Giving back...or paying it forward...online

Since the beginning, the web has been a great place to discover new things, share and learn.  Suddenly, everybody could connect to everybody.  You could read the blog of another little human living on the other side of the planet.  With the emergence of web 2.0 technologies, one to one and many to many communication has evolved towards collaboration possibilities.  You can now work with people all the world to achieve projects, to help, to get involved.

Here a few starters to help you get involved.

1-  Use the web to find real life vounteering opportunities: volunteermatch

Bringing people together : VolunteerMatch strengthens communities by making it easier for good people and good causes to connect. The organization offers a variety of online services to support a community of nonprofit, volunteer and business leaders committed to civic engagement. Our popular service welcomes millions of visitors a year and has become the preferred internet recruiting tool for more than 75,000 nonprofit organizations.

2- Make micro-loans to help entrepreneurs accross the globe:  kiva

Loans that change life.  Kiva's mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty.  Kiva empowers individuals to lend to an entrepreneur across the globe. By combining microfinance with the internet, Kiva is creating a global community of people connected through lending.

Kiva was born of the following beliefs:

• People are by nature generous, and will help others if given the opportunity to do so in a transparent, accountable way.


• The poor are highly motivated and can be very successful when given an opportunity.


• By connecting people we can create relationships beyond financial transactions, and build a global community expressing support and encouragement of one another.

Kiva promotes:

• Dignity: Kiva encourages partnership relationships as opposed to benefactor relationships. Partnership relationships are characterized by mutual dignity and respect.


• Accountability: Loans encourage more accountability than donations where repayment is not expected.


• Transparency: The Kiva website is an open platform where communication can flow freely around the world.

As of November 2009, Kiva has facilitated over $100 million in loans.

3- Micro volunteering via your iPhone: Give Work

Have a minute? Samasource and Crowdflower present Give Work, their new iPhone application. Give Work lets you support refugees in Dadaab, Kenya—the world’s largest refugee site—in minutes by completing short, on-screen tasks. The refugees are training to complete these same tasks and, by volunteering to tag a video or trace a road, you will generate money to support their training as well as valuable data to help focus future training programs.

Crowdflower, a Bay Area company that provides efficient crowdsourcing for short, simple tasks, is providing the jobs. As soon as a refugee reaches 75% accuracy, he or she will move from the training to the work.As soon as a refugee reaches 75% accuracy, he or she will move from the training to the work.

4- Green activisme via crowdsourcing, help monitor watersheds: Creek Watch

A new iPhone app can turn would-be environmentalists and folks concerned about water quality into helpful data gatherers.  Most people living in cities in the U.S. don’t think much about the streams they drive over or pass by. With a new iPhone app, IBM hopes to change that and improve water quality and information about water supplies. The newly launched free app on Apple’s iTunes store enables people with iPhones to become citizen reporters–or citizen environmentalists (more details on Forbes blog).

These are just a few examples.  Let us know of other web based volunteering opportunities you support.