Ask HN: How can I use my developer skills for good?

I have been thinking about this for a while and a recent post[1] brought the question back:

How can I use my developer skills for good?

The post was about the elephant population in Africa and in general I have a strong interest in preserving nature. Are there organisations or open source projects that I can contribute to that have proven to be effective in this regard? I spend my increasingly scarcer free time on different hobby projects, but nothing that will do much good to the world. Maybe there are some ways in which I can change that.

Does anyone know of any organisations or projects that could always use some very part-time input from experienced developers?

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16471579

4 comments

[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 19.3 ms ] thread

FroshKiller 8y ago ↗

Donations are more valuable than part-time development. You're not gonna write some Python script that does for them what they could have done with a $500 check instead. Troubleshooting their back-office CSV imports won't pay for fences to keep poachers off reserves.

mosselman 8y ago ↗

Yes of course, I know that and I already donate to good causes. I am just looking for a win-win situation where I get to have fun developing something that helps out people to preserve nature or help out people.

atticusberg 8y ago ↗

If you’re looking to to do pro bono part time work you could consider becoming a coding instructor for a local learn to code program in your area.

If you’re interested in doing work for international NGOs you could also look for a full time role at one of those organizations

benaduggan 8y ago ↗

I contribute in my free time to an organization called Love Justice (Previously known as Tiny Hands International). They're focusing on sex trafficking prevention globally, and we're currently struggling to keep the tech up with the organization as they are scaling. We initially started off deving just for the country of Nepal, but the organization is now expanding to over a dozen countries and we are working primarily on adapting the web app to support that.

They have some really cool stuff in the road map that we just don't have enough volunteers to keep up. Trying to use facial recognition to identify traffickers and discover repeat offenders, trying to map out trafficking networks as they travel through various countries, etc. But full disclosure, the cool stuff isn't really in active development right now as we're addressing other issues.

You can check out our repos here: https://github.com/Tiny-Hands - Currently we're using Django for the web server and AngularJS for the client. Hit me up if you'd want to get involved or learn more! (my email is my username with gmail)