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Virtual Volunteering
An anonymous reader writes "Virtual Volunteering is new to me, so I thought that I would pass the info. along. Given the downturn in employment and the need to keep an active resume or CV, becoming a 'Virtual Volunteer', may be just the way to refresh your outlook and your resume. A PC World article talks about two sites which list numerous opportunities; Volunteer Match lists 41,538 opportunities associated with 23,359 organizations, and World Computer Exchange which 'is a global nonprofit organization committed to helping the world's poorest youth bridge the disturbing global divides in information, technology and understanding. WCE does this by keeping donated PCs, Macs, and Laptops out of landfills and giving them new life connecting youth to the Internet in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.' There are most likely more organizations like this out there, anybody have a special one that they are associated with?"
They must be NAZI BASTARDS who make people WAIT 20 seconds to POST because they are NAZI BASTARDS.
I could see this working
I prefer MS Windows to Linux
foock yoo foog
How about this one? Frankly I know not much about them, but according to their unsolicited letters sent to all small and medium companies, they claims to be a non-profit organization which offers free audit for companies computer systems. They even request everybody assist in the auditing. How nice they are.
(For humor-impaired, this is a joke)
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.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. it's the only thing that ever has.
Problem with volunteer work:
No matter how much volunteer work you do, you're expected to feed, clothe, and house yourself, pay for healthcare, college, and everything else.
The people that you volunteer to help are often getting these things free; whereas you are paying to be there.
If a volunteer organization would make it possible for me to pay my rent, buy me clothes, provide basic healthcare, and pay university tuition, I'd do it in a heartbeat! The only "volunteer" organizations I know of that actually offer a deal like that expect you to be willing to literally kill or die for the privilege...
I think this is a pretty great idea. And think of all the opportunities and new markets for spam!
Why, no, I haven't meta-moderated lately. Thanks for asking!
Some minor military healthcare data on it, but I can erase that.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
and I love microsoft
hahahah
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
If I virtually volunteer, do I only have to do virtual work? If so, sign me up!
Yess you 2 can stay inside behind your computer as a "Virtual" Volenteer....fun.
---
"...a global nonprofit organization committed to helping the world's poorest youth bridge the disturbing global divides in information, technology and understanding."
How about a global nonprofit organization committed to helping the world's poorest youth eat and avoid dying from preventable diseases?
Ok. I agree with educating the underpriviledged simply because through better education, the resources of this planet can be harnessed for the greater good, eliminating poverty and ridiculous infant mortality rates.
I even agree with skipping the industrial revolution, or at least speeding through it for the sake of protecting our environment.
If all of these underpriviledged starving people start living out full lives and competing in our job market, a lot of people are going to get _really_ freaked out. It'll be the perfect breeding grounds for terrorist acitivities. Budding intellectuals can coordinate covert ops on the lazy fat established classes in a high tech wargame which really just replaces the chaos that is neatly tucked away in starving countries.
So instead of seeing a shrivelled up, dying child, expect an empowered generation emerge from the third world. They just might show us a thing or two, and they'll definitely give us a run for our money.
Amazing. All that from a donated TRS-80.
Has anyone thought this through? Won't the third-world children who educate themselves on our used PCs grow up to compete in the labor market with good old American techies and engineers?
These commies and subversives are undermining the US economy! They are fostering a pool of cheap technical labour that will suck thousands of jobs across the border, to IT sweatshops where children as young as 12 pound out third-rate code for $1.75 a day! On our own PCs, no less... the irony!
Our very livelihoods are at stake and I, for one, will not stand for this terrorist plot. Do the patriotic thing and let your computers erode in landfills where they belong! (Just make sure you don't drink nearby well water for 30 years)
If we send the poorest youth food, then they will grow up to become content adults.
BUT, if we teach them to program in places where such a skill is useless then Microsoft will have a cheap and affordable source of labor for its future products!
The moral (only serious part): Send them food and hurt Micro$oft!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
You could volunteer your time in a more productive fashion by doing any number of self-gratifying things, including, but not limited to Looking at porn, Hanging out at this site, or Turning off the internet. All interesting and fun activities that don't require you to send money to anyone.
It's called "Open Source", a few of you may have heard of it.
There's a big group that controls a bunch of it called GNU -- they're wacky and pronounce the 'g' in GNU.
There's even a open source kernel called "Linux" started by some European guy. He works for some other company that does processors but spends a lot of time on the Linux thing.
Anyways, just wanted to point some folks at some other volunteer possibilities..
Volunteer Match and NetworkForGood list in person volunteer opportunities online. But most opportunities to actually volunteer online are around mentoring.
The UN has an online volunteering (see:http://www.unv.org/volunteers/options/online/ index.htm. Their online volunteering specialist, Jayne Cravens (homepage www.coyotecommunications.org, has been vocal about the benefits of online volunteering for years (real years, not internet years).
