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Ask HN: Anyone interested in working on projects related to social causes?

5 points by bsldld ↗ HN
I am a software engineer and want to form a group of like-minded software engineers to work on something that will make a difference on a massive scale (not immediately, but over a period). Moonshot ideas are not off-limits.

I have two ideas, but open to ideas from other engineers. We can bounce ideas across and decide what to work on as a group.

Anyone interested to work on new social impact open source project?

7 comments

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edent
I've seen a number of similar project and, without exception, they all fail if they attempt to do something new.

I'd strongly advise you to find groups who are already working on these problems and have built up deep knowledge about the issues which are faced.

There's no point going "I'm going to build an app to cure HIV!" if you haven't spoken to all the charities, health groups, and people who are already deeply immersed in this space. They already know which approaches won't work, which organisations have the best networks for promoting solutions, and who to go to for more advice.

So, my advice is don't brainstorm with engineers. Go out in to your community and find people who have an existing need which isn't being met.

Good luck!

solardev
What exactly are you pitching? Ideas are a dime a dozen but execution is much harder. The world has a ton of nonprofits but most of them aren't very effective. Most humans aren't very effective.
bsldld
> What exactly are you pitching?

Some people have ideas to fix something within the society that they think can be better. Engineers also have some such ideas. I would like to get together engineers so that we can work together on some meaningful project with an aim to solve some social problems.

> The world has a ton of nonprofits

Can be a social enterprise?

> Most humans aren't very effective.

If that is the argument for any new idea/venture, then nothing will ever get done.

solardev
I'm saying that there are already many worthwhile projects out there, and not enough time or money to support them all. Rather than asking in vague terms to make the world better, can you be more specific? What projects are you thinking of, what problems are you trying to solve, what skills do you need, etc.?

Your ask is too vague to evaluate. The signal to noise ratio of these things is incredibly low. Maybe your project is different in some significant way. But I can't tell what you're looking for.

bsldld
I have two ideas. But, as I said in my post, I am open to ideas from others. Here are my two ideas:

0. Making education funding sustainable without putting student into debt. Businesses will directly fund education as they are one of the major beneficiaries.

1. Creating online, live and interactive multi-lingual dictionaries to help reduce language barrier.

solardev
1 is an awesome idea and I'd love to hear more.

2 is wiktionary, I think?

bsldld
> 1 is an awesome idea and I'd love to hear more.

Basic idea is to use a federated blockchain platform to form a graph of students, teachers, employers and relevant government agencies. When a student gets a job and starts earning income, a percentage of the salary paid via the employer is sent to the education institution and teachers related to that student. More details are here: https://loan-free-ed.neocities.org

> 2 is wiktionary, I think?

Not exactly Wiktionary. Wiktionary is a static type of dictionary. What I envision is a more dynamic multi-lingual dictionary where there is link for a word from one language to other languages. That way users will be able to explore other languages and learn.