We understand that getting involved can be difficult during the age of social distancing. This list is meant to help you start thinking of ways that you can remain engaged in service and civic action throughout this pandemic.
To receive Service Learning credit to fulfill your ATA requirements, you must perform at least 5 hours of service and complete the Experiential Learning Reflection form.
Organized by students across the institutions of the Texas Medical Center, HTX COVID sitters' goal is to help those on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic by offering household management and tutoring services.
If you have reliable personal transportation and are able to drive, delivering meals through Meals on Wheels can help provide nutrition to those who need it.
Houston in Action is responding to COVID-19 by keeping people informed and protected from health risks, supporting Coronavirus education and volunteer efforts, and continuing to motivate people to complete the 2020 Census.
In a Common Ground for Action online forum, you exchange views online with others in a nonpartisan, small-group discussion that is moderated and generally lasts about two hours.
Public Agenda is a nonpartisan engagement research and action group. Access polls, analysis, and activities to remain engaged (such as the Text, Talk, Engage initiative).
Priorities and initiatives for addressing climate change, developed through youth activism online and on the ground.
"The power of art meets the strengths of community." Currently, they are running a Get Well project for people afflicted with COVID19 -- #getwellworld: YOUWILLRISEPROJECT.COM/GETWELLWORLD
Once you sign up and choose your language preferences, you'll be subscribed to periodic calls. Your caller ID will always say "QuarantineChat" when your phone rings. After a brief moment on hold, you'll match with another random person. You don't have to pick up if you're busy—your partner will be automatically matched with someone else. And you can join and leave the line whenever you'd like. It's private. You use your phone number to sign up for Dialup, but your matches will only ever see your username. All calls are end-to-end encrypted.
Volunteers transcribe hand-written documents in order to archive the writing in fully searchable and usable database. "The mission of the APWA is to replace speculation on and misrepresentation of prisons, imprisoned people, and prison workers with first-person witness by those who live and work on the receiving end of American criminal justice. No single essay can tell us all that we need to know. But a mass-scale, national archive can begin to strip away widely circulated myths and replace them with some sense of the true human costs of the current legal order. By soliciting, preserving, digitizing and disseminating the work of imprisoned people, prison workers and volunteers, we hope to ground national debate on mass incarceration in the lived experience of those who know prisons best."
Amnesty Decoders is an innovative platform for volunteers around the world to use their computers or phones to help Amnesty International researchers sift through pictures, information and documents.
People-powered research. The Zooniverse enables everyone to take part in real cutting edge research in many fields across the sciences, humanities, and more. The Zooniverse creates opportunities for you to unlock answers and contribute to real discoveries.
Digitizing books for open access through volunteer transcription.
With 30 hours of training, you can volunteer to respond on the crisis text line.
Citizen scholars are invited to transcribe historic documents including diaries and working papers of prominent Americans and records associated with the Smithsonian's vast scientific collections. Transcription makes these important materials more accessible to researchers around the world, as well as the general public.
Do you love gardens and the thrill of the hunt? The Smithsonian's Archives of American Gardens has images of numerous gardens across the United States that need a bit of sleuthing to be positively identified. Some images belonged to slide lectures that were dismantled over time or simply never were labelled. Regardless of how it happened, they are a mystery!
Our knowledge of the many life-forms on Earth - of animals, plants, fungi, protists and bacteria - is scattered around the world in books, journals, databases, websites, specimen collections, and in the minds of people everywhere. Imagine what it would mean if this information could be gathered together and made available to everyone – anywhere – at a moment's notice. This dream is becoming a reality through the Encyclopedia of Life.
If you've ever looked underneath a dock, you've probably noticed that it is covered with living things! This group of organisms, known as a fouling community, contains a wide variety of invertebrate animals, algae, and bacteria. Through Invader ID, you can help us to track changes in fouling communities and look for new occurrences of invasive species. With your help, we'll be able to track fouling communities in more places, and hopefully see early warning signs of environmental changes.
