NetAid www.netaid.org/

Organization Overview:

NetAid educates, inspires and empowers new generations of young people to fight global poverty throughout their lives. It creates a movement of informed youth -- tomorrow's leaders and voters -- who understand the root causes of global poverty and are committed to ending it. NetAid's innovative programs educate young people about global poverty and international development, and provide opportunities for them to take concrete actions that make a difference in the lives of the world's poor.

Projects:

1. Second Life (One Student)
Second Life is a privately owned, partly subscription-based 3-D virtual world, made publicly available in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, and founded by former RealNetworks CTO Philip Rosedale. Users can visit this virtual world almost as if it were a real place. They explore, meet new people, and participate in individual and group activities. Though sometimes referred to as a game, Second Life does not have points, scores, winners and losers, levels or end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of a game. Second Life has approximately 100,000 regular users, many of them young people. Second Life provides an interesting and potentially lucrative arena to educate, inspire, and provide methods for young people to fight global poverty. Because there is an economic component to Second Life, there is an opportunity to raise money as well for its core missions. Other development/nonprofit organizations -- Global Kids, Camp Darfur, Heifer International, and American Cancer Society -- have all used Second life to build their networks and raise money successfully. How can NetAid get involved?

Project deliverables:
• Identify and research initial ways to be involved in Second Life
• Identify scales of cost to participate in Second Life
• Create three profiles of other development/nonprofit groups using Second Life successfully
• Presents findings to the organization


Participant Comments

"I wrote a 14-page report which analyzed how nonprofits and teenagers use Second Life. Based on this, I made recommendations to NetAid on how they can get involved in Second Life. I also studied other competing technologies and adjusted my recommendations to include them."

"I was generally very interested in Second Life. This project fit in very well with my interests. I loved the work atmosphere. My supervisors were very helpful. They also made sure that we got to visit NYC. They took us out a couple of times for lunch. I liked the opportunity to visit all the places in NYC. I loved interacting with fellow SI students."


2. Global Action Awards Online Application (One Student)
The NetAid Global Action Awards honor high school students in the United States who have organized and led a project that has impacted people in poor countries, or raised awareness about global poverty in their own communities. The awards celebrate young people who have shown great leadership in areas such as HIV/AIDS prevention, alleviating hunger or improving access to education. Each year, a prestigious panel of judges reviews applicants on the basis of innovation, cooperation, leadership, inspiration, and impact. The honorees are awarded $5,000 for college or a charitable cause of their choice. Because NetAid no longer has a robust internal technical staff, the current Global Action Award application is being retired. The current application is a PHP-coded web form system connected to a MSQL database on a virtual hosting service. The form is quite buggy and not supportable without significant programming skills that are no longer internally available. This project will involve researching and evaluation of online ASP solutions available for developing a new Global Action Awards online application.

Project deliverables:
• Identify and research up to 10 possible candidate ASPs
• Create a comparison matrix that rates how each ASP meets the requirements of the application
• Present findings to the Programs Group
Application requirements:
• Must be a hosted solution and Web administrable
• Look and feel must be completely customizable
• Cost-effective
• Sessions-based (via a login/registration process) -- which allows applicants the ability to append their application up until the close date
• A recommendation is required, so a recommender will need to access an individualÕs application to complete the recommendation section
• Reporting
• Summary of apps and completion status
• Printable/viewable version of individual applications
• Excel or delimited file export


3. Global Citizen Corps Online Action Center (One Student)
Each year, NetAid selects a diverse group of passionate and committed students to become GCC Leaders. Following intensive training, either in person or online, GCC Leaders network with each other and receive tools, resources and support through an innovative Online Action Center. Turning learning into action, GCC Leaders implement a series of Global Action Days in their schools and local communities that raise awareness about global poverty, generate media attention and mobilize their peers in effective campaigns. The Online Action Center is based on the theory of social networking and online communities of practice and learning, that we can use technology to:
• Build strong social ties
• Create a common story
• Grow a dense communications grid
• Share resources
• Provide clear windows of opportunities
All of this leads to a stronger network of youth committed to fighting global poverty. The Online Action Center is essentially a blogging system built on a customized implementation of the open-source software Expression Engine. The system was set up and maintained by an outside consultant specializing in Expression Engine projects. Some back end and database maintenance was done by internal NetAid programming and DB staff. But because NetAid no longer has a robust internal technical staff, the current Global Citizen Corps Online Action Center (OAC) is becoming difficult to maintain and improve. The financial cost of maintaining and improving the current OAC is unknown, since issues, bugs or improvements must be done by an outside consultant at an hourly rate. Since NetAid created the OAC, social networking technology has exploded and costs have dropped. There are now many more ASP solutions targeting organizations social networking needs. This project will involve research and evaluation of online ASP solutions available for developing a new or porting over our OAC.

Project deliverables:
• Identify and research up to 10 possible candidate ASPs
• Create a comparison matrix that rates each ASPÕs features
• Presents findings to the Programs Group


Participant Comments

"Identified possible online community applications. Created functionality matrix and possible implementation solutions. It makes me consider the possibility of working for an NPO in the future. Paul Johnson was my supervisor. He is a nice person and willing to share his experience when working in NetAid."