This post is targeted at universities and student entrepreneurship. I could see some relevance to PSA. We often talk about how PSA could get more help, and how much money it takes to get people involved. The online platform described in the post, offers students a “piece of the action”. I wonder if PSA could offer volunteers a ROI, as a non-profit.
The online platform would inform, engage and involve.
- Inform Resources and information centralized; easily discoverable
- Engage A collaborative network of students and faculty that guides, motivates and supports
- Involve Once informed and engaged, students are given a seamless path to getting involved—writing the business plan, attending workshops, raising funding!
Your post ties into two things that caught my eye today:
1) Chicago announced a curated Kickstarter page with funding projects that we vetted by a local non-profit.- http://chicagoist.com/2013/04/10/chicago_launches_a_curated_kickstar.php
One of the projects listed was to train Inner-city kids to work with Raseberry Pi computers and program web sites – http://chicagoist.com/2013/04/10/chicago_launches_a_curated_kickstar.php
2) John sent me an article about Code America, which Las Cruces should apply to get a fellow or two assigned here. I believe the output of Code America are “open source” programs that can be applied in other locales.
Seems like PSA might be able to tie the two concepts together to further its interests, perhaps riding the coat-tail of broader City/County interests/
I’ll post that Code America article from Time to get it into our searchable database…in the next day or two.
For now, one can read it in our library here:
https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Peace-Corps-For-Geeks-Printout-TIME.pdf
Gary,
Checked out the Englewood codes project to build websites, compete in team competition, and redecorate a local organization website. All sounds very motivating and as you mentioned furthers community interests. Also, checked out Code America sent by John. We all seem to be in alignment in our choice of articles today.