There are also opportunities at Mentoring.org (a site devoted to mentoring youth), and MicroMentor a pilot project devoted to mentoring micro entrepreneurs.
As somebody in the Indian IT threads so eloquently said, "I hope some little kid, making $0.05 per week was whipped until he properly assembled my keyboard! The little bastard had it coming anyway..."
...my virtual public spirit and enthusiasm couldn't overcome my real-world apathy and laziness.
God, sometimes it gets so bad that I can't even be bothered to finish my own
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
many of those landfills are in developing countries, themselves. Please recycle your gear.
http://www.ltsp.org is a great way of turning outdated computers into powerfull linux systems fit for the job and avoid ms trash
1)Use drugs.
2)POST!
3)Devise ways to live in a wooden grocery store.
4)Beards
5)Redundant popsicle hat.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
1. Where exactly?...
2. and precisely How?...
could people, the least experienced computer neophytes to the most experienced programmers, volunteer on a one time basis for short term tasks at a campus terminal, the office workstation or from their home computer setup?...
What other resources are there to volunteer on a one time basis from the home computer setup, a campus terminal or an office workstation?...
besides
http://www.bostoncares.com
Having worked for a software company which didn't ship anything in three years, I was feeling like I was wasting a lot of time, as well as not giving anything back to my adoptive home (Seattle).
:) What I am saying is that you should find a volunteer opportunity that works for you, in the real world (not virtually) and give it a go. While you're doing good for others, it's ultimately great because it's good for you!
I looked into a number of volunteering places. The post is true that it's "virtual volunteering" when you use those matchmaking sites, but there's nothing virtual when it comes to actually doing the hands-on volunteer work.
I found YTP Seattle which had special positions for IT specialists. In the end, I didn't get one of those positions because they didn't need any at the time, but I have happily given two hours of my week for the last nine months to some very deserving students from challenging backgrounds.
It's easy to say that these two hours feel like the most usefully-spent of each week.
Don't inundate YTP in particular, I'm sure they don't want to be slashdotted
You can go to VolunteerSearch to find volunteer positions Australia-wide.
Most impoverished areas of developing countries in South America and Africa are hotbeds of illegal activity. Care must be taken to ensure that well-meaning donations of hardware and educational materials do not spawn a worldwide epidemic of hacking and computer crime.
I found that the Special Extended Edition of the Lord of the Rings film kills any time you have left. Give it a try.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
This will sound callous and unthinkable to some, however, the world cannot and should not rescue each and every underpriveldged person. Some people are meant to be in a certain place and others are meant to be in another place. Certainly, this is such a wide open discussion and it can be incendiary to some. Think unemotionally for a minute, can everyone on this planet with the sheer amount of people on it, be useful in the broadest sense? Can "everyone" contribute to the world? Of course not. Sadly, many people on the planet are underfed, undereducated and underrepresented. As a decent and caring human being one would want the best for everyone as much as possible, however, this will not happen realistically.
Its painful for me to even write this out but possiblty it will generate some useful discussion.
cryptorights
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Thanks to Slashdot posters for having shown me these links in past discussions! :)
ISSHO Kikaku currently uses the JoinProject module for PostNuke as a way to allow people to match their skills with the volunteer tasks that are in demand within the organization. It works well (need to register first), but it is very simple and is not adequate for more sophisticated needs. Why not look for something more sophisticated? We are, but don't forget that to give people all over the globe the potential for equitable access, everything must be translated - at least for some organizations.
So, mechanisms that match tasks and talent certainly need to be improved. But perhaps the bigger issue is tools for facilitating collaboration. These need to be reasonably priced, sophisticated and easy-to-use. And multilingual, of course.
In the specific case of ISSHO, an implementation of Wiki is very exciting so far, but - at the moment - lacks somewhat in the i18n area and in the linkage between the collaboration area and the website proper (this particular problem is related to the multiple flavors of RSS, ability or lack thereof of converting between encodings on the fly, and other issues). Sounds like it would be simple enough to solve, but so far these little nagging problems limit what organizations can do, considerably.
Once these and similar issues are addressed (and systems are in place to ensure that they will continue to be addressed, even as technology progresses) it will become much, much easier for volunteer organizations to get properly organized, and to organize potential volunteers. "Virtual Volunteering" will see a new dimension if and when these groups are able to focus more easily on the results, and don't have to do quite so many handstands to come up with adequate mechanisms for handling the basics.
The obligatory
8) ???
9) Profit!
Sorry, I had to...
Maybe I can find a girl to volunteer to be my girlfriend. Mostlikely not. :(
Free Instant Site Inclusion
Another worthy organisation along the same lines as mentioned in the article is ComputerBank Australia.
