Volunteering opportunities

Posted by sangguine on Thursday May 15, 2008 @09:34AM
from the self-post dept.

I live in Manhattan. I have been thinking if I can teach how to hack to teenagers or children. I am certainly not a great hacker, but I would like to show what I know and learn from young hackers. And plus, I would like to get more involved in the community. Do you know any organization that I can get involved in? Or do you know what the best way to find this kind of opportunity?

Thanks.

( 14 comments | 14 points | on HN )

Re:Volunteering opportunities by aggieben on Thursday May 15, 2008 @11:20AM (#190570)

I made my own opportunity: I just started tutoring. I made an announcement in my church's newsletter, and I told people in person. People come, we talk math, and that's it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Volunteering opportunities by xlnt on Thursday May 15, 2008 @11:40AM (#190590)

What? Religion helped something? No way!!!11

edit: fine, be that way. i dare you to downvote this to -666. if you don't get all the way there though i'm gonna sue you.

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by marijn on Thursday May 15, 2008 @02:38PM (#190751)

Okay, help me out here, I really wanted to down-vote you but I have no downward arrows. Yet your negative score suggests that there really is a down-vote feature. Do only people with lots of karma get to downvote?

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by xlnt on Thursday May 15, 2008 @02:51PM (#190763)

you only need about 20 or 25 karma to downvote. i upvoted you to help you on your way. please ignore my helpfulness and downvote my comment above anyway -- 16 people can't be wrong. pretty clearly i'm a troll who should probably be banned from news.yc.

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by npk on Thursday May 15, 2008 @11:12AM (#190557)

I volunteered for a local team of the US FIRST Robotics Competition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST_Robotics_Competition). I felt especially proud, as my team was all girls.

My suggestion is go for quality rather than quantity, unless policy-level work excites you.

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by bigtoga on Thursday May 15, 2008 @10:00AM (#190484)

How about starting off by telling us what you've done already (i.e. where you've already spent hours looking) to find such an oppty and then let us offer suggestions outside of what you've already done?

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by aitoehigie on Thursday May 15, 2008 @10:10AM (#190492)

There is a huge void that you can fill with your skills here in Africa,that is if you are interested. I believe you will make more impact and touch lives than in the US,which i believe is saturated?

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by Poleris on Thursday May 15, 2008 @10:16AM (#190495)

You sound like you have experience with this. Do you have more information?

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by marijn on Thursday May 15, 2008 @02:36PM (#190749)

Seconded. Africa is a bit of an opaque, far-off place to a lot of us, but the idea of going over there and sharing some skills definitely appeals to me.

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by bk1 on Friday May 16, 2008 @12:45AM (#191457)

A lot of aid money flows into Africa so monitoring and evaluation is a big problem.

Our charity www.rose-international.org is looking to have a basic web app developed that will allow local m&e of donor money that is used to pay for school fees (Tuition is charged for public schools here, and many kids are orphaned and have no way of paying the school fees).

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by Poleris on Friday May 16, 2008 @12:53AM (#191460)

I also wanted to reach out. I am working for an NGO in Zambia (http://www.project-educate.org) and we have a couple of projects that could use talented coders. One for example, would be a web application similar to MIT's OpenCourseWare, except designed for Zambian students.

We also aren't shy about sending people to Zambia to help out. If you're curious, or want more information, my email is in my profile. I'd love to hear from you.

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by aitoehigie on Friday May 16, 2008 @03:49AM (#191581)

if you are interested in coming to africa, and volunteering reach me at aitoehigie [at] gmail.com

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by sutro on Thursday May 15, 2008 @03:09PM (#190787)

CharityFocus is a tech-centric philanthropic organization that I can highly recommend:

http://charityfocus.org

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Re:Volunteering opportunities by omarseyal on Thursday May 15, 2008 @11:19AM (#190568)

taproot should have a new york branch. they're not the most "hacker-focused" outfit, but i've enjoyed my work with them. (fyi - this is not a teaching organization, it's more of a mechanism for lending your hacker skills to non-profits etc.)

(http://www.taprootfoundation.org/)

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