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Ask HN: How to help aid agencies as a software engineer

2 points by pvorb ↗ HN
Do any of you have advice or experience on how to support international aid agencies by working as a software engineer?

I'm already donating regularly to organizations like UNICEF and Médecins Sans Frontières.

What else can I do in the form of voluntary work?

I already searched for something like this but it led nowhere.

3 comments

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brudgers
Supervising and organizing volunteers is time consuming. For something like software engineering, vetting potential volunteers would also be a huge undertaking. Organizations are typically better served by contracting out important projects or having regular staff handle important work that requires brain power. Volunteers are not reliably committed over the long term to the degree employees and contractors are.

Maybe start small and volunteer at a local homeless shelter or food bank or hospital doing whatever needs doing irrespective of it being software engineering.

pvorb
Yeah, I was already thinking about something like that. The intention behind my question was to use what I'm really good at.
brudgers
I know. It’s not that software engineering can’t support organizations like those. It’s by the time it is possible to articulate a request for proposals, the distinguishing feature is relationships more than competence because there is not a shortage of competence at the scale the organizations operate. The “service market” is almost certainly liquid.