part, but rather a joint venture between a private company and the community, with profits being used to further develop technology-specific public works in the region.
People have already proven at least a passive willingness with distributed computing projects. The next obvious step is to donate a little non-profit coding. Plus, this works well as an adjunct to computer recycling programs that benefit "Third Worlds".
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
While I appreciate your noble intentions, I'm not 100% sure how software development would help most 3rd world and developing nations. Unless, I've really been living under a rock, most of the people in such nations who would benefit from such are high up the power ladder and have little to no interest in distributing down the ladder.
Besides, wouldn't one have to focus on developing the infrstructure to run said software anyway. Last time I checked, running software needs computers. Computers need power, connectivity, and even sometimes access to this Internet thingy. If I wanted to lead a project to help developing nations, I'd be much more interested in building telecommunications and electrical infrastrucutre then writing software they probably can't run or use for much good yet anyway.
While your idea is noble, I think perhaps it is a little too soon to be really globaly useful?
My favorite odd todd line.
And the fact that I seriously considered volunteering, made me feel better
about not..volunteering.
Check it out... do something like these folks, except in your city.
only infrmatn esentil to understandn mst b tranmitd
...without leaving your neighborhood, let alone country.
Go to your local library or school or community college and offer to teach free courses or help with the IT infrastructure. Be a guru for some programmer-to-be!
I used to teach at an adult education centre which was free to students (though I did get paid, so I don't claim to be a humanitarian of unequal pedigree here). It was extremely rewarding and I learned a lot as well.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
I think that in general it would be better to localize charity activities. Not to say that someone in France shouldn't donate time and energy to someone in Finnland but I have serious questions on the validity of the UN's organizational units. We can argue the whole "Globalization" issues with this. I hear man organizations already doing charity work on donating CPUs with Linux and stuff to emerging worlds but honestly, who needs a PC if your starving to death. My personal feelings are in a world with limited resources we need to have priorities in charitable work:
1: Basic Needs (Food, Clothing, Shelter)
2: Self Sufficency (Ability to make\get you own Food, Clothing, and shelter. Watch the Movie Soilent Green, or read the book why this is imporant)
3: Advancement of Society Standard (Literacy, Freedom, Education)
4: Wants, Computers, Cars, Leather Jackets and Blue Jeans.
Emergine nations need to have a solid foundation and bridging the Digital Divide seems pretty damn low on the ilst of priorities if I am starving and have polluted water to drink. I think we can hold of on donating the limited dollars there are to charity and set more, I wouldn't say appropriate goal (I like the idea of briding the digital divide), but more pressing needs. It would be far better for the natives of these emergine nations to be able to afford buying a computer versus getting one for free. Even better yet to have an industry where they can make and compete in computer production.
I think that UNITES needs to focus more on developing industies, markets, and agricultural areas before worrying about poor people having email. The idea that they want to Bridge the Digital Divide seems oddly out of place when you apply it to nations that have people starving and dying of terrible diseases. There are limited charity dollars in the world and we need to take a hard look at where they go and how they are spent and I just don't see this as a project that needs the money. The Peace Corp. seems to be the best bang for the charitable dollar. I hope this post sparks some discussion on which charities do the most good with the dollars they get. Good luck to UNITES and friends.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I'm in my first year as a Tech Corps volunteer in Ohio. I basically donate two afternoons a month to a public school district in town to assist teachers with technology projects in the school. We'll be working on re-designing the high school's Web presence and we'll also be conducting a lesson with French students to make fictional travel Web sites of French travel desinations.
In my opinion, you can't beat the gratification that comes from doing something like this. I get the opportunity to lend my expertise to an inner-city school district that could greatly use it. Definitely a win-win. I can't encourage this enough.
-- jimmycarter
I am so sick of these posts to Ask /. that can be answered by a Google search! Couldn't you come up with a query that would locate all the philanthropically minded hackers pining to make a contribution to the developing world on their home pages and Web logs? ;-)
Seriously: I'd be interested! Just like the Peace Corps without the tropical fevers!
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
I'm totally up for doing volunteer work, as long as it pays well.
come on fhqwhgads
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.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Sounds like a concept similar to this.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
If folks have spare time that they want to donate, how about helping out in your own backyard first?
