The first was when I interviewed eight-year-old entrepreneur Ryan Ross. During the interview, he said that running a business was easy and fun and everyone should do it. And that if we all did, we could help more people around the world.

Then I had the opportunity to ask billionaire Sir Richard Branson at a recent web conference for his thoughts on keeping his passion alive and giving something back as part of his work as an entrepreneur.

I don’t think it’s an easy feat to stay connected to our core values and who it is that we want to be. No, strike that. I think it’s easy to get so distracted by the “busy-ness” of our businesses that we forget our purpose, our mission, or our vision for our life and who we hope to be.

I want my life to be about giving back, helping others and being of service, but then the days happen. I move from one to-do item to the next, and before you know it, a month or three months or even a year has passed, and I haven’t really spent a big portion of my time encompassing or embodying the traits that I hope will make up the biggest portion of my character.

I don’t know the answer for sure, not yet at least. Maybe we figure it out with time, with age and with wisdom. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I hope there comes a time when I can focus much less on the things I hope to do and much more on the person I want to be.

Maybe instead of (or at least alongside) a to-do list, I should have a “to-be” list and then make a concerted effort to complete them both.

How do you instill more of the “being” even with all the “doing”?

Photo by Flickr user foxspain, licensed under CC 2.0

How can you find a way (and the time) to do more good in the world, while still keeping up with the demands of our businesses? One solution is to focus on one trait at a time.

First, make a list of all the positive traits you would like to have (generous, responsible, helpful, supportive, etc.).

Under each item, list ways you can incorporate more of that particular trait into your daily life. For example, if you want to be more responsible within your community, you might consider sponsoring an area youth program or volunteering to maintain a local park.

Finally, set aside time each day and week to devote to your commitment. Even 15-30 minutes a day can make a big difference. If you could commit to just 15 minutes a day, five days per week, at the end of the year, you would have contributed more than 65 hours of your time to improving the world around you. That’s more than a week and a half of your attention!

Many times, we put off getting involved and doing things that we really want to do because of the belief that there just isn’t enough time. On top of that, we think that the time we do have isn’t enough to make any kind of difference, but even small contributions add up. If we can find ways to give back in even the smallest ways, we can make big changes in the world around us.

In what small ways can you make a difference in the world around you? Share your tips for getting involved while still keeping up with your business and other commitments.

Image from Flickr by laRuth.

When I hear that word, I think of Africa, a continent that has historically been, and still is, either criminally exploited (to put it mildly), or shamelessly neglected by the rest of the world.

When it comes to web working, Africa is one of the last frontiers. In most sub-Saharan African countries, people tend to use mobile phones more than the Internet for business-related activities and communications. Factors contributing to this are high illiteracy rates and linguistic diversity. In addition, the high cost of bandwidth and lack of infrastructure are a serious problem. Many African countries also lack workers skilled enough in information and communication technologies (ICT) for web working to be a viable option. These factors are obstacles to adoption of the Internet as a tool for business, but access to computers and the Internet would contribute greatly to overcoming the obstacles that hinder their adoption and use in the first place.

Humanitarian and international development organizations know this, and are making efforts to get the continent connected with the objective of reducing poverty, as illustrated by this strategy of the UN Economic Commission for Africa:

Access to Information > Knowledge and Capacity > Innovation > Productivity > Growth > Employment > Poverty Reduction

What can we web workers do to help implement the UNECA strategy and make a difference in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world?

Harnessing the power of youth

Access and knowledge, the first steps towards poverty alleviation, are the focus of the One Laptop per Child movement, whose mission is “to ensure that all school-aged children in the developing world are able to engage effectively with their own personal laptop, networked to the world, so that they, their families and their communities can openly learn and learn about learning.”

Kids are fearless and enterprising and they have boundless energy and potential. Take these Congolese boys, for example. They identified a niche market and started a micro-business selling paper, pens and cookies on a college campus. With laptops and access to the store of human knowledge, they could end up being tomorrow’s web workers and entrepreneurs.

