The primary goal of Helping People Online is to provide an Internet directory of Non-Profit Human Service Organizations.

Most simply put Helping People Online is an Internet based, that is Online, directory of non-profit organizations. It hopes to ultimately catalog all of the more than 600,000 non-profits in the United States who find that our service can assist them in publicizing their services.

Whatís wrong with existing directories? Essentially nothing if a telephone number and address is enough information. But telephone number is seldom enough information. No agency handles all the problems of man- or woman-kind at one location. All agencies are established to help certain populations. Consider a simple distinction between two service providers: One provider is able to meet the needs of people who are sober and cooperative and the other provider is able to address the needs of people who are not sober and cooperative. No one can tell this is an important distinction and from a list of non-profit agency telephone numbers.

How does Helping People Online tackle the deficiencies of existing directories? Helping People Onlineís database will carry the additional information needed to match a client with an agencyís strengths.

Where does the information come from that permits matching the client with the right service agency? Ideally the information would come directly from the agency itself but experience indicates the people who are best at running and agency are often not good at developing and publishing the information lay people need to access them. To address this deficiency Helping People Online has a secondary goal Community Service Education.

What are the components of Helping People Onlineís community service education? The initial goal is develop a K-12 and post-secondary curriculum, which at the beginning will compliment existing community service education, programs and later stand alone as a complete independent community service curriculum.

What are the major elements of the community service curriculum?

Planning ñ observation and problem definition.

Fact Finding ñ fieldwork, research, interviewing.

Quantifying ñ assigning magnitude and severity to the data.

Documenting ñ writing to encourage people not to simply understand but take action.

Helping People Online is going to implement a revolutionary curriculum development model. It will be based on behavioral objectives and it will be developed and refined on the Internet using an ìopen sourceî model.

How does the open source model work? A website will be created containing the basic structure of the curriculum and published on the Internet. Everyone with access to the Internet is free to copy the material from this website and they encouraged to comment constructively or submit new materials to the website. A panel of experts will review the new materials and the comments about them. The panel will accept the best and add them to the core materials for general distribution. In time the core materials will be reviewed for accreditation. Accredited materials will be available inclusion in schools and colleges for credit. Once the curriculum and materials are accredited they will be available to create a complete curriculum for schools and colleges that had none previously.

People with new ideas will be encouraged to publish these ideas in a section where materials are accepted for comment. In time their ideas will result in new materials and overall program improvement.