Fellow Presentations: Day 2 (Jose Arocha)

Jose Arocha started off with a bit of personal history, as most of the fellows have. I generally haven't included that in the write-up, because I'm not sure that they want their private info included in a public blog. Part of Jose's family's political involvement was so interesting that I'm going to make an exception: while Venezuela was still early in its democratic stage (about 40 years ago), Jose's grandfather was the governor of one of the states, for the prevailing political party (the social-democrats, I think). At the same time, Jose's uncle was the leader of the socialist revolution party! Must have made for some interesting dinner table discussions...

Jose also gave an interesting background of Venezuela, describing it as "a poor country with a very rich oil company called the government." Apparently, the country has been in nearly continuous crisis for the last 20 years, as the middle class has shrunk from 60% to a mere 18%. People are starting to recognize that they can't wait for the government to solve all the social problems, and are looking for ways to self-organize. Some marches have attracted more than a million people.

With this background, Jose's Volunteer Bank is an immediate, practical way of matching volunteers (and their skills) with social needs. The Volunteer Bank will be a web-based application, but the technology portion is not the real focus: creating an overall exchange system is. Volunteers may earn points ("V-miles") for donating their time and talents. These V-miles may be redeemed for products and services from sponsoring companies, who receive recognition for their socially responsible stance. Most donations would be in-kind (movie tickets and the like), but some companies may choose to make a "matching grant" of dollars for V-miles donated back on behalf of certain organizations.

Jose has done more prep and project planning than most of us, lining up other organizations to help with the project:

• Apal@ncar: A Venezuela development gateway of 7,000 social organizations
  
• FIPAN: A collection of 75 NGO's focused on assisting children and families
  
• Redbinaria: A web development company in Venezuela
  

He's even got a detailed Microsoft Project plan with a target launch date of 30 March 2005. Ambitious, but with the traction that he's got, a great goal to shoot for.