title: Code for social good published: true description: coding for a better community and a better self tags: webdev, contribution, wordpress, help

We tend to improve ourselves each and every single day for the better

from learning libraries, frameworks, programming languages to doing them and open sourcing them, our role as developers have benefited the world good enough that we have a good amount of libraries, frameworks, programming languages for almost any use case

but the one part that we haven't focus on that much is the act of writing code for social good

what do you mean by 'writing code for social good?'

writing code for social good is a vary vast topic since anything that helps society is considered social good

but what social good I mean in this post?

the social good that I am focusing on is helping the people in need but this time with code

that varies from creating a code teaching chatbot to creating a small site for a small NGO that would save that money for something useful

not everyone has the luxury to offer coding lessons or to hire a developer to do for them a website

so, why not helping anyone in need if we have the ability to do so?

so what do I get in return?

this is the fun part: nothing! 🙂

don't get me wrong here, it is not modern day slavery or anything but you shouldn't expect to get anything in return

getting something in return eliminates the part of 'doing it for social good', it should be something that comes from the heart

from that small site or app that you have developed, you could possibly change someone's life to the better

when you give something, the world tends to give you something back

now I mentioned previously that you shouldn't expect anything at all

and that what you suppose to do, but the universe might have a different route for you

say that you created a small site for an NGO and they loved it

pass forward 3 months later and you get referred to a freelance gig or referred to a job because of that NGO

that wouldn't be bad at all right?

we all say that we want to contribute something for the world

everyday, we tend to wish that we could improve the world around us by contributing

as we contribute more, we feel like we are doing something bigger than us and becoming an active part of society

Wordpress do_action

each year, Wordpress do a charity hackathon called 'do_action' https://doaction.org/

do_action is a hackathon that can be hosted anywhere in the world, where local wordpress developers develop a site for a non profit organization (NGO) in just one day

the idea behind of it is to use wordpress for social good, even though wordpress is open source and some might use it for making money from freelancing

why not use this set of skills and develop something that would help someone?

the community behind wordpress have given you a platform that you can benefit from, why not benefit someone else with it?

how can we contribute?

there are many ways that you can help benefit the community

while coding something for social good is the goal here, not everyone can contribute with code

here are some suggestions on how you can contribute if you are not a technical person:

• donate money (if available) to make a certain project to keep it up and running
• offer suggestions and feedback (something like a pull request on Github)
• spread the word, maybe you can't help but someone else can

and here are some suggestions on how to contribute as a technical person:

• find a project you like and create something that would help benefit this project to the better

• offer suggestions and feedback

• answer pull requests that would remove some bulk of pull requests for the maintainer of the project

this year, we will also participate in a do_action

I'm part of a wordpress community in Beirut,Lebanon called wpBeirut and we have been doing do_actions for 2 years in a row

2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThBur2vbBgw

2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2squp0ExmEE

and this year (2019) we will also contribute as well by providing

we will gather our top local wordpress developers and develop websites for NGOs in one day

if you wish to help us

we have created an opencollective page so that if you wish to help https://opencollective.com/do_action-beirut

and if you wish to help by providing a premade template/plugin that you have developed on the side and wish to make a good use of it for social good, feel free to reach us out on github as well https://github.com/wpbeirut