Digital Volunteering, how can you help online?
Whenever we hear the term volunteering we think of using our energy or resource to help others. Volunteering is mainly for humanitarian purposes. Generally, when talking about volunteering or social work, people think about helping each other or giving food, etc by visiting the places. But during the time of the pandemic, while we are at home how can we volunteer? How do we do something from home that has a social impact?
Technology is a very important thing in our life and today we use it very often while we are at home during this pandemic. Around the world, any social or humanitarian work is also powered by technology. So, you can use your computational resources to help in those works as well. So let’s get to know how can you involve in such activities. (Also, all the underlined words are the link to the program website, so do visit them if you really want to involve in it.)
Crowdsourcing
A big work might take a lot of time and effort to do by a single person but if it is divided and worked out by many people it will be faster and easier to complete. This is what concept of crowdsourcing is actually based upon. One of such crowdsourcing program activity is known as the Local Guide program in Google Maps. In this program, you have to name places around you. You can add information about places you have visited and know well. Even if individual people add information, collectively with the power of crowdsourcing 1000s of people will be adding their knowledge to the Google map which will help us in navigating properly. There are many such projects in which you can crowdsource and add your efforts.
Citizen Science
Researches in different fields need a large amount of data to get a meaningful result. Again, with the help of crowdsourcing, you can be part of people who will help to get those data and contribute to important researches. It can be in the field of important science or also in social causes. Some important citizen science programs that I am familiar with are as follows:
Mapping:
Before any disaster occurs, we have to plan for preparedness. A map of the targeted place is a very important thing in planning and logistics. With the help of the map, we can get knowledge about road networks, health infrastructure, water resources, etc in that place. This helps us in proper resource management. Even during the Barpak earthquake maps were used to know which roads are passable, which patch of land could serve as a helipad or drop zone, what are navigable routes to supply aid by foreign humanitarian organizations? So maps are an essential item that can help in social causes. Just within the 48 hours after earthquake struck, 3,199 miles of roads and 110,681 new buildings were added to digital map platform of OpenStreetMap. That is the power of crowdsourcing.
OpenStreetMap is an openly editable, crowdsourced collection of geographical information. While staying at home, you can add buildings and roads or other famous places that you know of your neighborhood from your computer. Also, you can add similar features to places you haven’t been at all by the process known as remote mapping. Your time and contribution can help improve the state of the map and provide key information that might be needed in the time like disasters for relief efforts. Visit OSM Nepal if you want to contribute to Nepal.
Bird watching:
While staying at home you might have started to count things like number of pages in copy or even grains in rice haha. But hey, you can count birds which is far more enjoyable. Bird counting helps to create map of bird species in a particular region. This helps in collecting more knowledge about local biodiversity. Your contributions in this program are significant as birds are important part of the food chain and they need to be studied.
In this program you have to simply stay in your balcony or backyard and observe. Once, you see any bird you have to record date, time, species and location of each bird. Then, you just have to submit the data. That’s it! Your data will be used by ornithologists to analyze global bird population. Visit birdcount.org for more information about this program.
Asteroid Search
Yes asteroid, that space rock which is shiny as it passes from earth, you can observe that as well and identify them from your own computer. There are way too many asteroids, so scientists alone cannot identify on their own, so you can help them observe the asteroids. But why do asteroids need to be watched? Because asteroids are dangerous and if they ever hit the earth it may also lead to mass extinction. So, we need to constantly monitor their threats.
You can get telescope data from organization called International Asteroid Search Collaboration (IASC) with which you can look into open sky and report if you see any asteroid. You get to work with real astronomical data and this program is also supported by NASA. And the fun thing is you can name the asteroid by yourself if you are able to find it. You can take part in this program from Nepal by contacting Nepal Astronomical Society.
Covid Connect Nepal
Covid Connect Nepal is a program where the members gather pieces of information about the availability of hospital beds, oxygen supply, and concentrators. They act as a bridge between various parties like hospitals, oxygen supply places, pharmacies, blood banks, and patients. They can help people in need so that they don’t panic while trying to handle everything s/he needs.
Young and interested people can volunteer in this program where you have to contact different people to get status quo as well as help victims. You try to update the information as well as manage the resource as possible. You can learn more about them from their page कोभिड Connect Nepal | Facebook.
Conclusion
There are many interesting things in digital space in which you can volunteer your time into. When you are bored, but you have internet and mobile or laptop then you can do such activities. These programs not only affect you but also have social impact in other people’s life. There are other advanced programs like contributing in Open Source Software, bug bounties as well as other Citizen Science program that you can get into according to expertise. But no matter how big or small if it, if your effort can change other people’s life then I think such things are definitely worth trying in your life.
