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How Do You Volunteer Professional Services?
keefus_a writes "My wife and I usually take a week long vacation in the Spring and I tossed out the idea of volunteering abroad. Neither of us has a problem with doing manual labor, or whatever task is needed. However, I thought it might be of some value, and substantially more rewarding than our daily grind, if we could volunteer our professional services (I'm a network guy and my wife has a master's degree in counseling). The problem is that I haven't found any resources for doing so on a short-term basis. So I ask Slashdot. Has anyone ever done short-term volunteer work in your professional field? What organization did you contact? Or are we better off donating money to a particular cause and just working on a tan?"
Craigslist Casual Encounters?
Find the nearest church. The leaders there will be able to help you find a cause.
I worked in Peru and Bolivia in 2001, and I say just go somewhere, most captials in 3rd world countries have multiple NGO offices, go there and ask. Network is hard since you will most likely work for a telecom company instead, but local universities could of course be glad to get help.
Based on recent tragedies in Haiti. If your just offering to provide local general volunteer services, approach your local charitable organizations that provide those types of volunteer services and let them direct you.
If you are considering volunteer work in disaster areas, please.. please, do not do it. There are professionals trained in those types of things, the last thing they need is for a group of volunteers who went to help out, suddenly requiring rescuing of their own. After the main disaster cleanup is done, and the areas are safe, then offer yourself up as a volunteer, but till then, stay out of dangerous areas.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
The guy at ______________ is gonna be pissed.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I did a quick search and found http://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/index.html and http://www.volunteermatch.org/. I haven't used either, so I'd be curious to know if somebody here has and what the experience was like.
I'm the guy at _____________- and I'm getting sick of idiots who can't dial properly.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I like the one suggestion above, to just go and ask. Few organizations are as mired in bureaucracy as the head offices of NGOs. It's the field offices that may be able to come up with some work on the spot.
Short of that, get a tan. Sorry, but there's no such thing as "intellectual day labour" - most jobs that use education require you to mesh in with a team, with an office environment, with a set of clients and problems. It takes a week, minimum, often a month, to be productive enough to pay back the hours spent showing you around, introducing you, briefing you.
If you want a great story about the fun of dealing with NGOs, try this 3-screen Atlantic article on the lady who had the terrific idea of a co-op of Afghan farmers that would produce essential oil from their pomegranates for use by "The Body Shop" and others for high-end soaps. It involved purchasing, at first, a single hand-cranked seed-oil press.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/afghans
My favourite bit on page 2 - asked to fill in a 14-screen spreadsheet with numbers on "production coefficients", the "equipment procurement, loan-repayment summaries, sales figures, labor costs, packaging and shipping costs, and cash-flow statements. It took me two weeks, full-time, just to fill in the cells with real numbers. And I have a master's degree from a U.S. university. I began to wonder how Afghan entrepreneurs would ever be able to negotiate such requirements." Presenting it to them at the end of the two weeks, she's told, the "...agribusiness team greeted the spreadsheet with a snort. "We don't need anything like that. He just loves to cook up these spreadsheets," they remarked of their colleague."
Most professional type stuff requires longer terms. The reason is that often you are dealing with complex situations and a week isn't even really enough time to learn the system, much less accomplish anything. I think about where I work and if you can in and said "Hey I'd like to help out for a week," I'd have to say "no thanks" because you couldn't do anything useful. While I could certainly use more sysadmin type help, it'd take longer than a week to get you trained up on what we've got.
Short term volunteer work is almost always going to be grunt labour type stuff because there's almost always a need since it doesn't pay well and it takes little to no training. Your more advanced skills aren't likely to be used.
Take your vacation somewhere where your tourism dollars will really help the locals: Goa, India (or just travel in India); lots of places in South America; Phuket, Thailand; etc. Skip big tourist drawing areas like the Bahamas where your money goes into the pockets of wealthy hotel and tourist industry owners.
Stay at more modest accommodations. Spend your money on small local service providers, food providers, crafts makers, and so forth. Tip them well.
By doing these things you'll stretch your vacation dollars farther, be more in touch with the local culture, have a good time, and help disadvantage people just trying to make an honest living.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
My experience, which is mine and only mine and so can't speak for anyone else, was that volunteering tech time was overwhelming.
I volunteered to do the web programming and graphics a few years back for a small organization. The thing it's just like work. There are deadlines, pressure, unrealistic requirements, the whole deal. And just like real tech work, it's not easy to hit the ground running on day one as there's a learning curve to how they work and operate. It's not something that's easily broken up in 4 hour casual chunks just when you want to do it.
I'd say just do habitat for humanity or send money or something. But don't try and be a network admin for a week somewhere. It wouldn't be fun to have you totally screw up their firewall on your last day before heading back to your job. Send them money so they can contract local services where someone is doing it as their job.
Construction and Demolition specialists are needed to repair (or demolish and rebuild) structures.
For many of the people in those categories Haiti will be their first "real" disaster scene. Others may have previous experience and volunteer to help even though their "day job" isn't rebuilding nations after a catastrophic event.
While I agree that people should only go into a disaster area like Haiti as part of an organized recovery effort I don't believe the "Don't go there because you don't work for [insert disaster group]" attitude this post and the grandparent take is at all productive - These organizations do not have the manpower or expertise to do it all themselves.
Just my $3.50 as someone who has gone in after fires and floods to bring skeleton infrastructure up and support further recovery.
/~mikeg
As a woman who can remember the dark days before Roe when pregnant girls "disappeared" out of schools and thousands of desperate women died every year from backalley and coathanger abortions, I know I have to do my part to help abortion rights. Since I'm not a medical professional and can't perform free abortion services myself, I do the next best thing and donate my time at local Planned Parenthood and private abortion clinics. The doctors, nurses and staff are all wonderful, welcoming people, but most of them know next to nothing about computers because the average abortionist is over 60 years old. Increased reporting requirements, insurance mandates, and electronic records means that computers are more important than ever and small abortion clinics have trouble even keeping their computers and networks running and can't afford expensive consultants and medical software.
All this means that you wouldn't believe the smiles on the faces of abortion clinics staffs when I volunteer at their offices. My latest deal is saving them money on software by installing open source wherever I can. I live in a mid-sized mid-western city, and recently redid a local Planned Parenthood network. I replaced their hokey Netgear router with an old Pentium II beige box running OpenBSD 3.3 as a firewall (BEST release of ANY OS for a firewall, IMHO), and I even reinstalled the secretary's Windows 98 PC with Ubuntu 9.04 and OpenOffice and told her it was Windows Vista. (HA!)
So if you want to put your skills to work for the greater good, call your local abortion clinic and tell them you can help with their computers. You won't regret it.
Did he mention a disaster? No. Did he mention Haiti? No.
Your snide comments are not helpful.
The poster wants to volunteer his technical skills abroad in an area with need. I'm sure there are plenty of places in the world who could use some professional expertise. You yourself suggest that he can help at home, but perhaps he'd like the experience to help abroad.
Unless you have an expertise in food distribution/agriculture, medicine, or communication ... you will probably just be excess baggage.
Really? The Peace Corp seems to be very active in building schools, hospitals and other infrastructure. They aren't excess baggage.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
The French have a word for this: it's called a 'congé solidaire' (holiday in solidarity?) which makes it easy to google. I believe the French government actually grants citizens the right to take time off to donate time to support economic development in select countries, so there's an entire mini-industry supporting this in France. If by some chance you speak French, you might try googling congé solidaire and see what comes up. I see Routard has a site about this kind of vacation. I know there are also Swedish companies that specialize in volunteer holidays abroad.
English-language companies also exist that do this kind of thing. VSO in England is a large organization that arranges volunteer work abroad for non-experts (I mean people who don't have local knowledge or an expertise in charitable work). Instead of looking for someone who specializes in working holidays, which may in some cases be more good intention than good works, try talking to a volunteer abroad organization. You will be far from the only ones asking about short stints. Maybe you can negotiate something with them. You might be able to use your skills or you might not, only someone who has more specific knowledge about volunteer abroad programs will be able to tell you. Keep in mind that there's often a sunk cost for sending out volunteers, which is why there's more demand for people willing to make longer-term commitments.
I haven't heard of any companies that specifically cater to the technically inclined.
I'd rather be robbed by a poor man than robbed by a rich man. At least the poor man has an excuse, and a reason. The rich man has neither.
If I'm going to be exploited, I'd rather not be exploited by a Ferengi.
Free Martian Whores!
Serving others from the heart is far more rewarding to the soul than anything else I know.
The International Association for Human Values is a large organization actively doing phenomenal work around the globe with very little overhead, but they are little-known in the US. Disaster relief, youth empowerment, forums for peace dialogs, community developemnt, environmental action, and rural education are some of the focuses of the organization.
I've volunteered for a few organizations, and I've found that IAHV volunteers are consistently not only driven and hard-working, but also peaceful and wonderful to work with during the day.
http://iahv.org/get_involved.asp
http://iahv.org/show_address.asp?country=United%20States
(flash warning... some pages work fine with gnash)
What do you get more of, the more you give away? Love.
Whatever you decide to do, I hope you have a wonderful time.
Some people climb mountains on vacation. They're out in the cold, possibly getting rained or snowed on, sleeping on hard ground, straining muscles and risking serious injury. Yet still they call it their 'vacation', and no one argues.
This guy doesn't mind the type of work he does, and he likes the idea of helping other people in his free time. While he's doing it, he's going to visit novel places in other countries, discover new cuisines, learn about different cultures and lifestyles, and have a whole office full of new friends who are glad to see him and want to show him a good time. The locals will know the good places to eat, the fun things to do, the little hidden sights and pleasures that you can't find in your travel guide. He can pull CAT5 during the day, then walk outside and drink rum while the sun sets over the beach.
What's so bad about that? Different people relax in different ways.
~Idarubicin
Dude,
You're posting on Slashdot. You're a D&D rulebook lawyer. Your sig is a Tolkien quote.
Did you think you were just a little nerdly?
Don't feel bad. I myself actually own a Star Trek collectible. You're in a safe place here, among friends. :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
And why does wanting to enjoy your life and the fruits of your labor make someone evil?
It doesn't, unless that's ALL you want to do. We have two words for people who care only for their own needs and no one elses; infants and sociopaths.
Here, let me look these up for you:
compassion
empathy
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
What you're referring to as collectivism, I usually call family, friendship and community.
Have you ever noticed how lonely and miserable it gets in your Randian paradise?
Take two worlds, one in which everyone looks out for each other, and the other in which everyone looks out for themselves. I don't know what their official designations would be, but the common nicknames for them would be "Heaven" and "Hell."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."