How about, "Because the need there isn't generally as great"?
Anyway, even if this software is bespoke, it's going to be available under the GPL, so anybody who has a use for it (and can get the source) can benefit from it.
I love this idea but I am a little skeptical.
I've worked on enough volunteer projects to realize that most volunteers are people that have too much time on their hands. They've just moved to a new city, are between jobs, broke up with their significant other, etc. There is nothing wrong with this other than that all these situations are extremely temporary. As soon as the other parts of their lives start back up, the desire to volunteer disappears.
This a huge pain for the organization as they have devoted time and resources to orient and train these very short term volunteers.
Your proposal is even more likely to suffer from this as volunteers who never meet the people they are helping will feel even less obligation to the people them. You need to find some way to secure a time commitment from you volunteers and work very hard to make them feel connected to the work, otherwise the turnover will kill you.
Yeah. The technology industry isn't doing anything for India. Its not like they're attempting to convert their workforce into the majority of the Computer Science industry for the world.
Oh wait. THAT'S EXACTLY what they're trying to do.
They have little resources other than human resources, like a lot of third world countries (not all of India can be considered 3rd world, but most of it can). They are not alone in this idea. If you consider that the world itself is a national economy, and that human resources are also resources (just as an infrastructure is) then you can see that this can help 3rd world countries. If they don't have the infrastructure they need, that can be imported (or the people can be temporarily exported) to deal with that problem.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I donated time to volunteer work at a then local high school - I have since moved - teaching students in project oriented programming competition formerly called the New Mexico Supercomputing Challenge (now called the Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge when they rolled it and the Sandia NL sponsored rival program together).
Students were brogutht ogether in small teams and taught programming, often from the ground up, math, and science towards a project. Often a lot of backfilling took place to get the students up to the point where they could understand the math and science behind the project as well as actually grasp what it would take to write code for the supercomputers. It was very challenging and a lot of fun.
It has always perplexed me when we have people so constantly complaining about the school system that those that have the time and energy to volunteer do not simply go down to their local school system and volunteer. Make an appointment with the principal and see where you can help. I betcha he or she will be very ecstatic if you can bring ideas and time to the table so long as it does not tax the school resource wise (budgets being tight things...)
The rewards of seeing a student's face light up when they get it are well worth the time...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
What software do the folks in the underdeveloped countries really need? I mean what specific software, that is not already written? Perhaps what is already around is sufficient? Just wondering.
The good thing about the knowlege industry is that not only can you telecommute. It's the fact that you can share the knowlege and be richer for it.
Beyond just giving them the source, you've got to make sure that you make every effort to make the recipients of your aid part of the team in the cathedral or at least feeling like they're part of the bazaar.
There's nothing worse than sending in aid that makes the person wind up with this big shiny thing that they don't have the resources to maintain or expand on.
So yeah. Clean water first. Food second. No war third. Good medicine, industrial infrastructure, a reliable democratic and open government... and then technology that the developing country can really feel that they own, rather than that they adopted because they found it or someone gave it to them.
I would consider donating some free time as long as I DIDN'T have to do it from home.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
It seems to me that while potentially useful, your idea of passing out sub-projects from software companies or IT teams in developing nations to a group of open source coders in the Western world doesn't really advance the goal of the UN initiative. As another poster mentioned, there are more serious problems to overcome in many developing nations that make "bridging the digital divide" realtively meaningless. I believe someone else pointed out that what these nations really need isn't code, but IT infrastructure.
Those are valid points, but I think the fundamental idea of the UN program is to provide technology experts who can not only assist in local projects, but also transfer their expertise through the course of working on those projects. A group of US/UK/GER/FRA/etc coders whipping out brilliant and useful code for sub-projects is certainly helpful, but it doesn't go very far in creating a communal working environment wherein the presumably more experienced techs volunteering can pass their knowledge and experience on to the local techs. Sure, the locals can read your brilliant source code, but they don't get to participate in the development of that code necessarily, and having their questions answered via email is nowhere near as positive a learning environment as working on the code with a real person next to them who can answer their questions and point out interesting tidbits on the fly.
The real digital divide is knowledge based, and the best way to close that gap is to teach someone how to do it themselves, not tell them to send the hard parts to someone else to do for them.