They take old hardware, repair/refurbish it, install Debian on it and distribute it to the needy. A better description is availble on their website (linked above).
David de Groot Snr Systems Engineer
I agree fully, the world does not have the resources to bring everyone up to the standard Europeans and Americans are used to, as well as some Asian countrys. Not just education but living standards, imagine trying to give every china man, indian, african, a house (not some shack, im talking a proper house), couple of cars, and also jobs that are well paid for every single one of them, and the resources needed for that?? Hey I admit im generalising a bit, not every person in these countrys are poor/unfed/eneducated etc, but the vast vast majority are. Utopia will never happen, not while things are finite and energy costs money.
Laptop Reviews
Maybe you cannot get a computer to *every* person,
but even sending one or two PC's top the local library
can make a big difference. Shared resources can be very useful.
A lot of PC's in your average western home/business spend
a lot of their time idling, but would be efficiently shared.
Even in developed places there tends to be unnecessary
insistence on "one per customer" where sharing may
work (think of holiday houses).
that's right. IT won't cost you a dime (you might even make money), & you won't have to do much/anything. no kidding.
to reduce/eliminate larcenious accouNTing fraud for US, all you need to do is vote with (what's left in) your wallet.
remember, ill eagle dysfunction starts at the "top". buy the time IT gets to you, there's NOTHING left, or right, about IT.
good to see you're waking up J.. better late than never.
.asp we know, know ill eagle billybuks flowz through the pourtolls of /./robbIE et AL (we're sticking with our pledge to not mention va lairy again, to avoid being moderated to -16)?
the moral to the storIE: a little deceptive FUDgePacking never hurt anybody? mod US up robbIE, IT's STILL smelling badly DOWn here.
well, if DRM becomes a hardware reality i`ll keep my old stuff just to be on the safe side thank you very much. besides you can`t eat a computer....
With a mandatory minimum number of volunteer hours required for graduation from most government and liberal private high schools, this should be well received by the students. SOme provision for entering their social security numbers into a database to confirm their contribution will round things out nicely. Perhaps family data like mother's
maiden name, fathers birth date and city, family trans ethnic marraiges, etc. will afford adequate proof that the volunteer work has indeed been accomplished by the student and not by some $3 piece of Chinese software.
-t
Why did the folks at Volunteermatch make the site US only? Did they figure other countries might not need a similar facility?
The concept that the world cannot support a population living with "Western" standards is not only wrong, it is pseudo-racist.
As societies become more technologically and economically developed, resources are used more efficiently. Moreover, advanced economies can afford to search more far, wide, and smart with regard to resources. In the US, most commodities are cheaper now (in inflation adjusted terms) than 30 years ago. Richer countries also have decreased birth rates.
Moreover, "externalities" such as air pollution are easier to deal with in a rich economy because the extra money is there to add the exhaust controls and regulations neeeded. If you are going to starve, you don't care about micro-particles breathed in because of your in-home coal fire.
The big mistake is that economies are not zero-sum games. Everyone can get rich together, infact the world is far, far richer now than it was than at the turn of the century. Look at places like South Korea that went from a dirt-poor agricultural country to having better broadband than the US. Even very underdeveloped countries are better off, though lagging Western standards.
Every free market exchange raises the wealth of both parties, or else the parties would not agree to participate. Moreover, rises in market prices of resources (if they happen) either cause more effort to go into finding them, or cause more effort to go into alternatives.
This doesn't mean there won't be some specific environmental problems...global CO2 is probably a problem, but would be easier to deal with in a rich world than a poor one. But don't worry about non-externality commodities such as iron, tin, copper, and oil, the market will take care of them just fine.
The Alameda County Computer Resource Center in Oakland doesn't just recycle old computers (and none of that China dumping shit either), but provides hardware to many organizations and individuals who otherwise would go without.
If you're local, they're definitely worth your time, your old hardware, and your money.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Claim: Signing and circulating online petitions is an effective way of remedying important issues.
Status: False.
There is another one called Charity Focus, Inc (www.charityfocus.org, which I'm a member of) and is based out of California. They hook up volunteers in web/graphics design, project management and project leadership with NPO's in need of web sites (or web designers to re-do old sites). Through them I rebuilt (with the help of a volunteer for whom I took over after she had to leave the project due to medical reasons) the website for PeopleTech.org,an NPO that takes donated computers, refurbishes them, and donates them to needy children/families (more info on their site).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Not that I want to spoil a rather good argument but isnt the US the biggest polluter in the world consuming over a 1/4 of the worlds energy for only a small fraction of its population?
Also didnt the rich US refuse to sign upto the Kyoto agreement?
If US geeks were more economically literate, that might help!
/me is overjoyed.
I find it utterly ironic that in the united states, the culmination of high school economics is playing monopoly with "pretend checks" instead of "pretend money."
