A few weeks ago, Her Indoors made an off-hand comment about how I should do more for good causes. At the time I grunted as my attention was elsewhere but the statement didn’t leave me and I’ve been mulling it over for the last few days. The outcome of this internal debate is that I’m happy with my charitable contributions. I’ve helped a charity with their network issues when they had a fire and were forced to move. I’ve installed the wiring for a school left high and dry by C2K running out of budget. I’ve been running NiMUG for the best part of a decade for free and allegedly done heaps for Mac users in Northern Ireland (according to some of those Mac Users). I’ve done FOC house calls for some people who really couldn’t afford another option and Mac-Sys regularly donates to raffles for worthy causes. Infurious, though still just starting up, contributes patches back to the open source world and take it from me, if they were in a position to “give something back”, then they’d be doing a lot more than just that.
Today I set up a web page for a campaign for improving a playground. It’s based around Colby Park in Four Winds in Belfast. Have a look at the Campaign for Colby Playground. Sure, it’s just a little WordPress install but it takes my time (and my money) to set these things up and the people doing this aren’t technical people. My kids won’t even see the benefit of this park as they don’t live anywhere near it, but I was asked and it’s a good cause.
If you have any knowhow in the political process or even know how to motivate people, get in touch with them. It’s not about what you can gain from it, but rather what will become of it on it’s own.