If you are involved with an NGO, and would like to find out more about how Ubuntu could benefit your organisation, this is the place to come. We'd like to hear more about your current IT setup, and how Ubuntu could potentially improve it.

Overview

According to Wikipedia "Non-governmental organization (NGO) is a term that has become widely accepted for referring to a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons with no participation or representation of any government. In the cases in which NGOs are funded totally or partially by governments, the NGO maintains its non-governmental status by excluding government representatives from membership in the organization. Unlike the term intergovernmental organization, 'non-governmental organization' is a term in generalized use but not a legal definition; in many jurisdictions these type of organizations are defined as 'civil society organizations' or alternative terms."

Many of these NGOs do great work all around the world and the Ubuntu community shares a lot of the NGO ideals and spirit: Ubuntu means "I am what I am because of who we all are" and it's what brings us together.

Currently there are great initiatives within the Ubuntu Community to share the technological expertise with NGOs. The Ubuntu-NGO team seeks to ensure that Ubuntu becomes a very resourceful platform for NGOs and it re-energizes the great work done by teams across the world. We want to make Ubuntu work great for NGOs and make it help them in their daily work.

What We Do

Aim

The aim of the Ubuntu NGO team is to make it as easy as possible for charities, non-profits and other NGOs to benefits from what OSS and Ubuntu have to offer.

Ubuntu NGO is not just another targetted advocacy group for Ubuntu, but the beginnings of dialogue between NGOs and the community, as a means to help lower the barriers to charities wanting to adopt Ubuntu, and as a resource of case studies to log the successes and issues that were faced by other NGOs wanting to adopt Ubuntu.

Approach

Our activities broadly fall into three categories: Advocacy, Documentation and Technical contributions to Ubuntu

• Advocacy:

  • Interviewing NGOs to discover their needs,
  • Recording Case Studies of NGO implementations,
  • Liaising with NGOs long-term to keep track of development.

• Documentation:

  • Documenting Best Practices

• Technical contributions to Ubuntu

  • Packaging NGO-specific applications,
  • Thinking outside the box for developing solutions. eg/ areas without Internet.

Team Organisation

• Team and mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-ngo

• Blog: http://ubuntungo.wordpress.com

  • talk to Laura or Daniel if you want to help writing on the blog.

• Team Report: NGO/TeamReports

Meetings

The next meeting is going to be:

CategoryNGO