Daily Archives: 1 May 2013

Volunteer online ever? I’d love your photo!

jayne at computer 2002Do you help, or have you ever helped, a nonprofit organization, non-governmental organization (NGO), grassroots organization, school, or other civil society organization (CSO) via a computer or smart phone, as a volunteer (that means unpaid, NOT as a paid employee or paid consultant)?

Maybe you volunteered onsite as well, but at least sometimes, you also volunteered offsite, designing a database or graphic or web site, editing a document, translating text, offering professional advice, moderating an online discussion group, tagging photos or mentoring someone.

Maybe it was called virtual volunteering. Or online mentoring. Or cyber service. Or microvolunteering. Or crowd-sourcing. Or cloud computing volunteering. Or Internet-mediated service.

Or maybe it was just called volunteering, plain and simple.

Whatever it was – or wasn’t – called, I want your photo! Why? I want to feature such photos at this Flickr Group, “Online Volunteers.”

Photos of yourself with a computer or tablet or smart phone would be great, but so would a photo of you with your dog. Or your kids. What’s most important is that you don’t just submit a photo; you also should describe what you do as an online volunteer, including either the name or a description of the organization(s) you support.

ALSO, please tag your photo “online volunteer” (use quotes in the tagging process).

Submit the photos directly to the Flickr group for online volunteers– which means you will need a Yahoo ID. If you don’t already have such, and don’t want one, you can send ONE photo to me, via email, however, please clearly note in your email who you are, why you are sending the photo, etc.; blank emails, or those with sketchy descriptions, will be discarded without viewing (to protect myself from computer viruses). Photos that don’t clearly represent online volunteers will be rejected – that’s why your description is SO important.

Please share this message to volunteers you work with, or anyone you think might be interested.

Goal: to show the diversity of online volunteers out there. The practice of online volunteering is more than 30 years old. I want to show just what a HUGE group of people volunteer online, and have been doing so for a long while now!

Looking forward to your photos!