There are many organizations and foundations around the world offering volunteering programs for all tastes. They help to combine business with pleasure: doing good deeds to gain new experiences, get to know a new country, and learn new skills. International companies offer their employees volunteer days every year, but unpleasant mishaps often occur: highly skilled people have to spend their time doing jobs they are not suited for. Artificial intelligence can come to the rescue.
Statistics show that there are over 150,000 charities in the UK alone, employing 1 million people and spending around £80 billion a year. But very often, resources go to waste. Media manager Ben Maher started thinking about developing an AI application when he saw employees of a tech giant painting walls during volunteer days sponsored by the company. In doing so, they were world-class designers, developers, lawyers, and accountants.
The new BeWorthwhere app combines the strongest volunteer skills with the needs of charities. Artificial intelligence helps to understand people, their skills, and ambitions, analyze them and match them to specific offers.
Thanks to the LinkedIn API, every volunteer who wants to offer their services to BeWorthwhere does not have to go through a tedious registration process. All one has to do is log in through the LinkedIn API and their skills will instantly join the database and become available to the charities. In doing so, LinkedIn adds an element of gamification by rewarding volunteers with badges that publicly recognize their contribution to the charity.
But AI’s volunteering opportunities are not limited to this program. Artificial intelligence is used to match volunteers from different countries to eliminate bias and subjectivity. There are also AI-enabled programs that are used to support vulnerable groups remotely. In particular, they intelligently replace a live person when providing counseling and psychological support. And that’s terrific because computer programs in this case reduce suicide and crime.
