Help from Home

Resolve International – Eliminating Poverty in Nepal

admin — Fri, 11 May 2012 09:04:31 +0000

UK based Resolve International is a charity that helps the poorest people living in developing countries. Recent work that it has undertaken has been to improve the health, education and social welfare of children, parents and grandparents living in Nepal.
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To raise awareness of their campaign, you can have fun watching a video about young people entertaining local villagers to raise money for a local library in Baglung, Nepal. It is then hoped you will ‘like’ the video and share it amongst your network.
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This simple act will help to raise awareness of child poverty in Nepal.

http://resolveinternational.org/article.php?id=56

April, 2012 Update

admin — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:14:33 +0000

We are proud to announce that we have a new service up and running in the guise of our Free Microvolunteering Consultancy Service. It’s aimed at introducing non profits to the concept of microvolunteering, followed by advice/guidance on creating actual microvolunteering actions themselves. As far as we know, we’re pioneering this service as we believe nobody else is doing this at the moment.

It’s been developed over the past 5 months in collaboration with a young dynamic lady from Romania. She has a wealth of knowledge, enthusiasm and expertise of the microvolunteering arena and we’re really excited that she is running this service under the Help From Home umbrella. Please check out the service – if you’re a non profit or voluntary organisation.

We were in discussion last month with one of the Directors of OSN, a paid TV corporation based in Dubai. She runs a non profit in her spare time and wants to set up a microvolunteering platform for the MENA region (Middle East, North Africa). The discussion originally focused on our Volunteer Anywhere Project, but it soon became apparent that this wasn’t the vehicle that was going to deliver her vision. Ho hum! The bottom line to all of this is that she has been given lots of information from myself to hopefully direct her onto a path that will enable her to set up her own microvolunteering platform. Watch this space!

Speaking of our Volunteer Anywhere Project, we’ve now made our Business Plan and Outline Web Template publicly available for anybody to view and decide whether they would like to collaborate with us. We recognise that we don’t have a business head on our shoulders, so we’d like to see Volunteer Anywhere develop under the skills of a social entrepreneur who has the right skills to deliver it to the market and, if they want, make money from it! Curiously, all we’re interested in this project, is making impact with it.

Till next time.

Slavery Map – Ending Slavery

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:55:15 +0000

The organisation running this project is called Slavery Map and it aims to rid the world of slavery. An estimated 27 million live in captivity today – yet we know about the difficulty of so few of them. Slavery Map aims to change this. If we are aware of these cases it is far easier to put an end to slavery.
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You can participate in this initiative by adding reports of slavery that you’re aware of or have researched, either from your own community or from anywhere in the world. Just sign up, watch the ‘How To’ video and then report an incident.

http://www.slaverymap.org/

RSPB – Postcards That Save The Albatross

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:35:03 +0000

UK based RSPB (The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) runs a scheme to save the albatross, via postcards that inform people how amazing albatrosses are and RSPB’s campaign to save them. If you wish to participate in this scheme, you will be given 5 free ‘Save The Albatross’ postcards to use as you wish, although they hopefully wish you to use them to help their campaign. Obtaining these cards is as easy as filling in a very simple form, although to be eligible to receive the postcards you must be over 18 and a UK resident.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/applications/inforequest/details.aspx

RSPCA – Preventing Animal Cruelty

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:59:50 +0000

The organisation running this scheme is the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), which operates quite a few branches across the United Kingdom. The scheme is based on recruiting volunteers to help out with computer work for these different branches, that may take the form of updating databases, creating and maintaining word processing or compiling spreadsheet documents.
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Each branch of the RSPCA has different requirements and the website provides a handy search facility to discover which branch needs helps in which department. Most of the work can be conducted from a person’s own home within a flexible timeframe, where you will be contributing to RSPCA’s mission to help prevent animal cruelty.

http://www.rspca.org.uk/getinvolved/volunteer/whatcanido/details/-/roleId/1232728002312

Good Egg Project – Pledge an Egg

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:01:16 +0000

The initiative running this scheme is called the Good Egg Project and is dedicated to donating eggs to feed the starving people of America. All you need to do to take part in this scheme is to pledge an egg, which incidentally will be provided at no cost to you via ‘Feeding America’. Your pledge simply consists of providing your name, email and zip code. For every one person who makes this pledge, one egg will be donated to the starving people of America. This is a fantastic scheme, and benefits America greatly. How could you miss such a great opportunity?

