Monthly Archives: August 2019

Your favorite non-English resources re: volunteerism or nonprofits?

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I asked this back in 2011, but it’s time to ask it again:

I would like to know YOUR favorite online resources regarding volunteerism / volunteers (especially the support and management of such), nonprofits or NGOs (non-governmental organizations), including Tweeters, in languages OTHER than English.

Spanish, French or German are most desired, but any language – Arabic, Persian Farsi / Dari / Tajik /, Hindi, whatever – would be welcomed.

In short, I’m looking for the Spanish, French, German, Arabic and other non-USA, non-English-language versions of Energize, Inc., of VolunteerMatch, of resources for those that manage volunteers like what I have on my web site, etc.

Please send the name of the resource, the URL of the resource, and a summary of what the resource is – does it focus on volunteer management? On nonprofits / NGOs / charities using the Internet? Or helping organizations recruit volunteers? Or fundraising / resource mobilization? Or any aspect of management? Is it a web site? A database? A Twitter feed?

I have some of these resources already, but I would like to have more. Plus, mine need updating:

I will share what I’ve compiled already and what’s submitted – and is what I’m looking for – on my web site, and announce the page here on my blog, as well as my Twitter feed and my Facebook page.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

Tools for project managers with remote teams

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This article from International Center for Journalists is focused on journalists and editors working with journalists and other contributors remotely, but much of its advice is applicable for nonprofits working with remote staff and remote volunteers (virtual volunteering) – or working with staff you see face-to-face but you need to work with online as well. The article is written by the project manager of Chicas Poderosas, a community of women in media spread across 18 countries in Latin America. 

For instance, when brainstorming a story or a project with your team, she uses remote visual boards like Jamboard. “Jamboard has virtual post it notes, and allows your team to simultaneously create text boxes, write comments and even draw.” Has anyone else used it? What do you think of it?

To keep track of the individual activities in the chart, she uses Trello. Each task is its own card, which can be assigned to a team member, and can include deadlines and alerts. Trello has integrations with other tools such as Google Drive. “In our Chicas Poderosas weekly calls, we update the Trello board, checking up on what each Chica did, and we create and take ownership of new tasks for the next week.” 

She also has good, not-techtool-specific advice like: 

The best tool is not the latest, or the most complex and automated. The best tool is always the one that is more natural for your team, the project and any other involved stakeholders.

If you do find a new tool that you want to implement, always take the time to schedule on-boarding sessions so that your team can practice using it, ask questions and share their challenges. 

Do you use any of the tools she mentions? Do you have other ideas?

And if you want to explore how to involve and support volunteers, whether those volunteers are around the corner or around the world, check out my book with Susan Ellis, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The book is the result of more than 20 years of research and experience regarding virtual volunteering, including online micro volunteering, crowdsourcing, digital volunteering, online mentoring and all the various manifestations of online service. It’s packed with examples from a variety of organizations and details on how virtual volunteering works, how challenges are overcome, and how success is measured. It includes

  • Detailed advice on virtual volunteering assignment, including one-time “Byte-Sized” tasks (micro-volunteering / microtasks), longer-term, higher-responsibility roles and virtual team assignments.
  • A thorough look at various practices for screening and matching volunteers to assignments, with an eye to getting the most capable volunteers into your volunteering ranks and preventing incomplete assignments or burdensome management tasks
  • How to make online volunteer roles accessible and welcoming for a variety, diversity of people

Susan and I wrote The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook in such a way that it would be timeless – as timeless as a book about using computers, laptops, smart phones and other networked devices could be. It is USA-centric but it offers a lot of international perspectives as well.

There’s also a chapter just for online volunteers themselves, which organizations can also use in creating their own materials for online volunteers.

If you read the book, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Good Reads web sites (you can write the same review on all three sites).

UN Digital Cooperation report released

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The age of digital interdependence: Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation has just been released. 

In July 2018 the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) appointed a panel to consider the question of “digital cooperation” – the ways we work together to address the social, ethical, legal and economic impact of digital technologies in order to maximize their benefits and minimize their harm. The Secretary-General asked the panel to consider how digital cooperation can contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the ambitious agenda to protect people and the planet endorsed by 193 UN member states in 2015. He also asked the panel to consider models of digital cooperation to advance the debate surrounding governance in the digital sphere.

The Co-Chairs of the panel are Melinda Gates (USA), representing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jack Ma (China), Executive Chairman of the Alibaba Group. Ex officio members are Amandeep Singh Gill (India) and Jovan Kurbalija (Serbia) of the Secretariat of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation. Members of the panel that contributed to the report include:

  • Mohammed Abdullah Al Gergawi (UAE), Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future, UAE
  • Yuichiro Anzai (Japan), Senior Advisor and Director of Center for Science Information Analysis, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
  • Nikolai Astrup (Norway), Former Minister of International Development, now Minister of Digitalisation, Norway
  • Vinton Cerf (USA), Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
  • Fadi Chehadé (USA), Chairman, Chehadé & Company
  • Sophie Soowon Eom (Republic of Korea), Founder of Adriel AI and Solidware
  • Isabel Guerrero Pulgar (Chile), Executive Director, IMAGO Global Grassroots and Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Marina Kaljurand (Estonia), Chair of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace
  • Bogolo Kenewendo (Botswana), Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Botswana
  • Marina Kolesnik (Russian Federation), senior executive, entrepreneur and WEF Young Global Leader
  • Doris Leuthard (Switzerland), former President and Federal Councillor of the Swiss Confederation, Switzerland
  • Cathy Mulligan (United Kingdom), Visiting Researcher, Imperial College London and Chief Technology Officer of GovTech Labs at University College London
  • Akaliza Keza Ntwari (Rwanda), ICT advocate and entrepreneur
  • Edson Prestes (Brazil), Professor, Institute of Informatics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
  • Kira Radinsky (Israel), Director of Data Science, eBay
  • Nanjira Sambuli (Kenya), Senior Policy Manager, World Wide Web Foundation
  • Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah (Australia), Chief Executive, Oxfam GB
  • Jean Tirole (France), Chairman of the Toulouse School of Economics and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

From the report:

Our dynamic digital world urgently needs improved digital cooperation and that we live in an age of digital interdependence. Such cooperation must be grounded in common human values – such as inclusiveness, respect, human-centredness, human rights, international law, transparency and sustainability. In periods of rapid change and uncertainty such as today, these shared values must be a common light which helps guide us… 

We need to bring far more diverse voices to the table, particularly from developing countries and traditionally marginalised groups, such as women, youth, indigenous people, rural populations and older people…  

The resulting report focuses on three broad sets of interlocking issues, each of which is discussed in one subsequent chapter: 

  • Leaving No One Behind argues that digital technologies will help progress towards the full sweep of the SDGs only if we think more broadly than the important issue of access to the internet and digital technologies
     
  • Individuals, Societies and Digital Technologies underscores the fact that universal human rights apply equally online as offline, but that there is an urgent need to examine how time-honored human rights frameworks and conventions should guide digital cooperation and digital technology.
     
  • Mechanisms for Global Digital Cooperation analyses gaps in the current mechanisms of global digital cooperation, identifies the functions of global digital cooperation needed to address them, and outlines three sets of modalities on how to improve our global digital cooperation architecture – which build on existing structures and arrangements in ways consistent with our shared values and principles.

Some of my observations about the report:

  • I like the three broad sets of interlocking issues.
     
  • I was very pleased to see so much emphasis on countering misinformation and on the need to use online tools to build trust and social cohesion.
     
  • The date of the publication is nowhere to be found on the report. I think it was published in June 2019. 
     
  • The term non-governmental organization (NGO) is never mentioned in the report. Not once.
     
  • Activists nor activism is never mentioned in the report. None once.
     
  • The phrase civil society is used. Does that include the work of NGOs, or activists, including those opposed to government or promoting alternative strategies to those being promoted by more mainstream international NGOs, all of whom mobilize people to engage online as consumers, clients, campaigners, supporters, proponents, opponents of activities by corporations/businesses and the government?
     
  • People with disabilities and their unique needs regarding access digital technologies are lumped in with other marginalized groups, which ignores the unique needs of people different kinds of sight impairments, people with hearing impairments, people with different mobility issues, and a range of other physical and intellectual challenges that people creating online tools do not design for. And there’s no mention that improving accessibility for people with disabilities improves access for EVERYONE. The scant references, lumped in with other marginalized groups, are easy to find: just look for the word “disabilities.” This would have been remedied if the panel had included Sharron Rush (USA), of Knowbility or anyone from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

For the next year or two, this report will be used to justify what any UN initiative does regarding ICT4D – and used to dissuade other proposals, like supporting the needs of human rights activists online, or initiatives that make a centerpiece of promoting accessible web design. And given those ommissions, it’s a mixed bag – a followup is most definitely needed to address this. 

See a list of all United Nations Tech4Good / ICT4D Initiatives to date (yes, I track them, since I was involved with two of them, United Nations Technology Service (UNITeS). and the UN’s Online Volunteering service (formerly NetAid).

Here is the panel’s official web site. You can also follow the initiative on Twitter @UNSGdigicoop.

Also see:

Hosting International Volunteers: A Where-To-Start Guide For Local Organizations

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I’m seeing more and more local organizations – non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, schools – in developing countries posting on sites like Reddit, asking foreign volunteers to travel to their countries and volunteer. These NGOs and others offer no information on whether or not its legal for foreigners to come to the country and volunteer, no information on what they will do to ensure volunteers will be safe, no information on what screening they do of volunteers to ensure safety of volunteers – they just post, “Hey, we help orphans / wildlife / women, and you can come here and help us.”

It’s troubling.

The reality is that it is not ethical nor appropriate for any NGO to recruit foreign volunteers unless they are already involving LOCAL volunteers and have the full endorsement of local people for the work they do, and it is inappropriate for them to recruit foreign volunteers unless they have complete information on assignments, safety, screening, quality control and more.

That said, some NGOs have a legitimate need for foreign volunteers, and this page on my web site is meant to help.

Hosting International Volunteers: A Where-To-Start Guide For Local Organizations provides detailed suggestions for NGOs in developing countries interested in gaining access to foreign volunteers. This is a “getting started” guide, NOT a comprehensive guide: it’s impossible within the boundaries of a simple web page to detail all an organization needs to do to host volunteers from other countries.

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.