Have you got five minutes for some micro-volunteerism?

We’re all busy, and for many of us the regular time commitments of traditional volunteering is a commitment too far. But if you could do something useful and meaningful in five or ten minutes, at any time, that would make it a whole lot easier, right?

That’s the idea behind the Do Some Good app from Orange. In partnership with ten different charities, it lists a series of short ways to volunteer. Each one relies on collaborative, crowd participation, and can be done in five minutes.

Being one of those people still labouring under the apparently mistaken impression that a mobile phone is something one makes phone calls on, I haven’t tried it out, but it sounds good. It’s certainly an innovative list of projects.

You can answer a survey for the Samaritans, contribute photos and details to a national ‘Outdoor Play map’. You can tag places that need more trees or rate the sustainability of restaurants, or do some micro-translation for Practical Action. “This action gives linguists the opportunity to translate bite-sized pieces of Practical Action’s valuable technical briefs” says the charity. “These can then be pieced back together and subsequently used to help many people working on the ground in developing countries.”

The excellent Sustrans and Groundwork are also involved, and I’ll be interested to see if it works. Although of course if you’ve got five minutes and an interest in guerilla gardening, I recommend actually planting some seeds as well as using your mobile to recommend a spot for somebody else to do it.

If you’ll excuse the branding, here’s the explanatory video from Orange: