Random Hacks of Kindness is proud to be one of a number of organizations harnessing the power of individuals and technology to make our world a better place. Code for America is an organization that we have a great deal of respect for and are excited to bring you news about their 2013 fellowship program.
The CfA Fellowship is for designers and developers in the United States who are ready to help break open local governments and help them see the benefits of transparent, open development, and building a community around civic hacking. The fellowship is a chance to put your skills as a member of the RHoK community towards a year of service and innovation with city governments.
What is involved in a CfA Fellowship? There are a lot of components of the fellowship bu the main parts consist of pairing you with a US city, providing a month of training in Gov 2.0 and other skills, development of web applications with city governments, and creating new approaches to the challenges facing cities. Here is a great list of 11 reasons why the CfA program might be right for you. You can also peruse the list of CfA projects that are underway.
So what should you do? Well, take a look at the application page and be sure to get yours in by July 29th!
Finally, we understand that CfA is focused on just one nation, wheras RHoK is a global community of civic hackers. If you're not based in the US, how do you think this model would work in your local or national government? What open data challenges exist there that might not be present in the US? How could they be solved? We'd love to hear from you - feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.