[Rubyforchange-talk] Coding for change

[Chad Fowler]

On 8/13/07, Helder Ribeiro <helder at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey, guys!
>
> I'm really interested in joining this group of people who want to do
> something for the world with their talents and it's really great to
> see ideas coming up and people willing to do stuff.
>
> And as much as I like the idea of Charity Driven Development (coding
> normal stuff, getting paid and donating the money) - I might even help
> out with that -, I'd also like to see free software projects that are
> *themselves* going to directly benefit suffering people throughout the
> world.
>
> As an example, I've heard about this big complex health management
> software that is geared towards developing countries and is in active
> use in Africa. That's the sort of thing I'd like to work on, or
> something educational, etc., and something that is already in active
> use if I can help it (it's less than ideal coming up with an idea and
> maybe not having the means to actually get people to use it).
>
> Does anyone know what's the name of that medical software (can't find it!)?
>
> Do you know of other projects that are in use in developing countries
> and could use some help?
>
> Do you have any ideas of projects that we could start ourselves and
> that would have that kind of impact?
>
> Thanks for listening, hope we can actually find something we can help
> people with :-)
>

Helder, your sentiments here exactly mirror mine.  My primary goal for
my involvement in this group is to establish a sustainable process for
churning out impactful projects that solve real problems, as opposed
to focusing on fundraising.  Fundraising is also good, and I think we
can do both, but to me the real value in having smart programmers
involved in a cause like this is that we are smart, passionate people
applying our creative and analytical minds to real problems.  There's
a lot more value in that than the financial giving we can and should
also be doing.

Thanks!
Chad