Code For India: A Nonprofit App Project
Can an app change lives? Venture capitalist Karl Mehta thinks so. Mehta wants interested developers to code for eight hours a month for free. Why? He is hoping to develop life-saving apps for people in India. The project is called ‘Code for India,' and its goal is to provide people in India with needed help.
Current Code for India Projects
So far, the ‘Code For India' project has produced a slew of apps including an app that helps women stuck in violent circumstances; an app that lets people report on class sizes and teach absences in schools; one app that provides people with a way to report civil problems; and many other apps are under development.
Right now, ‘Code for India' has a few hundred developers working with the non-profit, but Mehta has bigger goals. His plan is to get more than one million programmers from around the world to donate their time to this cause.
This is a cause that Amazon is behind too. Amazon has donated its web hosting services to ‘Code for India', so that the program can remain lean.
Not Backers, Developers
Metha doesn't want a bunch of backers to get in on his project. He is largely funding ‘Code for India' on his own. What he wants are a lot of programmers to take the initiative to help out people in India. People that are facing “…real problems, hard problems…” as Mehta puts it.
But can apps really help to change lives? Will it make a difference if a woman in a violent situation can phone five of her friends to help? Mehta thinks so. He believes that in a place like India, “…you can only depend on your neighbors.”
By providing free apps that are available for people in need of help, Mehta hopes to change the desperation that is often faced by many people throughout India – but he's not stopping there, either.
Code For India: A Nonprofit App Project: Apps For All
Mehta's project might be called ‘Code for India,' but it's actually a project that he helps will spread to the rest of the world too. The project “…could help hundreds of other countries who face similar challenges,” Mehta told press.
Mehta is still working on growing his nonprofit, and the organization needs programmers regularly. The requirement is eight hours per month, but that's not a lot of time to spend creating an app that could, potentially, save someone's life.
Apps are often taken for granted in North America as fun ways to pass the time, but technology can do more than provide a cure for boredom. In the case of ‘Code for India,' technology can actually help to make the world a better place.
If you have some time to spare (and have coding skills), check out the ‘Code for India' website. Will you donate eight hours per month to creating apps that might make a major impact? Do you believe that this project is a good idea?
Questions? Comments? Talk back!
