Using Technology to make a positive social contribution.
Technology is fun. It’s also an enabler for business and can be used to further humanity’s evolution at an accelerated pace by favoring cultural exchanges and fostering the sharing of ideas.
Today, there are unprecedented ways of connecting like-minded people throughout the world and enabling them to collaborate towards a single vision, or towards a call to action.
I wanted to gather in this post, all the people in Montreal who have been using these technological channels to try and bring about some needed change in the world. So here are the people and projects that I know that have as objective to make a positive social contribution:
1. Gifter.org - Austin Hill and Ben Yoskovitz. A possibly related project is Akoha (previously Project Ojibwe)
Make a wish by dropping a coin in the wishing well and $1 is given to charity. Sponsors provide the funds.
2. Atwater Digital Literacy Project - Miriam Verburg
The Atwater Digital Literacy Project, a project of the Atwater Library, gets kids and community groups using creative web technologies (blogging, audio, video, digital photos) to find new ways to talk about things important to them, and to help them build their communities.
3. île Sans Fil, CivicAccess - Michael Lenczner
ISF provides free wireless hotspots in Montreal and ways for content creators like artists to make their work known online.
CivicAccess:
Welcome to Citizens for Open Access to Civic Information and Data, a group of citizens which believes all levels of government should make civic information and data accessible at no cost in open formats to their citizens. We believe this is necessary to allow citizens to fully participate in the democratic process of an “information society.”
4. Listen To Your Kids - Julien Smith
Listen To Your Kids connects kids that want to share with parents that want to listen.
5. FACIL
FACIL = FACIL pour l’Appropriation Collective de l’Informatique Libre. FACIL educates about and promotes the use of Free computing resources, like free software and open-source software.
6. Homeless Nation - Daniel Cross
The Homeless Nation is Canada’s only website created by and for Homeless Canadians. Through a national network of outreach workers, The Homeless Nation Project is dedicated to providing the tools for homeless Canadians to share their stories, unique philosophies and points of view with other Canadians. As well, this site provides an opportunity for the general public to interact and learn more about Canada’s homeless population. We believe social change is an interactive process, and HomelessNation.org is a means to starting this national dialogue.
7. Yellow Door
The Access Internet Project is three years old! As a now steadily expanding project, we cater to isolated seniors in the downtown area. Our goal is to introduce basic computer and Internet skills to seniors by matching them with a volunteer that meets them directly at their home for one-on-one tutorials.
Thanks to Mat Balez.
If you know of any others or if you are involved, do let us know.
March 12th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
I’d like to highlight an organization that I’ve become involved with as a volunteer: Yellow Door, and specifically their Access Internet program [http://www.yellowdoor.org/accessinternet.html].
Basically, it’s getting out there and teaching elderly people how to use the Internet, with the hopes of relieving some of the widespread isolation and loneliness they experience. It’s putting them in touch with a new world of information (the one we’ve all come to know); one that seems very magical to them.
It’s easy, especially with technology, to think of instruction and adoption in terms of children - the next generation that will come along and improve the world. But at the same time, I think it is a crying shame that we too often forget about the elderly, and they do not get to participate as much as they should/could. That’s why I like the Yellow Door - it’s addressing what I see to be a very real, and growing, need.
March 12th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Hi Mat, thanks for the information.
I agree with you, we forget the elderly too often. Technology can be a fantastic tool to enable them to connect with other people throughout the world and not feel lonely, or simply to express themselves.
I’ll add it to the post.
March 14th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
[…] socially minded are learning to harness this power to incite action in the world.As Josh Nursing pointed out, a lot of these efforts our coming out of Montreal, like Austin Hill’s Gifter and Julien Smith’s […]
March 15th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
[…] was preparing a post about the people and projects using technology for a social cause in Montreal for the Montreal Tech League blog. Along the way, I made three wishes at Gifter.org, the brainchild […]
March 19th, 2007 at 10:22 am
[…] to Montreal, Josh started by listing web services that fosters social changes and Roberto Rocha followed a day later with another post. I am happy they are talking about […]