Improve Your Serve!

We here at Social Actions have been hard at work this summer trying to improve our serve. Not the tennis kind, the volunteering kind! And if you haven't heard already, it's time to sign up for a great opportunity to improve your serve -- Mozilla Service Week!

During Mozilla Service Week, tech-savvy volunteers all over the globe are going to help meet the technology needs of individuals, schools, community groups, and non-profits. If you're reading this on the web, you're qualified to help out. Teach your grandma how to use the Internet. Refit that old laptop in the closet with Linux and open source software and donate it to your local community center. Get together with your friends, find out what help non-profits need, and pledge your support!

Another way you can help is to spread the word to people and groups who might need technology help, so they can post a volunteer opportunity.

We've helped Mozilla bring together an amazing group of Friends to ensure the success of Mozilla Service Week:

Join in and improve your serve!

Tags: mozilla, mozservice09, volunteering

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Comment by Mike Everett-Lane on August 26, 2009 at 1:19pm: Daniel,

Absolutely! Like any "serve-a-thon" I believe the benefits (to both volunteers and non-profits) will really extend beyond just the one week. I'm sure a lot of volunteers will continue working with their organizations after September 21. And I hope that in 2010 we'll hear a lot of those stories! (2010 seems like a long way away, doesn't it?)

Thanks for participating in MozService09 -- and please help get the word out to those other youth organizations in Chicago!

Comment by Daniel Bassill on August 22, 2009 at 9:26am: I think Mozilla Service week and events like this are great. As you can see by this story, my organization is benefiting from the creative work of volunteers at The Royal Order of Experience Design, based in Chicago.

However, I'm just on of more than 200 youth organizations listed in our Chicago Tutor/Mentor Programs Links library. If Service Week volunteers and companies browse this list they will see that some programs do a great job of telling their story, and others could use some help. They may not know about Mozilla Service week, but that does not keep a volunteer from reaching out to them to offer help.

That's really the point of my message. Non profits need help every week of the year, not just one week, or one day, or one month. Thus, my hope is that teams of writers, tech volunteers, video makers, etc. will adopt tutor/mentor programs in different neighborhoods (see map), and find ways to tell their story every week, like advertising, so that this help begins to draw a consistent flow of volunteers, dollars and other needed resources to each of the tutor/mentor programs in a city, not just one or two.

Many of the smaller non profits don't have the resources to constantly advertise and promote themselves. Their hands are full just doing the work these resources are intended to support. Thus, volunteers taking intermediary roles, using the many technologies of the internet, could do for non profits things they cannot do for themselves. If this is on-going, it has greater benefit than if it is just one day, or a week, or a month.

If this happens, Service Week 2010 could include stories of people saying what they did over the past year to help one or many non profits move a year closer to achieving their mission. Such stories might encourage others to begin similar involvement.