Ask HN: Best ways to volunteer?

Librarians love it when tech people come in to help. They don't have technical skills and most techies don't seem to think about volunteering at the library.

My goal: To help local libraries provide a free coding bootcamp to anybody who wants to learn.

Libraries are a beautiful place. They don't discriminate against anyone regardless of social status, race, gender, etc.

They basically have a "job" board for different categories of tasks that can be done remotely online including design, web site building, other tasks, etc.

It's not the easiest†, as many orgs might be overseas so working asynchronously is almost a given. Budgets for them are often next-to-none, but their service demands are usually relatively low.

I highly recommend giving them a look. There are a lot of great, small, un[der]funded organizations trying to help people in despair, impoverished children get a leg up, children in troubled homes meet new potential—all kinds—and they need the help because they can rarely afford to pay for it, but the ability to manage something like a website and blog that gives them increased exposure and ease of contact is a huge boon.

They also need online English teachers, researchers, project managers, writers, the list goes on.

https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en

Tech options: https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/opportunities?f[0]=fie...

† edit: To clarify, many of the technical needs are relatively simple—though there seem to be some more challenging options appearing as well. The harder part may be effective communication and understanding—though the people I've worked with have always been great and understanding and just want to deliver the most because they're doing what they do precisely because they care. They're not getting rich.

No, thank you. FOSS developers are usually skilled and self-motivated engineers, so corporate-style control is unnecessary or harmful.

Money, quality code, bug fixes, documentation, publicity (there are so many great but little-known FOSS projects), or a simple display of appreciation for the authors' work are all welcome.

If you have such a background and enjoy working with kids you can be quite helpful by (1.) helping students keep from falling so far behind in school that they're unable to pass their classes (2.) providing an example of what it looks like for an adult to be passionate about math and science topics (I think many of these students don't have many such examples).

I'm not sure it's the highest-impact thing I could be doing (i.e. maybe I could have a greater positive impact by donating the hourly value of my time to some charity) but if you're interested in boots-on-the-ground volunteer work that involves in-person work I'd highly recommend it.