Charity Software development shops?

[Stan Witkowski]

At 04:11 PM 8/25/04 -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:
>Does anyone on the list know of a charity software
>development shop that will do some teaching in the
>G.T.A.?



Charities are not set up for this. Years ago, after
losing my father and family friends to cancer, I went around to
every organization I could find in Toronto and offered my services
as a free programmer. I also offered to do ANYTHING that even touched on
computers for free. By then I had worked in the computer field
in Toronto for around 20 years.


The collective response from about a dozen organizations was  "Huh?!".


They didn't know what to do with me, and in the end, despite some
prodding from keen-and-eager me, all decided to do nothing.

Princess Margaret was the worst: we ended up in a shouting match
when they got it into their heads that I was trying to sneak in and
get a full-time job.

It was a surreal experience.

It was the only time in my life that I caught myself shouting,
"I'M NOT HERE FOR A DAMN JOB!!!"  within a few minutes of
coming in and offering to work for free.

After I reeled out of the hospital I had to sit down for a
bit while the "moment" passed.


(It was the kind of thing screenplay writers collect and file
  under "weird moments for indie films"...)




However:

look into this:


http://www.boardmatch.org/

Join the Board of Directors of a community non-profit organization
as a contributing Director.


[     I.E. You don't just attend Board meetings - you work as
       an unpaid volunteer using your skill set.
       From what I've seen they mostly need people in the
       areas of: fundraising and information technology. -Stan. ]


Board candidates:
     - contribute expertise
     - expand skills
     - network

Qualifications  - Participating organizations are looking
for individuals with the following characteristics:

     * Interest and enthusiasm
     * Youth to retirement age
     * Diversity in ethnicity and life experience
     * Post-secondary degree (preferred)
     * 2-3 years of work experience (preferred)
     * Accounting, engineering, finance, human resources, law,
       information technology, marketing, public relations,
       operations, sales, services etc.
     * Live or work in Greater Toronto Area

=============================================================

Stan.



--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml