How Tech Firms Can Give Back to Community

2008 TED Prize winner David Eggers wish at the recent TED 2008 conference in Monterey was to ask anyone in a position to help “to find a way to directly engage with a public school in your area” and then share the story of their involvement with the public school on the OnceUponASchool.org website.

826 National, TED & Hot Studio stepped up and helped make the first part of David’s wish come true by creating the Once Upon A School website.

In the 2 weeks that the website has been live there have been a number of potential project ideas created where technology companies could pledge to help. Once Upon A School is seeking 1000 pledges nationwide from individuals and or companies ready to help their local public school.

A few of the recently listed project ideas that would make excellent pledge projects for Enterprise 2.0/Web2.0 companies include:

• Scaling up the OnceUponASchool.org website site so that it includes social networking functionality.
• Building out a robust tracking system for projects/ideas/stories.
• Institute an internship program that actively recruits from the nearest struggling public school.
• Help a school develop a useful website presence.

At Applation we are discussing making a pledge to start an internship program with a local Phoenix Area High School in the fall.

This is a very worthwhile cause and effort that hopefully will gain traction nationwide.  The OnceUponASchool.org website mentions that there have been 100 pledge committments so far but there is still a gap to get to the goal of 1000 pledges.