We tend to improve ourselves each and every single day for the better
from learning libraries, frameworks, programming languages to doing them and open sourcing them, our role as developers have benefited the world good enough that we have a good amount of libraries, frameworks, programming languages for almost any use case
but the one part that we haven't focus on that much is the act of writing code for social good
what do you mean by 'writing code for social good?'
writing code for social good is a vary vast topic since anything that helps society is considered social good
but what social good I mean in this post?
the social good that I am focusing on is helping the people in need but this time with code
that varies from creating a code teaching chatbot to creating a small site for a small NGO that would save that money for something useful
not everyone has the luxury to offer coding lessons or to hire a developer to do for them a website
so, why not helping anyone in need if we have the ability to do so?
so what do I get in return?
this is the fun part: nothing! 🙂
don't get me wrong here, it is not modern day slavery or anything but you shouldn't expect to get anything in return
getting something in return eliminates the part of 'doing it for social good', it should be something that comes from the heart
from that small site or app that you have developed, you could possibly change someone's life to the better
when you give something, the world tends to give you something back
now I mentioned previously that you shouldn't expect anything at all
and that what you suppose to do, but the universe might have a different route for you
say that you created a small site for an NGO and they loved it
pass forward 3 months later and you get referred to a freelance gig or referred to a job because of that NGO
that wouldn't be bad at all right?
we all say that we want to contribute something for the world
everyday, we tend to wish that we could improve the world around us by contributing
as we contribute more, we feel like we are doing something bigger than us and becoming an active part of society
Wordpress do_action
each year, Wordpress do a charity hackathon called 'do_action' https://doaction.org/
do_action is a hackathon that can be hosted anywhere in the world, where local wordpress developers develop a site for a non profit organization (NGO) in just one day
the idea behind of it is to use wordpress for social good, even though wordpress is open source and some might use it for making money from freelancing
why not use this set of skills and develop something that would help someone?
the community behind wordpress have given you a platform that you can benefit from, why not benefit someone else with it?
how can we contribute?
there are many ways that you can help benefit the community
while coding something for social good is the goal here, not everyone can contribute with code
here are some suggestions on how you can contribute if you are not a technical person:
- donate money (if available) to make a certain project to keep it up and running
- offer suggestions and feedback (something like a pull request on Github)
- spread the word, maybe you can't help but someone else can
and here are some suggestions on how to contribute as a technical person:
- find a project you like and create something that would help benefit this project to the better
offer suggestions and feedback
answer pull requests that would remove some bulk of pull requests for the maintainer of the project
this year, we will also participate in a do_action
I'm part of a wordpress community in Beirut,Lebanon called wpBeirut and we have been doing do_actions for 2 years in a row
2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThBur2vbBgw
2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2squp0ExmEE
and this year (2019) we will also contribute as well by providing
we will gather our top local wordpress developers and develop websites for NGOs in one day
if you wish to help us
we have created an opencollective page so that if you wish to help https://opencollective.com/do_action-beirut
and if you wish to help by providing a premade template/plugin that you have developed on the side and wish to make a good use of it for social good, feel free to reach us out on github as well https://github.com/wpbeirut
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