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Ask Slashdot: Geeky Volunteer Work?
An anonymous reader writes "I plan to be in-between jobs for 1-2 months later this year and use part of this time to do some volunteer work in Africa. My naive question: what to do and where to go? Is it possible to make good use of the skill-set of a typical geek? Any interesting projects worth supporting on-site?"
There are plenty of good projects wherever you happen to be right now. Schools (public and private), libraries, senior centers are all always looking for volunteers to help make their environments better places for those who use their services. Sure its not as impressive as going overseas to do some work, but it also has many headaches that the overseas visit will not.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
The best work I ever did in Africa (Kenya, Ghana, Zambia) and Haiti was to train local staff to do the job I was being asked to do. When it comes down to it, a system that can't be maintained shouldn't be set up in the first place. Whatever you do, train someone there to keep it up.
I spent three years in Africa (South Africa and Zambia) doing geek work. Here's the deal, you can't do something "important" in one or two months, so don't plan on being the knight in shining armor coming in to help. However, if you go in with an attitude of humility and a desire to learn, you can be helpful.
My suggestion, based on my experience: Most of the NGOs I worked with had crappy old donated computers running some pirated version of XP, full of viruses. You could be a great help by finding a local (i.e. Africa run, not international aid agency) NGO and helping to clean up their computers, install anti-virus, get their printers working etc etc. Good computer support is in short supply, so folks do what they can but it's not easy. If you are thinking about this, also bring along a box of CDs or DVDs with latest versions of software, because getting on the internet is either impossible or slow or really expensive, so doing on-line updates is a pain.
I tried teaching people to use Ubuntu with limited success, everyone wanted Windows with Word, because that was what everyone else was using, and that was what was "known". It's a good solution, but without support falls down like everything else.
Good luck, let us know how it all worked out.