UPDATE: Please refer to more recent blog post to find out about more CiviCRM related Mozilla Service Week activities!

Mozilla Service Week is coming up in just one month - September 14 to 21, 2009! The driving force behind this event is a strong belief that everyone should know how to use the Internet, have easy access to it, and have a great experience when they're online. During those 7 days you are encouraged to share, give, engage, create, and collaborate by offering your time and talent to local organizations to make their Internet use easier and more effective. CiviCRM, among others, became a partner of this initiative.

We invite you to participate in this initiative, register at the website and do either (or both!) of the below:

• If you have proper skills and experience to help with installing, upgrading or customizing CiviCRM, providing a training on how to use it effectively or perhaps just answering some questions about it - consider joining as volunteer and pledge some hours to help with CiviCRM.
• If you represent an organisation who's using CiviCRM or wants to use it and wouldn't mind getting some expert knowledge - register a volunteering opportunity describing your needs.

Of course CiviCRM-related activities are not the only thing that can be done during the service week - although it would make us really happy to see a lot of people volunteer to do them. :-) There is also a lot of other things that can be done:

• Choose from a broad list of service opportunities - there is a lot of volunteering requests already published! More details on Mozilla Service Week site.
• Take part in Earth Day for the Web on September 22nd, which aims to celebrate and preserve the Web as an important commons accessible to everyone. This year’s theme is “Digital Inclusion” and there will be local service events that you can join in on!
• Create your own service opportunity: Reach out to a local school, organization or people near you to find out what sort of technology help they need.

Mozilla folks state the mission of service week in the following way: “We believe a group of committed, energized, service-minded people can accomplish almost anything. That’s why we’re harnessing the power of the Web and the passion of the Mozilla community to see how big a difference we can make in one week.” CiviCRM also has an excellent community around it – let’s join and make a difference!