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National Organizations Doing Technology Outreach?

Posted by Cliff on from the helping-others dept.

Phil Shapiro asks: "My neighborhood church has a Technology Mission comprised of volunteers doing computer support work for various good causes in the community. The folks in this mission are interested in being in touch with others doing similar kinds of volunteer work in other places. Does anyone know of national organizations doing technology outreach work of this kind?"

15 comments

  1. Insurance by Godeke · · Score: 1

    I have considered doing this (and sometimes feel like I am when it comes to family and friends). However, I was advised that the insurance risks to my company were too great, even if I did the work as an individual. Yes, gotta love the good old US legal system, where simply advising someone on how to use their computers makes you exposed to lawsuits for all the unrelated stuff that happens to them afterwords. Since this situation has happened to me in the business world (employee downloads porn dialer on a machine I didn't even touch and then accuses me when it is discovered) already, it's a risk I would prefer not to take. In that case, NTFS was able to help me show the owner that the account used to download the dialer was not the administrative account, but this bozo's account, but I may not always be so lucky.

    --
    Sig under construction since 1998.
    1. Re:Insurance by sohojim · · Score: 2, Informative

      Your legal advisor should check out Good Samaritan laws in your area, and should also look at drafting a very simple yet effective liability release form.

  2. Have to love America.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How do you walk around the place without worrying about lawsuits? Wher I live such law "cases" would be laughed out of court - in fact the laywers would laugh at you.

    1. Re:Have to love America.. by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      The lawyers would have laughed at it here too.

      The legal system isn't as bad as people make it out to be. People are just paranoid about being sued, and other people that want to be dicks for whatever reason play on those fears.

      It's likely no suit was ever filed in the preceding anecdote.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    2. Re:Have to love America.. by Godeke · · Score: 1

      Actually, the company did proceed with a suit and I had to file for discovery to get a third party tech to discover who owned the files on the drive that caused the problem. The suit was withdrawn upon discovery. Companies react adversly to $13,000 + phone bills with no explanation, which I can understand, to an extent. The weasle who tried to blame me was the companies nominal "administrator", and thus had some credibility with the company. He was fortunately cluesless enough to not cover the tracks that were present in the NTFS permission data on the backups from the time the dialer was active.

      --
      Sig under construction since 1998.
    3. Re:Have to love America.. by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      Well, at least it didn't get far.

      I too can identify with the numerous problems presented by unqualified idiots who somehow rise to being the "administrator", especially at smaller companies.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    4. Re:Have to love America.. by Glonoinha · · Score: 1

      I came into this thread to scream quit doing technology outreach programs (quit teaching poor people how to use computers)! and this, quite frankly, is a perfect example of why. I don't care if a welfare mom can buy a new computer for $87 worth of food stamps ... that doesn't make it a good idea.

      This goes double strength for going to third world countries and teaching them tech.
      Shit - what's a tribal bungaman gonna do with HTML?
      Teach them something useful like growing food on a farm.

      I could rant on, but I won't.

      --
      Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
    5. Re:Have to love America.. by pluther · · Score: 1

      As a director of a non-profit that does technology outreach, I can answer the question somewhat. First of all, we don't focus on individuals, either in the US or out of it, but on communities that have no internet access.

      What a, as you referred to them, "tribal bugaman" is going to do with HTML?
      Several things:
      Communicate with displaced relatives who have had to move due to war, famine, government action, land seizure, etc.
      Teach their children math, science, reading, computer skills, accounting, administration, and tons of other things that are facilitated by having access to computers. A computer network is actually easier to transfer, and easier to get academic course material with, than textbooks, encyclopedias, etc. in their paper form.
      Communicate with human rights groups and report on human rights violations by a tyrannical government or by a guerrilla group, and to help them find support.
      One computer we placed in Port Blair (you may have seen that city in the news recently), was recently used to let friends in other countries know several of the people there were OK, and to help coordinate aid.
      And yes, if you have internet connectivity, you can use it to learn more about farming techniques, too. In Chiapas, Mexico, where we did our very first project before we were even an official NPO, there are people who've been feeding entire villages with the same plot of land for over 2500 years. They're certainly not going to be learning anything about farming from me, who can't even keep a strawberry patch going from one year to the next. Nor do I know anything about medicine, food distribution, how to drill a well, or a host of the other things that there are groups, connected via the internet, helping with. Tech is what I know, so that's what I use to help.
      Hope it helps answer your question!

      --
      If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
  3. Southern King County, WA? by knisa · · Score: 1

    I'd like to hear from anyone doing this type of thing in the southern suburbs of Seattle (Tukwila, Renton, Kent, Auburn, etc). Tips for starting up a technology outreach and so forth would be helpful. Thanks!

    --
    This space for rent.
  4. NPOTechs in Chicago by sohojim · · Score: 3, Informative
    I am president of a non-profit organization in Chicago called NPOTechs: we provide free software, training, and technical volunteers to non-profit organizations in our area. Our past classes have included a 20-session course on RHCE, classes on OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Blender, general Linux (all including free software giveaways). Our past volunteer projects have included FOSS databases, VPN-based WANs, samba server implementations, etc. We also show up at non-profit events and conferences to distribute copies of Knoppix and The OpenCD.

    I would recommend that you check out AC4, the Association for Christian Computing Centers, also known as TechMission. I used to work for one of their secular partners, CTCNet which does similar things but for community- as opposed to church-oriented sites.

    If you'd like to see how we've been doing things for the past couple of years, check out our website at NPOTechs.org.

    And good luck!

  5. http://www.geekcorps.org/ by BYC(VCU.EDU) · · Score: 1

    The only place I've heard of doing this on a large scale is Geekcorps http://www.geekcorps.org/. However serveral users groups (mainly Linux Users Groups) do perform some charity related work.

  6. Geeks without borders by j1m+5n0w · · Score: 1

    Geeks without borders.

  7. Christians shouldn't need tech support... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ...because Jesus saves!