I only took that shit because auto mechanics 2(best course set in my school aside from AP Physics) was full. I got in next semster!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The National Alliance is a good non-profit organization to join if you are interested in helping to improve society.
In Australia, we have Computerbank, that upplies recycled computers running GNU/Linux to low income schools, individuals and groups. We have worked with East Timor, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, as well as local individuals and groups:) http://www.computerbank.org.au/ I am coordinator of the Sth Australian Branch - http://sa.computerbank.org.au/
Nothing - well thats something.
www.idealist.org
www.craigslist.org
And for open source projects, SourceForge has a help wanted area
It's surprising how difficult it is to find companies looking for tech volunteers. I'm sure there must be thousands of non-profits out there that could use help setting up computers, databases, websites, etc., but there doesn't seem to be any good way for the two sides to communicate with each other (VolunteerMatch is painfully amateurish).
Good information about volunteering. Never occurred to me there might be online opportunities to help out non profits. Particularly appropriate since the geek community in general has had lousy participation in charity work...
If the entire world was as developed as the West, I am sure they would find the energy needed. It would be a great boon to society to have starving Ethiopian farmers become well-fed Ph.D. engineers working on hydrogen, fusion, and solar energy!
CO2 is an issue. It is an economic "externality" that can only be effectively dealt with through regulation.
But the decision is whether you develop technology for economically reasonable CO2 reduction now and regulate later, or whether you regulate now (potentially disrupting global economies) in hope of developing technology later, if you can afford it.
The US government decided to look for technology first before adopting the Kyoto Protocol, which would provide a questionable envrionmental benefit even if it could be enforced.
Either way, the good news is that CO2 reducing technologies are under development (mainly in high-GDP countries). We already have nuclear fission which we may need global climate change to give us the guts to use. LED lighting, fuel cells, advanced solar, and hydrogen fuel are currently under development.
One other thought: The US produces the most CO2 per capita, but the least CO2 per dollar of GDP in the world. Thinking that way, it is the most efficient user of energy...
One of the best online volunteering services is by NetAid , and is managed by the UN Volunteers program . This service is devoted exclusively to supporting organizations working in and for communities in developing countries. Yes, that's right -- online volunteers are making a difference in the lives of people in the third world. And have been for about two years via NetAid. NetAid is also more than a matching service -- organizations can use this free service to manage and communicate with online volunteers, and individuals can use it to report on organizations they support. There's extensive information to help both organizations and individuals during online volunteering. And there are LOTS of testimonials from both individuals and organizations about why online volunteering is worth doing.
Some of you have questioned why volunteer at all. A good place to explore this issue is at Serviceleader.org. Enjoy. But for a personal testimonial -- some activities that I do as a volunteer are things that are applications of my professional skills to mission-based organizations. Other volunteer gigs involve activities which are new things I don't get to do (and sometimes don't want to do -- or, would like to do) in my job. As a volunteer, I feel more free to experiment. My approach to my volunteer activities is quite different than my approach to paid work. I feel more like an investor when I'm a volunteer, and more independent. I feel like I can take greater risks in my work "style." And I feel valued in a different way, a more emotional way, as a volunteer by organizations I help, than as a paid staff member. I wouldn't choose one over the other, but I wouldn't have one without the other.
I've been an evangelist for Virtual Volunteering since 1996 -- really glad to see it being discussed here, and I'm happy to answer any questions offlist for Slashdot users. Feel free to email me on the subject.
J Cravens http://www.coyotecommunications.com
Via
http://www.bostoncares.org/about
In 1991, a group of six young professionals met at Pizzeria Uno's in Harvard Square to share their frustrations at not being able to find meaningful volunteer opportunities that did not require an ongoing commitment - something their busy schedules would not allow them to do.
They agreed to work together to find non-profit organizations that could utilize the help of volunteers with limited and unpredictable free time. Their goal was to create a calendar of volunteer opportunities to send out to their friends who were interested in volunteering. And so, starting with a calendar of only 2 service projects, Boston Cares was founded. Today, Boston Cares' volunteer opportunities exceed 100 projects each month. [ more... ]
http://www.bostoncares.org/about
For programmers, there's an ongoing open source project codenamed Calliope to provide free online community forums with strong privacy, content and participant list protection, and without commercial advertising. See http://calliope.sf.net/
Other OPG volunteer opportunities at https://www.onlinepolicy.org/services/opg-voluntee r-apply.shtml
More general info at http://www.onlinepolicy.org/
> I thing you're missing the capability of Makefiles.
It takes several _hours_ to do `make' a second time on my
machine with the latest glibc sources (and no files are recompiled a
second time). I think I'll remove `build' after changing one file if
I want to recompile it.
-- Juan Cespedes
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