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So many of our clients give back to their communities year-round, which we love. And we’ve shared some stories with you this year of our PICnetters giving back through service over the last few months, so it’s only fitting to give a little update on how our team is spreading the holiday spirit.
Although PICnet doesn’t have a direct role in giving back to the community, all of our employees feel a strong sense of sharing what we have with others who are less fortunate. This is the fifth post in our series about the PICnet Team’s volunteer efforts. Who: Project Manager Pradeep Suthram Pradeep has been working for PICnet for several years as a project manager, but still finds lots of time for his community, including his church, and even supporting charities his friends work for as well. But his main project hits close to home: for the last couple of years he has been volunteering for Friends of Prajwala, an organization that works to help victims of sexual trafficking and prostitution in India. As a a native of Hyderabad, India, Pradeep has found a way to help the people from his home country, and has even gotten support from multiple friends and family members. Through Friends of Prajwala, Pradeep has been leading a fundraising effort called The Rebuild Campaign to help build a new shelter near Hyderabad for 600 women and girls who are survivors of sexual assault and trafficking. Growing up, Pradeep witnessed a lot of poverty and wanted to do something about it – he says that trafficked women and girls are some of the most poor people in India, and therefore denied their rights. He has since built a website for The Rebuild Campaign, and helped to raise $16,000 so far through his friends and networks. Pradeep also assists the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area (UNA-NCA) with website development (using Joomla! of course) and he has helped to organize an international development career fair and hosted seminars on microfinance and technology related to international development. “UNA NCA has helped me to connect with a lot of like-minded ‘do-gooders,’ and learn about some really interesting issues,” says Pradeep. This is the third post in our series about the PICnet Team’s volunteer efforts. Who: Office Manager Julie Dennis
How did Julie get involved with Community Bridges? She had been looking for an organization that empowers women and girls, and after attending a development conference in November of 2008, she approached the Executive Deputy Director about volunteer opportunities and was put to “work” in January 2009. Julie says,”I really like helping these young ladies figure out how to deal with the hardships that they might encounter in 8th grade and especially on through high school. It is great to have a support system of people who care for you, and I think that these mentees know that Community Bridges is there to do just that.” One of Julie’s favorite projects through Community Bridges so far was a Saturday yoga session they held during a unit on positive body image. “It was really cool because we were taught something that we could do to help our bodies (and minds), and it was also a great bonding experience for the mentors and their mentees.” Julie is a mentor once again this semester for a young girl, and she’s looking forward to the special events and activities and spending time with fellow mentors and their mentees. Learn more about Community Bridges. This is the second post in our series about the PICnet Team’s volunteer efforts. Jamie Ozimek contributed to this post. Who: Project Manager Katie Guernsey
At AFTA, Katie serves as a member on the Emerging Leaders Council, and the chair of the Technology and Communications Committee. As a Councilmember, she helps inform the direction that AFTA takes in supporting arts administrators who identify themselves to be “emerging” in their career on a national level. What exactly does that mean? According to Katie, AFTA’s definition of an “Emerging Leader” is someone under 35 years old, or in the field less than five years, but depending on the person, these guidelines can change a little. The Emerging Leaders Council devises programming, networking, and professional development opportunities for their peers under the guise of AFTA’s infrastructure. On a local level, Katie helps to coordinate professional networking opportunities such as the “Creative Conversations.” Some of Katie’s specific duties include maintaining AFTA’s Google Group and overseeing the strategy of how to best serve their constituency through online technologies. This year, she facilitated one of the Emerging Leader Networking Sessions at the Annual Convention. Our PICnet friend and partner Aspiration is hosting a “Social Media Sewing Circle” from 1-4pm, Sept. 15, as part of “Mozilla Service Week,” in San Francisco. They will be hosting a few free sessions such as: Social Media Tracking, Publishing strategies for social media channels, Facebook and Twitter Essentials, and Beginning and advanced blogging skills. The event is free, but space is limited, so RSVP now if you plan on attending! It is hosted at the San Francisco Nonprofit Technology Center. Check it out here. What is Mozilla Service Week? Starting tomorrow, techies will be donating their time (more than 9,000 hours pledged so far and counting) to help make a difference in their communities and the world – and doing it all online! You can sign up to volunteer here, or just to find out more about this exciting week of web service. Jamie Ozimek contributed to this blog post. Today marks the first dedicated National Day of Service and Remembrance, on the 8th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. We though it fitting to start our PICnet Volunteer Series today. Every few weeks, we’ll be featuring another PICnet Team Member and his or her service efforts. To read more President Obama’s call for service and the introduction to this series, click here.
When he’s not helping to develop websites for PICnet clients, Kevin takes even more hours out of his day (and night) to volunteer with the Joomla project, as a member of their Development Team. Currently, he is on their Joomla Bug Squad as the co-maintainer of the current release series. To break it down for you, Kevin tests for bugs reported by the community, writes patches, and reviews and commits patches added to the releases. He also serves as a member of the Joomla Security Team, for which he tests for security vulnerabilities in new releases of the open-source CMS and adds the appropriate patches. Jamie Ozimek co-authored this blog post. United We Serve is President Obama’s nationwide service initiative to promote Americans to volunteer in their communities. It is based upon the idea that if all Americans help out, even just a little bit, it will improve their communities and attend to the social needs that have arisen as a result of the economic downturn. Though it began as a pilot program over the summer, it is now expanding into an ongoing program in an effort to make volunteerism a way of life for Americans. Serve.gov provides all of the information about United We Serve, and is a great site to check out for those interested in finding a volunteer organization in their area or setting up their own service project. The site provides toolkits for a variety of service ideas in areas such as education, health, and energy and the environment. These toolkits provide information on every step of each project’s development, including how to establish a team and set goals. The site also allows you to register your service project and recruit volunteers. Better yet, it is a service built on an open source volunteer opportunity aggregator called All for Good. So what does all of this mean for non-profit organizations? It means that now is an excellent time for organizations to promote their causes and demonstrate the value they provide to the American public. An increase in volunteer efforts at organizations will give experiences to community members that the philanthropic community will support. And then – participants who share their testimonials may receive further visibility. To celebrate the remaining weeks of the pilot program’s term, we thought it appropriate to highlight some of the great work that PICnetters do in their free time. The passion we have working with nonprofit clients to ensure their web presence is a successful tool is just an extension of the value we find in reaching out and helping our communities. That’s the intrinsic reward of working at PICnet. We hope you enjoy getting to know our team a little better over the next couple of months as we feature a different employee and their volunteer efforts every few weeks. PICnet is proud to be a part of President Obama’s national call to service. |
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Julie has only been working as a PICnetter for a few months now, but she has been volunteering since early this year to middle-school girls develop lifeskills through Maryland-based 
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