Today, in the Nonprofit Commons weekly meeting, a group of Nonprofit Commons members discussed their Mash-up Challenge project. I am voting for this project, and I am endorsing them.

The Transition project's mission is to combat homelessness and to help those in transition envision a real life situation where they will have a home. To that end, the homeless participants will build their virtual homes, the 40 virtual world participants will be able to tell us whether they feel closer to being able to design a real-life reality that includes a home. The mash-up will work with Second Life and other web tools to create a homelessness resource portal for finding local service providers quickly, a widget tool flexible enough to import and embed across webspaces and virtual worlds.

Their findings will help determine whether virtual worlds like Second Life are an appropriate tool for people to use in redesigning their lives. Starting from the Nonprofit Commons in Second Life, the Transitions team will be mentoring new residents in lifeskills and building new homes along through the website A Place for Dreams, , where new opportunities will emerge. They plan to offer full life-skills trainings, business tools and microloans, one-click services.

Here is the chat transcript from the meeting, where they describe their project and their experience with the Mash-up Challenge. They participated in the Google Hackathon last week, and had a very productive learning experience (there are 8 members of the Nonprofit Commons in Second Life on the team, and it is led by Evonne Heyning and Sandy Andrews, both Nonprofit Commons members).

Below, is the chat transcript from their presentation about their very cool mash-up:

[8:59] Ozma Malibu: ok, the transitions project will provide resources to displaced/homeless/in transition folk, on several levels
[8:59] Ozma Malibu: one of which is in SL
[8:59] Ozma Malibu: AND last Friday, Amulius and I attended the Google hackathon and got so much help!
[8:59] Manifold Destiny: can you explain what that means? homeless in SL?
[8:59] In Kenzo: http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/transitions is the document we have started to help the community get onboard with this project
[9:00] In Kenzo: Looking at RL homelessness through an SL lens, seeing if we can make a positive impact thru SL and other web tools created especially for those "in transition"
[9:00] You: google hacjkathon was a techsoup/netsquared event
[9:00] In Kenzo: We have applied for the mashup challenge with Netsquared
[9:01] Ozma Malibu: Volunteer engineers from Google were at the hackathon along with Netsquared, and after being guided to think things out we got to work with each attending engineer to see how their expertise would fit with our goals
[9:01] In Kenzo: To build web tools that will provide easy one-two click searches for those who need basic living care
[9:01] In Kenzo: and a portal that will encapsulate our collective work, as each of the group leaders here has contributed a vital piece
[9:02] In Kenzo: Community VoiceMail, Bridges, Floaters all serve this community already, we are consolidating their services and other data from around the web to make it easier for people to find what they need and move forward
[9:02] In Kenzo: At this point, we would love you to visit the website at Netsquared and give us your vote, make comments and ask questions there
[9:02] In Kenzo: http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/transitions
[9:02] Carmen Gray: /great idea Kenzo :-)
[9:03] In Kenzo: We need lots of public support, and others here re welcome to join us if you see a programmatic link with your nonprofit work
[9:03] Jani Myriam: That *so* rocks!
[9:03] In Kenzo: we will be doing an SL pilot soon!
[9:04] Buffy Beale: Yes please everyone take a minute and vote for us
[9:04] In Kenzo: we will rock the vote today, come and help us gain a little momentum for this work. ozma and the team here has put a lot forward to build an SL pilot project, helping those in transition build new lives here
[9:05] You: and help these avatars win the big prize for teh net squared contest
[9:05] In Kenzo: We are REALLY EXCITED about this opportunity, and opening it up for people to start new businesses and lives through this imagination space....we will provide mentionship and grounding, tools and resources together and we invite you to join us
[9:05] In Kenzo: for the web space, for SL, for this community and most of all for those looking for a new life, we are building aplaceofdreams.org and will gather these elements on the web in the coming months. thanks for your help.
9:06] In Kenzo: http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/transitions