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2009/11/18: Planning Day of Service, January 18, 2010

Submitted by hallman on Wed, 01/27/2010 - 8:47pm

Planning Day of Service, January 18, 2010: Followup from October 21, 2009 Meetup.

Location: United Way of the Greater Triangle, 2400 Perimeter Park Drive, Suite 150, Morrisville

Leader: Shelly Bowers, United Way of the Greater Triangle

Website: http://www.meetup.com/NCTech4Good/calendar/11741619/

Notes and discussion:

There were about 8 people.

Migdalia Santos, United Way of the Greater Triangle joined us to help us with project definition and using United Way's Volunteer Solutions.

After the October 21 meeting, Judy and Shelly posted three volunteer opportunities for agency NCTech4Good in Volunteer Solutions.

  • One to define this NCTech4Good project.
  • One for an alternative school for middle-thru-high school students that had a computer lab that was unusable because the computers ran too slow. NCTech4Good volunteers responded to that request for help and this project is completed.
  • Triangle Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service (Monday, January 18th, 2010)

Several people have registered as NCTech4Good volunteers, viewed the projects, and a couple have connected to our projects, so Volunteer Solutions looks like it will work well for matching volunteers with needs.

The plan from the October meeting was to offer Tech Assessments. We were going to select tools, recruit nonprofits that need help, recruit volunteers, train volunteers, and conduct Tech Assessments. We talked briefly about this plan and decided it was too ambitious, especially given the time of year.

After much discussion, we decided on a two-pronged approach:

  1. A pilot project to clean up the computers in two computer labs on or around Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Monday, January 18th, 2010), depending on whether or not we can access the computers on MLK Day. While cleanup programs are running, talk with staff and try to get an idea of how they use computers and other tech needs they have. Document the work done. Add "nonprofit computer lab cleanup" as an ongoing service for NCTech4Good folks, working with other volunteers. Once we have a well established computer cleanup service, we can repeat the process with another service.
  2. An ongoing project for NCTech4Good volunteers to act as liaison between nonprofits and volunteers, identifying and defining specific projects, adding them to Volunteer Solutions, finding volunteers to do the work, providing training with training materials, documenting what was done, project status, and evaluations at completion. Each project will need documentation/PR people as well as Tech people.

For the MLK Day project:

  • Shelly will work with Migdalia to find to computer labs in nonprofits that are having problems with their computers.
  • NCTech4Good will provide teams to work on the computers on MLK Day or sometime close to that day, depending on the preferences of the nonprofits. Each team will have a leader and at least one documentation/PR person who will record the problems discovered and how they were resolved, report back on how well the project went, and perhaps develop resource materials that could be used by other computer labs. It is important that we provide the nonprofits with skills to maintain their own machines. It is also important to provide feedback within our group and to future users of our services on our accomplishments. And, of couse, each team will have people to do the work, following the instructions of the leader. No skills are required of the workers. The project provides learning opportunities for volunteers along with helpful services.
  • If equipment needs replacement or upgrading, team members will return to the computer labs to complete the work as soon as possible. United Way's Teaming 4 Technology (T4T) program can probably provide any equipment that is needed. If purchases are required, requests can be made to Public Information Network, Inc./RTPnet through Judy.
  • The MLK Day project replaces the regular January Meetup. There will not be a Meetup January 20.

We do not want to have to have face-to-face meetings in order to get this work done, and we do not want to use the NCTech4Good Meetup email list for project communication.

Judy has created a special interest group for NCTech4Good projects. Go to NCCommunities.org/NCTech4Good-team, register on the website and join the group. To post a message, click Group post and create the post. Posts email to group members and are added to the page blog style -- most recent first.

The NCCommunities site can also be used in other ways to support NCTech4Good projects. Materials that are developed can be added to the Resources collection. Forums are also available. The website is build using Drupal and CiviCRM, which has a wide range of add-on capabilities. Let Judy know if you have suggestions for improving the site.