海角大神

Programmers in San Francisco and Berlin got together recently to attempt to build a system that would allow immigrants to tell their families they鈥檝e 聽without anyone else finding out.

In Nairobi, a similar group worked on , including incidents of election violence and accusations of voter fraud.

In Toronto, others worked on a system that could allow Nepali women to .

All of them were volunteers, willing to lend their technological expertise to nonprofits and causes.

These projects and others were part of the 鈥溾�� weekend, a twice-yearly, 36-hour work session for designers, programmers, and technology experts to solve problems facing nonprofits and other organizations interested in doing good. The , held this month in 25 cities worldwide, drew 900 participants, according to organizer SecondMuse, a consulting firm that works with companies and individuals on better ways to collaborate.

The event spawned from a 2009 鈥渃risis camp鈥� in Washington that focused on ways technology could help in natural disasters and other humanitarian crises, says Elizabeth Walker Sabet, a consultant at SecondMuse and an organizer of Random Hacks. At that event, employees of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, the World Bank, and NASA decided to work together to start regular 鈥渉ackathon鈥� events to put ideas in to action.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency joined in support and helped create software at the first Random Hacks of Kindness event that was later used to help Haiti and Chile following earthquakes in those countries.

From there, the events grew.

鈥淭he community really took over,鈥� says Ms. Sabet. 鈥淭here was an outpouring of interest from all over the world.鈥�

Groups in different cities have gathered for six weekends鈥攐ne in June, one in December each year鈥攇enerating about 229 to 444 proposed . The events are entirely paid for with donations from private sources and organized by local volunteers, helped with logistics by SecondMuse.

Local groups of technology experts are always looking for problems to solve, Ms. Sabet says, and are . All those groups need to do is submit their problem online and be prepared to do some work to sketch out what they need.

During the weekend of the hackathon, nonprofits work with the technology experts to explain more about what problem they need to solve to help guide the solution.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 what gets people so excited about volunteering their time,鈥� says Ms. Sabet. 鈥淭he most rewarding thing we consistently hear back from the programmers is, 鈥業t was so amazing to be able to work with this nonprofit that knows the situation on the ground.鈥� 鈥�

鈥� with a local Random Hacks of Kindness weekend.

鈥� at .

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