Of course that's just my opinion, and I'm probably wrong
Unfortunately, what happens is that the very top people there end up leaving India and coming to the US, where the work is. That country produces some of the greatest technological minds in the world (law of averages suggests this; their population is 4 times the size of the U.S.), yet can't hold onto them.
Infrastructure investment should most likely come first...
I can't believe it's not lard!
Although i don't quite get how volunteering outside of your country is "lowest common denominator" i do agree that there are lots of opportunities to volunteer at home. There are lots of local community technology groups that do work around issues like bringing open source to the community like . Others like digitaldividenetwork/benton do work around bridging the digital divide. There are groups for people who want to volunteer tech services for schools and nonprofits like CompuMentor. And we can't forget the work that local User Groups have done for schools, nonprofits, and individuals over the years.
Although techie volunteer programs abroad are wonderful experiences (i've been fortunate to do community technology work in S. Africa and China), you don't have to travel thousands of miles away to do some tech good.
*EXACTLY*. Any venture that claims to be of benefit to the "needy" should make sure that it provides the tools and education to empower the community in which they are working; otherwise, you end up with a community that is now *more reliant* on outside sources to work with the technology/software/whatever that you have provided.
I would liken giving a Zambian village a network of PCs without training them how to use and maintain them to teaching schoolchilren how to read a book, but without teaching them anything about semantics, grammar, etc... in other words, worthless.
...we will come. Free Software is basically a "help your fellow man" kind of project, so it won't be very hard to find volunteers. However, as others have hinted, the real chore will be finding a task that can be solved by software that will benefit people without computers.
I've helped out with a few foodbanks have always been shocked at how incredibly primitive their distribution systems are. They have to have nearly prohibitive amounts of notice to get the orders for the right amounts of items correctly taken care of up-line. Locally there are no computers involved in this at all. A hand totaled list is read over the phone to a person who plugs it into a spreadsheet. AAAAAAAck! This is a job that screams, "Automate me." The people involved drool at the opportunity to place their orders less than a month in advance and to get rid of the paperwork, but setting up the infrastructure is most of the problem and actually writing the order submission app is pretty easy. In this case and so many others that I can imagine the majority of the work will be done on the scene. But for the fraction that doesn't have to to be done there, start some sourceforge projects and ask for volunteers. You'll find'em.
Not necessarily. There are two ways that monetary reward could come from such a venture: 1) the programmer may be able to learn new tools and skills "on the job" while performing this charity work -- which may equate to more money in the programmer's professional life, or, 2) not all "charity" work is performed pro bono. The venture that I alluded to in my earlier post involves an initial pro bono component, but my firm will be able to reap the rewards of that pro bono work at a later date, while still empowering the community. It's a win-win.
How's the saying go?
:)
If you give people a fish, they eat for a day. If you teach people to fish, they eat for a lifetime.
If you teach a community how to use/manipulate technology, they become better equipped to get employment. So you've given them #2: Self Sufficiency. By getting jobs using the technology you've taught them, they can take care of #1: Basic Needs. Once they have work, they can worry less about #1 and start concentrating on things like educating their children and participating in the political process (#3). And one day, when they're good little consumers like the rest of us, they'll be able to waste their time keeping up with the Joneses (#4)
I find that volunteering time on a worthwhile project is very rewarding. The process of reaching out and helping people is beneficial to my own well being. Even though I paid my way, I consider that I got more out of my mission trip to Latvia than I gave. Volunteering locally has also been very rewarding to me. I believe when we give we benefit. That is just the way we are built.
When are donated services to a non-profit organization recognized?
(S)pecialized skills are required and possessed by the donor.
(O)therwise needed by the orgnization
(M)easurable
(E)asily
You can remember this by the mnemonic "Some." (Directly out of the Becker Conviser CPA exam review).
Assuming the orgization you donate to is "qualified," you must also observe the "charitable contributions limitation" under the tax code:
Overall limit = 50% Adjusted Gross Income (AGI)
1) Cash - may be all 50%
2) Property - is limited to the lessor of:
a) 30% of AGI
b) The remaining amount to reach 50% after cash contributions
Notice this says nothing of "donated service." I guess you could treat the FMV of the service as "Property." However, I think you would have to go through old tax court cases to see how you should really go about deducting donated services.
