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The Humanitarian FOSS Project is a collaborative, community-building project that was started by a group of computing faculty and open source proponents at Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Connecticut College. Our goal is to build a community of academic computing departments, IT corporations, and local and global humanitarian and community organizations dedicated to building and using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to benefit humanity. |
- Awarded over 100 undergraduateinternship opportunities to work on impactful projects.
Relationship between humanitarian and development aid 3. Partnerships instead of project grants, and pooling resources (Steets 2011; World Development. How to engage students in humanitarian technology work was the topic of much discussion at the IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference 2018. The event showcased a number of student-led projects, such as, low-cost eye examination kits and apps for teaching sexual health. The Humanitarian FOSS Project is primarily an educational project whose goal is to engage more undergraduates in building FOSS that benefits their community. It began in 2006 as a collaborative effort among computer science faculty at Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Connecticut College in Connecticut.
Student Resourcesmac Humanitarian Project Proposal
- Introduced over 250 students across 12 colleges and universities, to FOSS concepts, methods and technologies across the United States, inspiring programs in Canada and Brazil.
Student Resourcesmac Humanitarian Project Funding
- Developed 10 new courses incorporating FOSS into the Computer Science Curricula ranging from introductory level to senior level software engineering and special topics.
- Reached over 300 participants through 4 workshops, 3 national symposia and various meetings and conference presentations.
- Garnered national and international recognition, with over 20 major publications in professional journals, and magazines including, The Chronicle of Higher Education, New Scientist, Communications of the ACM and Technology Innovation Management Review.
- Developed Humanitarian FOSS software applications for various national and international organizations, with deployments in New York City to Haiti.
Our approach is not unlike the Habitat for Humanity project: Instead of helping communities build houses, our students help build free software systems that benefit communities. The NSF grant enabled us to explore whether engaging students in the Humanitarian-FOSS enterprise helped undergraduates see that designing and building software is an exciting, creative, and (often) a socially beneficial activity.
The project's current focus includes building Open Source mobile applications for educational and humanitarian purposes. Working closely with MIT’s Center for Mobile Learning and the College Boards Computer Science Principles project we are designing mobile computing curriculum for high school and undergraduate students, based on App Inventor for Android platform. Working with ACDI/VOCA, we are designing and supporting a mobile based beneficiary registration and monitoring system to support a food distribution program in Haiti.
Acknowledgment and Disclaimer: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. CCF-0722137, CCF-0722134, CCF-0722199, CCF-0939034, CCF-0939097 and CCF-0939022 Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
If you are under 26 years old, a student, scout or high schooler and desire to do some volunteer solidarity based work, then you have knocked on the right door!
Prosuma organizes volunteer work missions in many countries. We connect young volunteers with education and social work backgrounds with organizations in need of help. Prosuma offers useful missions. We organize your accommodations via local partnerships, to ease the burden of logistics from your volunteer time.Since the creation of our non profit organization, more than 350 young people have already volunteered with Prosuma.
Our non profit organization is based on the idea of offering yourself in service on specific missions which place you into a reciprocal relationship of mutual sharing and enrichment.
Also, Prosuma acts to concretely help people in fragile situations, such as :
- refurbishment work of buildings used for social activities in order to guaranty their sustainability and durability in the future where they are already located
- food allowance
Since its creation, Prosuma has already financed 90 000 euros in refurbishment work and food allowance.