http://www.goodeggproject.org/take-the-pledge

Childrens Defense Fund – Protecting Childrens Rights

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:41:41 +0000

The organisation running this is called the Children’s Defense Fund and is a US based operation. The Children’s Defense Fund is a non-profit child support organization that has worked insistently for nearly 40 years to ensure a level playing field for all children in America. This includes protecting children from poverty; abuse and neglect; and ensuring their access to health care and quality education.
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There are various ways for a person to take part in this scheme; one very simple way is to send a message to your member of congress about an experience where you have seen uneven treatment of children. All you have to do is enter a few details into a form; you don’t even have to write your own message if you don’t want to.
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Action Created by Help From Home’s Consultancy Service
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http://www.childrensdefense.org/take-action/online.html

March, 2012 Update

admin — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 20:33:45 +0000

After a lot of dipping in and out of LinkedIn over the years, I finally took the plunge and signed up to it. Not sure how useful it will be to me and HFH, but so far it looks promising-ish. I’ve certainly found out more details about people who I’ve been in occasional dealings with over the past couple of years within the microvolnteering world – and how on earth LinkedIn knows who I have been dealing with, is a complete mystery to me! Anyway, I can see me using LinkedIn to further the microvolunteering concept in a limited way, because like all the other social media tools out there, there’s only so much time you can devote to a particular platform.
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HFH have had a few volunteers sign up to help us out, in the past month – mostly in the ‘Microvolunteer Action Database Article’ role. We are grateful for their help in assisting us to create impact via microvolunteering. However, one person in particular has expressed an interest in volunteering for us and whilst we’ve yet to iron out his niche in HFH, he could be potentially very promising for the promotion of the microvolunteering concept.
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Following on from last months’ entry about a possible collaboration with BrightWorks, it sadly didn’t amount to anything. However, on the bright side, the person who interviewed me from Cognoscere Consulting in connection with the BrightWorks appointment of them (read last months blog for an explanation of this), has stated that he wishes to become involved with HFH in a more personal capacity. At the time of writing the scope of his involvement is still to be thrashed out, but it’s probably going to be in an advisory role, helping us to deliver our ‘Volunteer Anywhere’ project to the market. Watch this space!
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HFH has now almost become an unincorporated association, which means that at last we can start exploring funding avenues that we were previously not eligible to apply for. We just need to get our Constitution signed and a bank account set up and we’re ready to go.
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We’ve also formed a tentative partnership with Give What You’re Good At. They are a UK based org that specialises in matching professionals who want to give their skills on a pro bono basis to charities and social enterprises that need their help for specific, short-term projects, usually upto 5 hours per week. We believe that this is a natural development for microvolunteers to go into, whilst GWYGA believes the actions on HFH serve as ‘taster’ sessions for more short term skilled volunteers. It’s the intention of both of our initiatives to explore further collaborative avenues.
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Til next time.

DigitalKoot – Preserving Finnish Culture

admin — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 15:26:28 +0000

Digitalkoot is a project run by the National Library of Finland and Microtask. The National Library wants to preserve Finnish cultural heritage and make it accessible to everyone. The game consists of analysing words from old Finnish newspapers and identifying mistakes, which greatly increases the accuracy of text-based searches of their archives. You do not need to know the Finnish language to participate.
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There are two versions of the game, one based on where the computer has failed to read a word and one where the word was misread. Each one has a tutorial video explaining how to play.

http://www.digitalkoot.fi/en/splash

IHF – Poverty Education

admin — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:26:47 +0000

The International Humanity Foundation (IHF) has 2 goals:
- to educate the poor and
- to educate the world about the poor
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Although it has centres in Indonesia, Kenya and Thailand, it does offer home based volunteering roles to anybody around the world. Timewise, you can participate for approximately an hour a week on tasks such as sponsor letters, media, accounting, promotional material, website maintenance etc.
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Fluency in written English is essential. Check out their website for more information.

http://www.ihfonline.org/volunteering.php