Geeks Without Borders and Random Hacks of Kindness

Phil, KD4IDH, sent me links to these two very interesting organizations. We sometimes joke about being "The International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards." These folks seem to be taking that idea to a whole new level.

Geeks Without Borders +) GWOBorg is an international coalition of passionate problem solvers working together to assist people whose survival is threatened by lack of access to technology or communications due to violence, neglect, or catastrophe.

One of the things that GWOB does is called The Digital Mountaintop: This is a free, open communications hub, accessible via voice, text (SMS), plain old telephone (POTS), Skype, SIP, Google Voice, Twitter, Facebook, Email, Instant Messaging (IM)…and as many other networks we can connect to. In crisis situations, neighbors can ask for help simply by sending sending a message to the DMT, as long as they (or someone they know) can connect via any of the messaging or real-time communication methods it supports.

Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) is all about using technology to make the world a better place by building a community of innovation. RHoK brings software engineers together with disaster risk management experts to identify critical global challenges, and develop software to respond to them. A RHoK Hackathon event brings together the best and the brightest hackers from around the world, who volunteer their time to solve real-world problems.