New England GiveCamp - Come Code for Charity
New England GiveCamp (June 11 – 13) is a project I’ve been working on with a number of community members for the past couple of months; the premise is quite simple:
over a weekend get a couple of dozen non-profit organizations together with a bunch of developers, designers, and technical professionals, feed them, have plenty of caffeine on hand, and by the end of the weekend those charitable organizations will have a new or refurbished website, an automated donor tracking system, a database to keep track of volunteers, or some other custom solution that they could neither build in house nor afford to pay someone to create.
Help make a difference - Volunteer today!
Now it’s up to you; come be part of this first ever event in New England. It’s being held from Friday evening, June 11 through Sunday afternoon, June 13th at the New England Research and Development Center (aka NERD) in Cambridge (and you can even stay overnight! well, it is a ‘camp’ after all)
At this point in time we need technical and non-technical volunteers to help the over two-dozen charities that will be on-site at the event. As a technical volunteer you’ll be placed on a team with other volunteers and assigned to a project for one of the non-profit organizations for the duration of the weekend.
In most cases the project will involve creating or revamping a website with the goal of enabling the charity to easily maintain their site on their own. If the letters CMS (content-management system) pop-up in your head, you’d be right on track. Many sites at other GiveCamps have leveraged packages like Sitefinity, Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, etc., and this one will be no exception.
Above all though, this is a technology-neutral event, and it may even provide you an opportunity to get some exposure and experience with other software packages and methodologies.
Whom would you be helping? Keep an eye on the New England GiveCamp site for more details in the coming days, but for starters, here’s some of the organizations that will be participating:
Lawrence Youth Soccer Association, Lawrence MA – an inner city soccer program seeking a website
Acton Latino Family Network, Acton MA – an organization providing outreach to Latino immigrants
RESPOND, Inc., Somerville , MA – the nation’s second oldest domestic violence agency
Critter Connection, Durham CT – a Guinea pig rescue organization
Helping Hands Outreach, Manchester NH –a transitional shelter for substance abusers
Manchester Public Library, Manchester NH – to support their summer reading program for children
Women of Means, Boston MA – providers of free medical care to women and children in homeless and domestic violence shelters
If you have any questions on the event, please contact the New England GiveCamp organizational committee.
Help make a difference - Volunteer today!