Why SocIT?
There are a lot of social service organizations that do tremendous work to benefit society. These are charitable organizations, NGOs, sometimes just a group of people - all focused on their cause and how they can support the people they are working to help. Many (perhaps, most) of these organizations could benefit by harnessing the power of IT to help them. We could do very simple things like setting up a portal, helping them get a social media presence, helping them raise funds (through online mechanisms, for example), communicating their work and accomplishments to the world, and more. None of these are really big things by themselves but can make a big difference to how their work is perceived and supported. There could be areas where people might need technological solutions to their problems, beyond just creating an online presence. This could range from simple aspects of managing volunteers, beneficiaries, and so on or more complex things like figuring out how to count students who need a mid-day meal on a given day in a school.
SocIT (pronounced like "society") is an initiative started to bring the benefit of IT, in all its myriad manifestations, to those organizations who help society. It has, so far, helped a school set up a website, a non-profit group with their portal (both of which continue to be used today). It had also helped the Rotary teams with a public portal where info on essentials (oxygen, medicines etc) availability (via crowdsourcing) during the height of the COVID-19 trauma as well as another portal to manage patient registration and track them while waiting for BBMP (in Bengaluru) to assign them beds in a hospital. These two have been subsequently wound up as their purpose was served.
There are regular requirements, small and big, that come our way and the only way to tackle them is through a network of volunteers who can all do their bit to help society with their skills. Contributing with one's skills can be a much more powerful, and effective, way to help society than merely donating money and this group has been created to connect all those who share a similar perspective.
At the moment (with just a few weeks for 2021 to end), this registration is being opened up to see how many people are interested. Starting early in 2022, active projects will become available for people to contribute to. There are a ton of skills that are needed, just a few of which are listed in the registration form. If you have any of those or somethign that's not listed there but are interested in doing your bit, please do register.
Much of the work can be done remotely, and indeed, if the last year or so has taught us anything it is that remote work is mainstream. Maybe you encounter needs from society that you think this group can solve and we can add them to our list to take up.
This volunteering is not just to help society and I do sincerely believe that it will actually make us better in ways we can't fathom. Even though these activities are unpaid and pro bono we will come away richer from each of these activities. I look forward to working with others to make this happen.
