*Official* 1st IVW Project Posted

I am glad to announce the very first official IVW Project post. I have posted this project in the LinkedIn group, since the IVW website is being worked on. Just a heads up, until the IVW site is live, all IVW Projects will be posted in the IVW LinkedIn group.

This particular non-profit is in a unique situation. Their mission is to reach out to children who are being sexually abused, and inform them to the importance of them telling an adult they trust about the abuse they have suffered. Hopefully we can provide quality IT service to this organization and help, in anyway we can, to keep the creeps from doing harm!

If you are interested in reading more details about this Project, please visit the IVW LinkedIn group

It's Becoming Official

With such rapid growth in the IVW LinkedIn group, I decided to purchase the IVW domain and so I registered:

http://www.itvolunteersworldwide.org/

Now I know most people are probably thinking, "that's too long to type". Well, what I have to say to that is, not so long ago we only had to dial 7 digits to call someone, now it's 10. With modern cool technology, we have things like, "bookmarks" in browsers, address books in cell phones, etc. I mean, when was the last time you actually called someone by dialing their phone number in the keypad? I went on a little rant there but I hope you get my point. There has been quite a few group members who have signed up to help with developing the IVW website.

LinkedIn

I started out by creating a group called IT Volunteers Worldwide (IVW) on LinkedIn. I chose LinkedIn because I already have a profile, and with over 4000 connections, I thought...."why not?!". To my surprise, the group grew at a rate of 30 new users a week. With the total members reaching 275 in just a little under 3 months things started to get a little hectec. I had non-profits posting projects, I had volunteers posting irrelavant posts, etc. Things started to get a little out of hand and most importantly off track from the IVW Mission. So in order to bring it all together, I posted a rule that all non-profits should follow IF they would like an IVW volunteer to assist them. Since the posting, I had numerous non-profits contact me to get their projects posted to the rest of the IVW group, which I am currently working on. This is a temporary solution. So thus, I registered...

The Beginning

It all started with the passion to help those in need. I have spoken to numerous non-profits and nearly all of them are in dire need of IT folks. Only one problem ... they have no money. That's not a situation you want to be in, especially in today's highly competitive IT market. I have heard a lot of "horror stories" in which IT people were hired, and half way through a project, they accepted another job with higher pay and left the non-profit to fend for themselves. Or a volunteer started helping them to build a website and half way through, quit. So I accepted a project here, a project there, and next thing I knew...I was drowned with work. I thought there HAS to be an easier way to not only provide non-profits with IT volunteers, but maintain a high level of quality. I definitely didn't want to be one of those volunteers that left the non-profit hanging. Whatever it was that I would do next, I wanted to make sure the Mission was, "To provide quality IT services to Non-Profits and good causes around the World." Thus, IVW was born.