Disclaimer: I am in no way an accountant . . . yet.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
but has it ever occured to you that your properties of hard work and endurance which have given you the lifestyle that you enjoy wouldn't mean squat if your country dissolved into a bloody civil war?
You are the master of your own destiny for now, only because there are many people in your country who would die to preserve the free and open system which supports your market.
Take that away and life becomes a lottery. It won't matter if you are an elite business person or a crack guerilla sniper- in times of civil disorder people suffer, and suffer, and suffer no matter how hard they try. And I don't mean having to do something mildly degrading like sit around with objectionable people who are richer than you. I mean being so hungry that people can count your ribs and knowing that your high IQ can't turn stone into bread unless those people in the hills stop shooting long enough to plant a lousy vegetable patch. Even the people who are ostensibly in control of the whole war find themselves locked into the conflict and unable to see a way out that doesn't get them killed.
In afghanistan, there used to be kabul university (est 1932 by some french and turkish guys) complete with schools of medicine, pharmacy, economics etc... Then the taliban sent the country back to the stone age, with the exception of a pile of the imported tanks. What happened to all the educated, hard working people? they had crap lives and then died. Some of them wound up in other countries, where their hard work and life savings bought them a cell in a processing camp.
Anyway, bottom line: if you really feel bad about donating your time to help people like yourself except that they suddenly woke up one day to find out that terrorists had killed their government, just consider openchallenge as a competition instead. It says so on the website linked in the main article. Here's a list of winners and the cool stuff they won demonstrating how elite they were.
Wouldn't you like to have another feather in your cap? Another free GPS module to show off to your friends?
And if one day you were to find out that your country had dissolved into war or your economy had imploded into a gooey mess of corruption, wouldn't you be comforted by the hope that somewhere out there there might be smart, talented people who care about other human beings in real dire straits and for whatever reason use their powers and skills to help.
I would gladly donate some free "geek" time to a worthy charitable project.
Gothmolly wrote:
;)
> It's arguably a noble notion, donating your time
> to those who have less. But how many of these
> have-not people and groups are in countries with
> backward or malevolent political and economic
> systems? Why should we all join a project to help
> [INSERT DICTATORIAL REGIME HERE]?
Those dictatorships succeed by keeping their people poor and ignorant. A child with a computer and internet access can be exposed to new ideas and learn skills that can get them better jobs than their parents. Eventually the people become less poor and less ignorant and kick the nasty old dictators out of there.
> I'd much rather give 5 USD to a local charity or
> even a street person, than to donate time to
> helping [INSERT PUBLIC "SERVICE" GROUP HERE] in
> another country. Where's the benefit in that,
> compared to helping out with local problems?
Giving to a local charity is good, and you should help your less fortunate neighbors. But $5 USD, alone, is a drop in the bucket even for local problems. Regardless of whether the problem is local or in the third world, the better solution is always one that builds a brighter future where people can become proud and independent, rather than one that just fills today's hunger (or tries to fill it, only to have the grain carted off by the local bully).
> Or is this another one of those Soviet-era
> things - "at least everyone is equally shabby" ?
Yuck! That's a disgusting philosophy. I prefer peace and happiness myself.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
MIT's Technology Review article on the state of high technology in Ghana should be required reading for the original poster, and all those interested in the subject of technology in the third world. The content of the article should give considerable pause to any clueless individual thinking that happily hacking away in their living room is going to substantially impact the living conditions of those living in the third world. While the article points out the immense promise of technology for the third world (one man interviewed had never received a piece of snail mail in his life, but had internet access, and could read news from around the world), that promise largely remains unfulfilled. The author states
Making a telephone call here requires persistence. Roughly half don't go through because of system failures, but that's only the start of Ghana's telephone woes. The country has a mere 240,000 phone lines--for a population of 20 million spread across an area the size of Britain. Moreover, telephone bills are inaccurate, overcharges common, and the installation of a new line can cost a business more than $1,000, the rough equivalent of the annual office rent. Lines are frequently stolen, sometimes with the connivance of employees of Ghana Telecom, the national carrier. Phones go dead, and remain unrepaired, for months. Some businesses hire staff for the chief purpose of dialing numbers until calls go through.
