For the last 18 months, I have been co-hosting a User Group in Brisbane called Brisbane Hacks for Humanity. This group is a technology oriented social and humanitarian endeavour that helps local communities, and participates in global projects. There are a few projects or organisations we have been in contact with that I would like to introduce here.
Human Ventures is a design agency that uses art as a medium for integrating and supporting youths in difficult situations as well as indigenous communities. We have had a few encounters with Human Ventures, the latest being discussions around providing mobile access to local digital stories.
Little Scientists is a newly created Australian organisation aiming at teaching science to very young children by touching their imagination through tailored experiments and games. My colleague Mark Ryall created this brand new website using WordPress and a fair bit of inventivness (note the wwww :)).
We have met Andrew Mahar from WithOneSeed at one of our last meetup. Andrew is a very passionate social activist currently involved in social projects in East Timor, preaching environmental sustainability through responsible agroforestry practices. We are currently looking at two potential projects we could collaborate on: a carbone emissions awareness & donations mobil app, and a free open-source cloud-based ERP for NGOs.
ThoughtWorks just launched a new internal program called HSP (Humanitarian Software Program). It is a platform and a structure for the ThoughtWorks SIP (Social Impact Program) ecosystem to tackle global challenges of our world, using really cool technology. Under the HSP umbrella, ThoughtWorkers and others have helped developing solutions such as RapidFTR, OpenMRS, and Mifos.
Corsamore 