Government leaders are in the thick of it. They’re making decisions with imperfect, constantly evolving information; being asked to lead through life-or-death scenarios; and considering the short- and long-term wellbeing of their communities. With governments under unprecedented strain, volunteers with U.S. Digital Response are working to provide real solutions to help ease some of their tech-related burdens in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
At USDR, we’ve been overwhelmed by the generosity of our 4,500+ volunteers and their willingness to step up and help in this time of need.
Meet Our Volunteers
Thousands of USDR volunteers have raised their hands to offer their services and skills, including engineering, design, operations, data science, supply chain management, policy making, marketing and more. USDR’s volunteers have worked for major companies like Facebook, USDS, Code for America, Quizlet, Airbnb and more. Many also have government experience at the local, state and federal level, including three of USDR’s founders who were U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officers.
Volunteer Spotlight
Meet Vi Nguyen and Greg Fitzpatrick. Vi’s background is in data and strategy with an emphasis in education, while Greg is a UX researcher, writer and communications consultant with an emphasis on non-profits, government agencies and global corporations.
Vi and Greg are working on Neighbor Express, a volunteer-driven platform for government entities that connects at-risk residents with essential services including meals, groceries, and ad-hoc deliveries during COVID-19. Together, Vi and Greg are leading efforts to improve the overall Neighbor Express experience for both volunteers and seniors. Their work will help identify best practices that can be applied across the board to help new cities and organizations implement Neighbor Express quickly and efficiently, ensuring that trusted neighbors can help deliver food, medication, and other needs to people in their own communities.
Vi and Greg are just two of our many volunteers. Stay tuned for more spotlights on the generous, talented volunteer experts who are putting their skills to use to help governments.
USDR Volunteers By The Numbers
Within our first month, we’ve had more than 4,500 volunteers raise their hands to offer their services and skills, including engineering, data science, operations, marketing and more.
Our database of qualified, experienced professionals includes close to 700 who are available full-time.
Since mid-March, we’ve talked to dozens of government teams to learn about their needs and matched volunteers to 150 projects.
USDR volunteers include over 1,000 experts in user research/design, back-end engineering, project management and data science, including nearly 300 USDR volunteers who have skills with mainframe systems including COBOL.
Where We Are
In the U.S., USDR has a representative volunteer from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Our volunteer force also extends to Egypt, New Zealand, Switzerland, India, Brazil, England, Argentina, South Africa and South Korea, to name a few.
What We’ve Done
How You Can Help
As governments’ needs continually evolve, as do USDR’s needs for volunteers. Right now, our biggest needs are:
- Translation services: Are you able to translate English to written Arabic, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Cabo Verdean Creole, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, or Vietnamese? Sign up to volunteer, select translation as a skill and list the applicable languages.
- We’re looking for a variety of skill sets. If you’re interested in learning about USDR’s work and how you can get involved, you can find more information and sign up to volunteer on our website.
Now What?
Now that you’ve signed up to volunteer, what’s next? First of all, THANK YOU. It’s evident that we have a passionate group of volunteers and we are continuously looking for ways to engage everyone’s skills in the most appropriate way.
Many volunteers may not have been assigned a project at this point, but we are still working to find opportunities to match hand-raisers with our governments in need. Additionally, we love to surface local volunteers when jurisdictions reach out — so please help us continue building the bench so we have qualified folks with a variety of skill sets located all over the country. In the meantime, we will continue to highlight ways you can stay engaged.
- Please consider volunteering with the Mutual Aid Hub or this database of localized resources.
- Check out our new GitHub repository to follow along with USDR projects and consider ways to volunteer to adapt them to other governments.
- If you have relationships with government leaders responding to COVID-19, please encourage them to request help through our website — we will contact them within 24 hours to learn more about their needs.
Visit www.USDigitalResponse.org to learn more.