Technical Advisor (IT) – Fintech & Crowdfunding Platform Proposal

Host entity: Rousto Charity

Areas of expertise: Software development, Information technology and telecommunications, Project management, programme development, strategy

Application deadline: 12/11/2026

Mission and objectives

Our mission is to promote the social, economic, intellectual and informational development of cities and districts of Tajikistan, particularly through the empowerment of youth and women.

Assignment context

Background Context & Project Scope:
Our organization, Rousto Charity, is working to launch the first scalable, interest-free, and ethical crowdfunding platform dedicated to empowering low-income entrepreneurs, smallholder farmers, marginalized communities, and charity organizations across Tajikistan and beyond in the CIS region. In these target markets, high traditional borrowing costs and limited fundraising mechanisms present massive barriers to growth for both grassroots micro-businesses and local non-profits. To address this, our platform utilizes innovative digital technology to connect local borrowers and civil society groups with zero-percent interest capital and direct charitable funding, advancing UN Sustainable Development Goals for No Poverty (SDG 1) and Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG 8).

Contribution to Organizational Objectives:
We are actively preparing an application for the Cisco Global Impact Cash Grant Program to secure the critical financial resources and technological backing required to deploy our initial software build. Because Cisco is a leading global technology corporation, their evaluation board requires highly precise, viable, and professional technical descriptions regarding our digital architecture, data handling, and hosting frameworks.

What the Volunteer Needs to Know:
The selected online volunteer will directly advance our organizational goals by acting as the technical anchor for this fundraising push. They will review our draft proposal text to verify that our technical language sounds professional, robust, and credible. The volunteer will fit into a small, agile remote team, collaborating directly with our Grant Writer volunteer to ensure the technical infrastructure descriptions are fully aligned with Cisco's enterprise-grade tech expectations, paving the way for a successful application and a future regional software rollout.

Task description

We are seeking a technical online volunteer to serve as an IT Technical Advisor, helping our team ensure that the application we submit to the Cisco Global Impact Cash Grant Program is structurally sound, professionally framed, and technically accurate.

The volunteer will support us with the following hands-on tasks:
• Support with reviewing the draft responses written for the Cisco application portal to ensure all technical terminology regarding app and website development is accurate and professional.
• Support with clarifying the basic system structure (such as user authentication, cloud storage, database management, and mobile frameworks) so the proposal sounds technically credible to Cisco's evaluation board.
• Support with recommending the most efficient modern tools and architectural workflows to highlight within our project roadmap description.
• Support with ensuring the application correctly describes data privacy safeguards, cybersecurity foundations, and secure transactional ledgers.
• Collaborate directly with our main Grant Writer volunteer to answer specific technical queries raised within the online portal interface.

Skills and experience

• Basic understanding or background in web development, mobile application development, or IT project coordination.
• Ability to read draft text proposals and suggest technical corrections or better phrasing for software, database, and cloud concepts.
• An interest in helping a nonprofit design a secure and scalable digital crowdfunding solution for social impact.
• Strong collaborative skills to easily coordinate and communicate with a non-technical grant writer in a remote team setting.
• Reliable internet access and responsiveness to review draft application texts via email or text messaging apps.

Full eligibility requirements, conditions of service and application instructions are available on the official UNV platform.