Moreover, even those fortunate enough to have access to the internet find themselves distraught by the knowledge of the incredibly poor conditions in which they must live. One internet cafe owner stated that the majority of users were online in his cafe trying to figure out a way out their country.
The upshot is that much more effort needs to be devoted towards basic infrastructure -- sanitary, transportation, and information -- before an idea like that of the poster's would make much sense.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
I, for one, would be interested in helping out through some volunteer work, as long as I agreed with the bigger picture.
People have made some good points about putting the needs of a local community ahead of those of the international community, but I've always been of the opinion that no matter who you help, it benefits everyone in the long run.
What I wouldn't like to do is devote several hours/days/months of my time to a largely useless cause ('We're going to give all the kids in Namibia a web page!'). What sorts of things could one volunteer their time for that we could actually beleive would help those we're volunteering for? Are we talking about automating agriculture or streamlining AIDS testing in african countries? (I'm not sure if either of those makes much sense in this context, but you get the point)
How about some good, concrete examples? I've often thought about how much I'd like to be able to help out various orginizations by loaning myself to them to write a bit of code or somesuch. Of course there's always handing out soup to the homeless, but I tend to think your average geek has enough know-how and intelligence to do a little more good than just preforming manual labor. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but if some impoverished 3rd world country could actually _benefit_ from me helping out, then hey, I'm all for it.
Support a very funny and very revealing ad to conserve oil use. I always thought those terrorism/drug ads were pretty ill-founded, but no one can argue with the terrorism/oil connection. Not too mention that this is very very ironic, considering bush's involvement in both the first ad and the second phenomena. They definately have my money.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
NetAid online volunteering.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
California Community Colocation Project provides:
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
I run a blog that talks about running church web sites that they don't suck.
One of the big issues we're discusssing is backend maintenance.
Yes, I'm all for us volunteering our time. That said, we need to make sure we implement systems and solutions that won't leave staff or other volunteers frustrated and/or in worse shape when we move on.
A good example is setting up a church web site. A geek comes along. Makes it look and feel great. A year passes. The geek is gone and now the organization is left there scratching their head trying to figure out how to modify things without breaking them.
In other words. Let's volunteer. But lets not make this like the one time we worked in a soup kitchen so we could feel better about ourselves. Instead, lets provide permanent, long term solutions.
--- have you healed your church website?
When it comes to taxes Time=Money works only one way.
...But what about the organizations in the US-- Non-profits, schools, etc.-- that don't have enough money/know-how to set up a decent system.
/ex
Others have mentioned that there are groups in the US that need help, and ways to help the local services. At least in California, there are a few groups that do this. One that I'm affiliated with has provided web space (low/no cost web space), on site technical support, and various small projects for a group of non profit organizations.
It is very interesting looking at this stuff-- there are literally no companies that will offer low/no cost tech support even as donations, to local non profits-- the ones that need it the most.
Get involved with the local groups. Any skills you have are really appreciated, and even if you don't want to or can't be there to help them, if you run a server, set up a little web site for them! Give them an account to get mail, and a hundred megs to put as big a site as they want on it, and it doesn't cost you anything but electricity which you would use anyway-- Usually they pull less than a few thousand hits per month
Sending food to a hungry person will, if it gets their only feed them a few times, then they are hungry again. You did not do anything but prolong their suffering. Their ecosystem is overloaded, this causes famine, plague/disease, and sometimes triggers war over resources. The less nice solution of for the majority of the population to die so as to provide an ample supply of food/resources for those that survive. Suggest that the birthrate be controlled... now that is unpopular.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I'm doing some work with an African country right now at work. Half the problem is they don't know what they want - so asking them what they think they want and then trying to build it is a bit of a challenge. We try to nail things down, but they just aren't sure and so you end up with issues of requirements/scope creep. You also end up with differing perspectives and a need to regularly reset expectations. Defining requirements and managing the projects may be a pretty serious challenge for some of the developing countries.
