How to support new/learning devs in developing countries? | Hacker News Reader

How to support new/learning devs in developing countries?

7 pointsficklepickle5 comments

I recently came across a neat github repo, but the end of the readme broke my heart. He is an obviously passionate young person, but was largely unable to afford food. He had a PayPal link and said even 1 or 2 dollars would help a lot.

Naturally, I tried to donate a few dollars. I'm pretty poor by developed country standards, but not compared to this person.

Unfortunately, PayPal refused to send the money. They let him setup a PayPal.me address, but any donations are refused. Likely because he is in a developing country. I'm sure he doesn't even know.

This really stuck with me. This talented young human can't improve his situation effectively for want of ~$1/day for food. Obviously there are more factors, but adequate nutrition is certainly a limiting factor.

According to the Global Innovation Index 2014, lack knowledge and skilled labour are two big factors that hold back development of a country.

HN, how can we help people in this situation?

We have a large pool of folks with tech skills and often money to spare here on HN. Let's put our heads together and see what we can come up with.

I like to bootstrap things. I see a platform where potential sponsees create a profile and link their github. Sponsors can support promising new/learning devs with small regular payments and mentorship. I think it's important it's not just money, but also knowledge transfer.

There would be many challenges to face, both technical and social. Getting small payments to developing countries reliably and efficiently would be be one.

I'd love to know about any prior art, anything like this that has been tried or exists today.

Thoughts?

Find out if there's a large Ebay-like plataform in his country. If so, see if their payment based service for commercial operations allows you to buy stuff from him. Maybe he can announce some digital product/service.

Also, can you link his GitHub here?

That's an interesting idea.

I should have been more clear, it's not really about this one individual. I'd like to see people with potential supported towards a career. It can be hard to do without guidance.

Helping people from poverty to a good career can have a huge knock on effect to families and communities and societies.

The repo in question wasn't amazing in an absolute context. It was amazing given this person doesn't own a computer and struggles to eat. Time spent looking for food is time that can't be spent learning.

I don't actually have the link at the moment. But there must be millions of people with technical aptitude but without the support and means to grow that into a career.

I'd love a platform similar to Patreon, but for new devs (particularly in developing nations) where they can post their work and receive mentorship/sponsorship.

Especially for those of us who work in major US cities, sponsoring a dev in the position of the young man described in this post wouldn't be very hard.

This is actually a good use case for transferring USDT (tether token that represents US dollars) to him, but without a 3rd party doing the verification, you run the risk of getting scammed.

If he is gaining traction, other can clone the repo and create the same story.

I should mention this isn't about this one person or his project. It wasn't particularly impressive or useful to a large audience. It just got me thinking.

This is about helping people like him with early skill and clear potential develop into skilled professional developers.

It's one thing to know some programming, another entirely to be able to turn that into a career.

If you can get a decent grasp on a language and concepts, self-taught in a highly resource-constrained environment, imagine what you could do with a little support and guidance.

The whole give a man a fish versus teaching him to fish thing I guess.

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