Solidarity over charity
“The recipient community is in the best place to determine its own needs, and they have the right to determine how and when and if a service will be provided and by whom.”
— Tim Wise
Stepping back to reflect ensures we act in solidarity, rather than with the mindset that ‘we are here to help, so get out of our way!’ It’s important not to impose solutions on organizations, but help in a deferential way. For this reason, we seek out partners that are helping people solve their own problems, and that have significant domain expertise. Our advice is: instead of trying to build expertise, seek to add what you’re good at to the experts’ toolkit.
A great example of this principle is our work with Start Network's Disaster and Emergency Preparedness Programme (DEPP) Innovation Labs (DEPP Labs) [1]. The program helped identify and incubate innovations from communities facing natural and man-made disasters. The ideas which came directly from the impacted communities were often the best fit to tackle the issues. We offered support to bring them to life and pitch to potential funders. In this way we supported many diverse innovators from four countries. Amplifying others’ contributions is a really effective way to help.
Who wants a gift horse?
Building a software product for a movement or organization is one thing. Maintaining, extending and operating it for years is another. As technologists, we need to take extra care that our solutions are sustainable and that organizations can continue to use them when we are no longer around. It is good practice to think in terms of minimum viable products and go for the simplest solution first. When working for non-profit organizations, simplicity is paramount as it is directly related to the long-term benefit of any contribution. What’s fit for purpose is also very context dependent. From a user research perspective, we must not only account for the end users, but also the end maintainers.
Impact over coolness
What has more impact on society – building a new website for an NGO or contributing to a humanitarian open source product that is used in many places all over the world? What if the former work is more interesting and challenging than the latter which involves working on software that is 15 years old?
There should be only one criteria when it comes to answering these questions: ‘what has the bigger impact?’ Tech for good is not about finding interesting work for ourselves but making lives better for as many people as possible.
The remainder of this article tells the story of two ThoughtWorks teams that have recently started working on OpenMRS and gives an outlook on the Bahmni COVID-19 project.