How to Become a Volunteer From the Comfort of Your Home
Do you want to make the world a better place, but at the same time identify yourself as internet trash and stay at home for three days? (Or do you have a legitimate reason why you can’t go outside?) It’s okay! You can help from the couch or even your computer chair.
A recent thread on Ask MetaFilter focuses on home volunteering opportunities. Here are a few highlights and a couple of our own ideas.
Average Human Interaction: Help the Blind See
With the Be My Eyes iOS / Android app, you can help blind users with visual tasks such as reading product labels and matching clothes. The app will alert you when someone needs help and you can make a decision or ignore it without pressure.
Conversely, you can help create lifelike digital voices by recording your own voice for VocalID .
Low / no human interaction: transcribe, read aloud and correct
Non-profit and research projects need serious help:
- Transcribe Shakespearean manuscripts or categorize antibiotic photos using the Zooniverse platform.
- Transcribing documents for the Smithsonian Institution
- Subtract Digitized Project Gutenberg Books with Distributed Proofreaders
- Recording Audiobooks for LibriVox
No human interaction: computer-assisted disease control
Must: use distributed computing to contribute to huge scientific projects. Folding @ home , one of the best known, has helped researchers develop drugs to fight Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and HIV. You can start helping by downloading the app or simply by running F @ h in your browser.
Don’t: mine cryptocurrency for charity. Cryptocurrency mining is ineffective; The creator of the Donate Your Tab crypto miner (which allows mining cryptocurrency in the browser) estimates that it can mine five cents per user per day . This stacks up, as does the direct donation of US dollars. In addition, cryptocurrency mining only works as long as this currency is worth something.