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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!
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?
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 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?
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.
...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.
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.