This holiday season, why not contribute to OLPC? You can buy a kid a laptop for $200, or contribute an amount of your choice with a click or two.

Building virtuous circles

Despite the obstacles I’ve stated above, there are skilled web workers to be found in Africa. Many of us already work with teams and vendors all over the world. We are uniquely positioned to collaborate with partners in developing countries and have a direct impact on capacity, productivity, employment, and growth.

The French site ProgOnline is a matchmaking platform where freelancers can create profiles and companies can post project requests or directly contact service providers. Many of the freelancers on ProgOnline are from francophone Africa. Similar sites in English are rentacoder.com, getafreelancer.com, and getacoder.com. (Disclaimer: I have never used these sites. If you have used them, or know of other such sites in English or other languages, please share in the comments!)

Sowing the seeds of innovation

I’ve mentioned before that many of us web workers are working on our own entrepreneurial projects. Are you developing a platform or business model that could be applied or tweaked to help bring developing countries into the loop? Entrepreneurs may find themselves without funding sources soon, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stop having ideas or working on their projects. More than fame and fortune (which is looking unlikely these days anyway), I imagine most of us really just want our projects to see the light of day. There is a big world out there that could use our help.

For the entrepreneurially inclined among you, there are dozens of great ideas in the action plan that came out of the 2003/2005 World Summit on the Information Society. It reads like a wishlist for a wired world.

Here are just a couple of items from the plan:

C8.23.c. The preservation of natural and cultural heritage, keeping it accessible as a living part of today’s culture. This includes developing systems for ensuring continued access to archived digital information and multimedia content in digital repositories, and support archives, cultural collections and libraries as the memory of humankind.

C7.21.a. Ensure the systematic dissemination of information using ICTs on agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries, forestry and food, in order to provide ready access to comprehensive, up-to-date and detailed knowledge and information, particularly in rural areas.

We all know that entrepreneurialism breeds entrepreneurialism. We’ve seen how new companies and entire new industries spring up around startups! Maybe your project could foster innovation in the developing world.

However, I don’t advise that you swoop in like Superman with your wonderful new gadget. Instead, do your best to coordinate with and engage local talent, business, government and NGOs in the project. You don’t want to put local people out of business and you do want to address real, not perceived needs.

One person can make a difference

Just a few months ago, Jonathan Gosier, an American software developer, writer and social entrepreneur, founded Appfrica International in Kampala, Uganda. He moved there with his girlfriend, who works in international development.

Appfrica’s mission is two-fold: to encourage western businesses and investors to engage African entrepreneurs, and to encourage the adoption of computers, programming and use of the Internet in developing parts of Africa. (More about Appfrica)

Jonathan tells me that local IT students at Makerere University can’t afford their own computers, Internet connections, or servers. To help them become developers, he has provided IT students in his area with LAMP servers on USB keys, which allows them to essentially run a web server off of the keys to work with applications as if they were online. The Internet connection at their university is flaky, so he also pays their public transport fares to his house, where they can use his connection to a locally hosted server. He’s loaded it with open source software that they can use to learn to develop. And his door is always open to them.

Jonathan funds Appfrica entirely from his own work as a web developer, but he will be seeking investors interested in helping the program flourish. In his view, “People should invest in the promise of Africa rather than donating out of pity for Africa.”

If you’d like to invest in some promise, and help Jonathan’s students transition from students to pros, or help him find funding, let him know!

We can’t all be Jonathans. It’s just not possible. But if you have a heart and a creative mind, you can find a way to make a difference.

We look forward to hearing more ideas from those hearts and minds of yours!

Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters to post about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. The theme for 2008 is Poverty.

The organizers of Blog Action Day ask that we “examine the issues from our own unique viewpoints and perspectives, look for solutions on the small and large scale, and ask how the individual and the collective can make changes.”

We hope you’ll join us in this worldwide grassroots action to sensitize people to the myriad issues and stories of poverty. If you’re not a blogger, don’t despair. There are several other ways to take part!

Please let us know in the comments if you’re planning to participate!

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.