Micro-volunteering
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Micro-volunteering describes a
volunteer Volunteering is a voluntary act of an individual or group freely giving time and labor for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve ...
, or team of volunteers, completing small tasks that make up a larger project. These tasks often benefit a research,
charitable The practice of charity is the voluntary giving of help to those in need, as a humanitarian act, unmotivated by self-interest. There are a number of philosophies about charity, often associated with religion. Etymology The word ''charity'' or ...
, or
non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...
. It differs from normal volunteerism as the tasks take only minutes to a few hours, and the volunteer does not make a long-term commitment. As a form of
virtual volunteering Virtual volunteering refers to volunteering, volunteer activities completed, in whole or in part, using the Internet and a home, school, telecenter, or work computer or other Internet-connected device, such as a smartphone or a tablet computer, tab ...
, the tasks are usually distributed and completed online via an internet-connected device, including
smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...
. It typically does not require an application process, screening or training period, takes only minutes or a few hours to complete, and does not require an ongoing commitment by the volunteer.


History

At the global level, in 2000 the
United Nations Volunteers The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme is a United Nations organization that contributes to peace and development through volunteerism worldwide. Volunteerism is a powerful means of engaging people in tackling development challenges, and ...
programme launched the Online Volunteering service to provide a venue where individuals from across the globe can take action for sustainable human development by supporting the activities of development organizations over the Internet. Grassroots organizations,
international NGO An international non-governmental organization (INGO) is an organization which is independent of government involvement and extends the concept of a non-governmental organization (NGO) to an international scope. NGOs are independent of government ...
s, local governments,
educational institutions An educational institution is a place where people of different ages gain an education, including preschools, childcare, primary-elementary schools, secondary-high schools, and universities. They provide a large variety of learning environments an ...
, and
United Nations agencies The United Nations System consists of the United Nations' six principal organs (the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Trusteeship Council, International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the UN Secretariat), ...
just need to register in this website, describe the microtask that should be addressed and launch a global call for support from individuals worldwide. The term "microvolunteering" first appeared on 9 May 2006 within a response to a blog post on the U.K.
mySociety mySociety is a UK-based registered charity, previously named UK Citizens Online Democracy. It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, those tools were open source, so that t ...
platform. A few months later, a Spanish microvolunteering website registered the phrase "microvoluntarios" as a web domain name. Microvoluntarios created the first publicly accessible online micro-volunteering platform in May 2008, after the first micro-volunteering mobile phone application was submitted to a public Google Android competition by The Extraordinaries. The concept was popularized by The Extraordinaries, a
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
-based social enterprise founded in January 2008. Their product is currently operating as Skills For Change. Other current popular microvolunteering projects include the platform Help From Home and Be My Eyes, a project focused on connecting volunteers to people with visual impairments in real time. Micro-volunteering, online volunteering and online activism through social media are fast growing trends, but there have been some concerns. Some observers believe the digital divide may further exclude people with limited access to technology and that benefits are not as accessible in low-income countries. Others assert that technology has made volunteerism more impersonal by discouraging
face-to-face interaction Face-to-face interaction is social communication carried out without any mediating technology. It is defined as the mutual influence of individuals’ direct physical presence with their body language and verbal language. It is one of the basic ...
, possibly obstructing volunteer engagement. Additionally, some non-profit organizers are not convinced that it will be effective.


Examples

The tasks involved in a micro-volunteering project are often similar to the crowdsourcing tasks found on crowdwork platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. Tagging photos from a vast database or transcribing manuscripts are some examples.
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
's
ClickWorkers ClickWorkers was a small NASA experimental project that uses public volunteers (nicknamed "clickworkers" on the site) for scientific tasks. Clickworkers are able to work when, and for however long they choose, doing routine analysis that would no ...
project asks online volunteers to identify martian craters from photos. However, nonprofits and non-governmental organizations have also successfully deployed micro-volunteer projects through text messaging. Volunteer health workers, for example, send
SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
text messages to report basic symptoms of illness and disease. Plotting the geographical occurrence of these symptoms on maps (or "
crowdmapping Crowdmapping is a subtype of crowdsourcing by which aggregation of crowd-generated inputs such as captured communications and social media feeds are combined with geographic data to create a digital map that is as up-to-date as possible on event ...
"), using programmes such as Kenyan-based
Ushahidi Ushahidi is an open source software application which utilises user-generated reports to collate and map data. It uses the concept of crowdsourcing serving as an initial model for what has been coined as "activist mapping" - the combination o ...
can help epidemiologists to identify patterns of disease and provide early warning of potential outbreaks. In Rwanda, the government distributes cell phones to volunteer community health-care workers in rural areas. These are used to monitor the progress of pregnant village women, to send regular updates to health-care professionals, and to call for urgent assistance when necessary. The scheme has contributed significantly to reducing maternal deaths. SMS messaging is also a powerful tool for election monitoring organizations to support the work of volunteers. It can help them to address logistic challenges more rapidly as well as contributing to effective election oversight and the protection of citizens' rights. Micro-volunteering is not always a solo activity, and some projects have included aspects of friendsourcing. Brady et al. explored this concept by forwarding visual questions from people with visual impairments to volunteers on Facebook. Questions were automatically posted to the volunteers' Facebook New Feeds, and responses to the question from the volunteers' friends were then returned to the original requestor.


Relationship to online activism

Micro-volunteering is closely related to micro-activism, where organizations recruit online volunteers to complete small acts of advocacy. For example, in 2013, the
Human Rights Campaign The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is an American LGBTQ advocacy group. It is the largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization within the United States. Based in Washington, D.C., the organization focuses on protecting and expanding rights for LGB ...
spread a logo for marriage equality on Facebook through user profile pictures to raise awareness for the issue. These efforts are sometimes labelled as "
slacktivism Slacktivism (a portmanteau of '' slacker'' and ''activism'') is the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions, characterized as involving very little effort or commitment. Additional fo ...
", as they require very little commitment from volunteers and their effectiveness is debated. Savage et al. also encouraged online activism in an interactive method by using a Twitter bot to seek out and contact potential volunteers.


See also

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Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
*
Distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...
*
Virtual volunteering Virtual volunteering refers to volunteering, volunteer activities completed, in whole or in part, using the Internet and a home, school, telecenter, or work computer or other Internet-connected device, such as a smartphone or a tablet computer, tab ...
*
Volunteer Volunteering is a voluntary act of an individual or group freely giving time and labor for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve ...
*
Volunteer computing Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop co ...


References

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External links


Third Sector Knowledge portal
– current research papers, articles and guides
UNV Online Volunteering service
operates in English, Spanish and French
Cooperating Volunteers
International Volunteers Volunteering Individual forms of volunteering