In fact, project management and business analysis skills may be a *key* donation to such an effort. Skilled business analysts, workflow experts, and project management people (esp those familiar with OS projects) would be a real asset to any such plan and should be figured into the mechanism. Correctly setting expectations would be an important part of successful and satisfactory development. This won't be a for-pay effort and it will be a distributed effort. Both invoke certain characteristics and limitations.
I have been looking for just these kinds of local or Int'l IT projects, insofar as I would be permitted by NDA's etc. to participate. I think this would be a worthwhile endeavour for the UN and the Open Source community. And it would leverage some of the powers of some open source OSs which run well on some older hardware, as much of the developing world may not be able to afford the latest 3.4GHz P-4 megasystem.
If this does go anywhere, I hope slashdot will provide ongoing coverage.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
I volunteer my time (and, in some cases, money) with the Boy Scouts, a local aviation for kids program, and a few other charities and good causes. I do it because I like it, because I think it's important, and because I appreciate the fact that people volunteered time for me when I was a Scout, et al. I have no aspirations of financial gain, nor do I receive any (including tax deductions: I don't itemize).
That said, there's nothing wrong with taking a writeoff if you're entitled to same. If you're volunteering specifically for the deduction, you need to examine your motives (and your methods: writeoffs are a poor way to "make" money), but there's nothing wrong with taking the benefit of it. Indeed, many people (myself included) have strong objections to the government, and feel that anything which (legally) keeps money out of Washington is a good thing. Would you say that accepting lunch while on a project site is verboten, because you derive gain from it? Certainly people who refuse to help because they can't profit from it need to do a little soul-searching, but if you're going to do it anyway (for presumably the right reasons), there's nothing wrong with availing yourself of long-provided benefits.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
Hi Jussi, Sure, you can use it.
Not a long reply though ;)))
1) I don't have money. 2) I believe many unemployed programmers would get work, if they could show that they have real life experience. You could understand participating in a goodwill project as education. I really believe, that if you are unemployed - by helping someone else, you are helping yourself.
I know about netaid. I believe we can complement it. According to my (limited) knowledge, contributing through netaid poses quite many constraints and has some limitations - also it is targeting a much wider focus, software is not the key issue in it. Yes, it might be that in the end the co-operation will be with NetAid, instead of UNITeS. However, the matter is worth investing.
Thanks for helping!
for the rest of the readers, we already exchanged emails - and will probably try and find ways for co-operation between VWDN and openchallenge.. :)
Someone should suggest Uncle Sam that they should re-invent goods-trading economy on these issues. I am sure they have lots of software projects to which people like you could participate - and as result get your debts cleared in exchange :)
Exactly, schools, universities and other organisations like could also benefit - and we are trying to get them informed. If you know any, please feel free to spread the word. Actually, if you read the 'about openchallenge' page you will find a fairy tale tailored for universities. :)
Yeah. That's the reality. However, keep in mind that we have not spend any penny in marketing - and actually just started spreading the word. Anyway, since the beginning, the hitrate on the server has been exponential, and I hope that within next 6 months there is already real potential. It will take time, but there is no hurry. If people think it's a good thing, the word will spread. If not, nothing is lost.
Thanks for the comment! A clip from another thread. "Exactly, schools, universities and other organisations like could also benefit - and we are trying to get them informed. If you know any, please feel free to spread the word. Actually, if you read the 'about openchallenge' page you will find a fairy tale tailored for universities. :)"
ps. I am also a father of two :)
Based on the feedback, Yes - I will use time to proceed with the proposal to UNITeS. Also, there was a lot of feedback which helps me in this work. Also, I now know more about the weak points of this approach and can start thinking for answers to them. So, final thank you to all of you who used some brain cycles on thinking. I hope you will hear some good news regarding this co-operation within a couple of months. Thanks!
Bill Gates was faced with this same dillema when he first set up his foundation. He went to conferences, heard pitches for thriod world EMAIL, web access, broadband, etc. Finally, he realized the same thing you have - that there was little humanitarian benefit to pushing high tech solutions where they didn't fit naturally. Instead, he got solidly behind vaccine development.
Say what you will about Bill, but he knows how to leverage his money to the task at hand.
PS - And, please, no flames on "he only donates a tiny fraction of his money, so he's still evil incarnate..." I was just using the guy as an example.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."