Join us in our global mission to improve education for the world’s children! Volunteer contribution is central to the educational spirit of OLPC. The ways to volunteer are as varied as your interests. The sections that follow provide information to learn how to become a volunteer, based on your interests and background.
If learning matters to you, you will be welcome. To directly get involved, visit the web site http://olpcMAP.net or email volunteer@laptop.org.
Finally, know that there are LOTS of fun, cool people out in the world who’d like to work and play together with you as contributors, to help spread our mission and to improve children’s lives.
The XO is meant for the entire family to use, so learning as much as you can to help each other learn is one way to volunteer with (and for) other OLPC learners worldwide.
You can contribute to the wiki, a web site that you can edit, at http://wiki.laptop.org to share your knowledge and XO laptop experience.
You can tell others about your projects and recruit others to join your efforts. To understand how easy it is to edit the wiki, go to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Wiki_getting_started.
You might want to get involved in a regional group with other XO owners in your area. You can find many such vibrant communities at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Regional_community_groups.
The OLPC project is an education project above all else, so your contributions are highly valued. You can contribute by testing, developing content, mentoring, or running group activities. You can start a University chapter of OLPC users – both formal Community Service Learning and great informal clubs exist. Details may be found at wiki.laptop.org/go/University_program.
You can try to meet with other teachers and students within your geographic region, or look up pre-existing groups within the list of regional groups here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Groups.
If you enjoy personally helping others, and the challenge of solving problems with learners worldwide, you would be a perfect fit for the Support Gang. We work together answering all kinds of questions about the XO, peripherals, software, volunteering, deployment, organizational development and anything else OLPC users ask about.
Community Support Volunteers are an extremely friendly and supportive group, who came together from all around the world, and work together closely online. We also meet weekly with invited guest speakers by phone, and in person whenever possible.
When you volunteer, fellow volunteers and OLPC will help you get started and assist you in finding answers to difficult or unusual technical questions. Bilingual volunteers are most especially welcome. Please join us at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Support_Gang.
If you would like to help others learn about the XO then you can help with the documentation. We have a dedicated team and we eagerly welcome new contributors! You don’t need to be a expert on the technology to participate - you may wish to just spell check or check images. You may also be inspired to write a chapter or improve existing chapters. You can learn more on how to contribute by joining the OLPC Library mailing list http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library
Existing XO and Sugar manuals are written and hosted at FLOSS Manuals.
OLPC is a world-wide program that tries to reach people in many countries, who speak many different languages. You can get an idea of the program and look for your languages on the Sugar Labs translation server. If you speak and write more than one language, you can help translate the wiki or the software. If you can help, please see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Translation.
Everyone is a creator: by creating and sharing something, you inevitably understand it better. Writing about the XO can also be one of the greatest contributions to helping others.
Please consider offering your communications or media talents on the OLPC Wiki - whether by writing, designing, editing, storytelling or simply organizing - anywhere within http://wiki.laptop.org.
If you want to create art for the XO, you can join other artists at the Art Community page at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community:Art.
You can upload photos to a great, growing worldwide archive at http://www.flickr.com/groups/olpc. One group of photos even shows those specially taken by XO laptops themselves, using the Record Activity. Hardware designers and testers
There are lots of volunteer hardware opportunities, from brainstorming about alternative power to developing peripherals to repairing XOs. You may want to develop peripherals for the XO that use its USB ports or other inputs, for health applications or beyond: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Health.
You can get involved with community repair centers or start your own, with volunteers or as a business: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Repair_center_locations.
You may want to work on power generation: http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/power. Or firmware coding: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OFW. To find out more about all of these types of hardware projects search for those keywords at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Hardware.
Software Developers especially should connect with Sugar Labs: http://join.sugarlabs.org
The XO’s software is designed to be malleable because we want the help of all the people in the world who are capable of writing free software to help other people learn. To get involved, you can:
In short: “patches are welcome”.
Help create changes in the community you live in - as well as ones you’d like to visit. Start or join a grassroots group: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Groups.
Volunteering at an OLPC deployment or school of any size is sometimes possible, in exceptional cases: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ClassActs/Resources
Volunteers working on their own much smaller deployments, work together leveraging their mutual insights: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ALEARN_Network
A great way to get started is to explore others’ work at http://planet.laptop.org and then email your specific interests and qualifications to: mailto:volunteer@laptop.org
Nothing beats meeting in person, and the OLPC community’s biggest annual summit occurs in October in San Francisco, thanks to: http://olpcSF.org.
Similarly a more technical spring summit generally takes plan around May in Montevideo, Uruguay: http://ceibalJAM.org.
We weren’t kidding when we told you that we accept volunteer contributions of all shapes, sizes, and kinds. Would you enjoy making presents for millions of children every day? Can you help?