Earlier this year we announced the RHoK Sustainability Project and soon thereafter announced out first sustainability partner, Geeks Without Bounds. RHoK sustainability partners will provide mentorship and support to help RHoK solutions realize their full potential. Today we are announcing our next sustainability partner, Bentetech and their SocialCoding4Good initiative.
SocialCoding4Good is the newest initiative from Benetech, a Silicon Valley nonprofit with a mission to create new technology solutions that serve humanity and empower people to improve their lives. Founded in 1989, Benetech combines business and tech innovation expertise to address large-scale unmet social needs, measuring its return on investment not in dollars, but in the number of lives it affects.
The SocialCoding4Good platform supports the growing global momentum around technology for good, channeling the creativity and good intent of the software development community, while enabling meaningful apps generated at events and hackathons to develop into lasting solutions with real, positive results.
SocialCoding4Good partners with humanitarian free and open source software (HFOSS) organizations such as Amara, Code for America, FrontlineSMS, The Guardian Project, and Wikimedia Foundation to connect qualified software industry professionals with opportunities to volunteer their time and talent to projects matching their passions, skills, and experience.
This exciting partnership with SocialCoding4Good offers RHoK participants the chance to contribute to HFOSS beyond the hackathon, and RHoK projects, ignited from a single aspiration or hackathon idea, the very real opportunity to achieve sustainability; a critical factor for true, transformative impact.
SocialCoding4Good will work with its HFOSS partners to steward key RHoK focus areas addressing issues ranging from civic engagement and the environment to healthcare and poverty alleviation. For each focus area, you’ll find a featured problem statement or challenge sponsored by an HFOSS organization, and have the opportunity to either participate in those challenges or submit new ones of your own. SocialCoding4Good will offer subject matter experts (SMEs) to assist in reviewing, informing, and refining definitions, providing important context both before and during a RHoK event.
For the upcoming RHoK Global in June 2012, these key focus areas will be:
- Accessibility in Education: Supporting Students with Disabilities, facilitated by Bookshare, which hosts the largest online collection of accessible books, textbooks and periodicals; and
- Data Applications for Human Rights, facilitated by Benetech’s Human Rights Program, whose open source data management software, Martus, provides groups around world with a secure way to document and disseminate reports of human rights abuses.
Over the course of the hackathon, SocialCoding4Good will work with its HFOSS partners and the RHoK team to identify the project with the most relevance to the focus issue and potential for longer-term development. Once selected, this project will receive technical guidance and project maintenance, mentoring on business and organizational sustainability, and visibility within the larger HFOSS and technology communities for up to six months after the event.
We here at RHoK are looking forward to working with Benetech at RHoK events in both June and December. Stay tuned to this blog for information detailing the requirements for submitting your project to be considered by the sustainability programs from Geeks Without Bounds or Benetech, along with a complete list of the benefits that come with being selected by one of these partners.