Spotlight: Humanitech

A row of people with gardening hoes planting trees; a brigade of vigilantes scouring the streets for litter; a set of concerned people knocking at your door asking for any cans you’d be willing to donate. These common perceptions of community service are dry, especially cliché, and can take very little creative input. It is rather difficult to find a way to benefit the community that actually uses the skills we learn in school, and if such a way could be found, it is usually way above our current skill level.
     So, too, thought Daniel Stensland, founder of one of Tech’s newest organizations, Humanitech, who, after working for a number of organizations last year, saw how far behind many of them were from a technological perspective.
    “Some got lucky and knew someone who was tech-savvy, but that wasn’t always the case,” said Stensland. “Those other groups would have to hire the services of an outside business, which would often result in an over-inflated price and a variable-quality product. Or, they would just ignore computers and, in doing so, miss out on a valuable resource.”
    In seeing how much technical help was actually needed, Stensland met with a group of friends who decided to form a school organization devoted to the melding of humanitarianism and technology, an organization which, for obvious reasons, took on the name Humanitech.
    Humanitech is a relatively new organization at Tech, seeking to open its doors to the public and recruit new members. Its premise is to put to use the unique capabilities of Tech students, transforming them into an aid for the community.
    Up to this point, Humanitech has devoted itself solely toward free web design, stating one of its purposes as building websites to replace those of local community-based organizations whose current sites are unattractive, unusable, or uninformative.
    “Humanitech is like the club Tech always needed,” said CM major Liz Ha. “Ever since I became interested in design, I always wanted to try my hand at making websites, but there never really was any need. Now I have a way I can practice and at the same time do something worthwhile.”
    Having recently evolved from the planning stages to a state of doing things, a small group has been busy working on a website for The Drake House. Humanitech has also received requests for help from and committed to a number of other organizations, including Human Rights Atlanta, Georgia Detention Watch, Amnesty Atlanta, and Georgia Rescue and Restore.
    “Humanitech appealed to me because I've always wanted to improve my skill in web design, and now I finally have a group to push me to learn more through experience than I've been motivated to do in the past,” said Erica Penk, 3rd year CM. “There’s also the fact that we're helping out non-profit organizations, so it’s a win-win situation.”
    Humanitech welcomes anyone, because it wants to be an educational process for everyone, even the Tech student who is interested in web design but needs to learn first. Through working in a group, discussing and seeing what needs to be done, students not only learn better for themselves but can also develop a portfolio of projects that are not academically related.
    Having made its debut not too long ago, the club is still looking at expanding and growing. The concept of being able to learn web design processes while working for a non-profit organization is an idea that appeals to multiple people, and, through that, the club hopes to grow to a point that it can handle multiple projects simultaneously.
    “In addition to working with current organizations with their technical and digital needs it is also a goal of Humanitech to provide education on using computers to populations relevant to our cause. Although there’s a large emphasis on web design and development right now, our projects are in no way restricted to it,” said Stensland.
    Humanitech currently meets Thursday s at 7:00pm in room 304 of the CoC Building, where members, old and new, get together in groups and discuss progress on certain aspects of whatever project they may be working on at the time. Learning skills in the creation of frontend and backend structure, Humanitech members come out better educated and more satisfied because they are able to give back to something that really matters to them with something they enjoy.
    “I see Humanitech as an organization that best represents the potential of Tech students,” said Ha. “We have web developers and web designers working together, as in the real world, to help build websites for organizations. There is no better way to expand my horizons, help non-profit organizations, and perform community service in a way that is enjoyable and fun for me.”