With a desire to help others, 20-year-old Yasmin Pascual Khalil, floated ReadWriteAnalyze (RWA) on November 26, 2010. Managed by a group of undergraduate students like her, RWA helps students and working professionals worldwide with their written works and CVs. “We do peer editing like proofreading and editing written documents, edit CVs and provide mentoring in the form of clearing grammar doubts, creating customised weekly vocabulary quizzes, etc,” says Khalil.
Coming with the statutory warning that they are not certified editors, Khalil, who serves as founder and president of RWA, says, “At RWA, we allocate students to mentors based on the mentor’s expertise. Some mentors handle English as a second language work, while others edit undergraduate research papers. Then there are those who specialise in CV editing. Currently, we can edit almost anything except for undergraduate and graduate theses. We are looking for teachers to help us out in editing advance-level papers.”
Approximately, over 150 students/professionals have benefitted from RWA till date, says Khalil. All the services provided by the team are free. The team members not only work together but are also studying together at University of the People, informs Khalil. A great fan of open source courses, Khalil who is majoring in computer science and chemical engineering says, “I’m a great advocate for knowledge sharing and I believe access to open source courses is a great way of doing so. I’m a firm supporter of Coursera, edX, Udacity, and Saylor Foundation and such.”
RWA also provides a wide range of virtual volunteer opportunities. “Volunteers can work during weekdays or weekends on the tasks of their choice and will be guided by the team. We are looking for those with a good command of written and spoken English and plenty of initiative, determination, motivation, and patience. This is an ideal opportunity to practise important skills used in the workplace, such as teamwork, communication, problem solving, project planning, task management and organisation. As a bonus, you will also receive a reference letter, if you volunteer for six months or more,” she elaborates on the opportunities. Details at http://rwaredefined.wix.com/rwax.
— shilpa.vasudevan@newindianexpress.com