Get Involved
My Temple Buddy is built by a small team. The project’s reach is already broader than what a small team can sustain alone, and there are kinds of expertise and perspective it does not yet hold.
If you are reading this page, you may be one of the people who could change that.
Below are the kinds of collaboration the project welcomes. Read what fits and reach out if it does.
For community members and heritage holders
The temples documented on this site belong to communities. If you are part of a temple community, a clan association, a heritage organisation, or a family with deep connection to a Chinese religious institution, your knowledge matters in ways that academic research alone cannot replicate.
Correct mistakes. If you see an error in how a temple is described, please tell us. Mistakes happen, and they should be fixed quickly.
Add context. If you have stories, histories, or knowledge about a temple that the site does not currently include, we would value hearing them. Some of this might end up in the public site (with your name credited and your permission); some might inform private notes that shape future analyses.
Connect us to others. If there is a temple, community, or family lineage that should be documented but is not yet, please point us toward the right people to talk to.
Advise on representation. If something about how a temple, deity, or practice is presented does not feel right to you, please say so. We would like to hear concerns directly to be respectful of the traditions the site documents.
What you can bring: a connection to the community or tradition being documented, and a willingness to share as an advisor and witness.
For neurodivergent and disabled visitors
My Temple Buddy makes claims about being designed for neurodivergent visitors, disabled visitors, and people with sensory sensitivities. Whether those claims are accurate is something only the community itself can answer.
Test the site. If you would be willing to navigate the site as a neurodivergent or disabled visitor and tell us where it fails, that feedback is genuinely valuable. We are particularly interested in: where the language feels alienating, where the visual design creates sensory difficulty, where the navigation creates cognitive load, and where the temple guidance feels insufficient or wrong.
Test a temple visit. If you are willing to use the site to prepare for an actual temple visit and tell us afterward how the preparation matched the experience, this is the most valuable kind of feedback we can receive. It is also a meaningful time commitment, and we are happy to offer modest compensation for this kind of structured user testing.
Advise on language and framing. If the way the site talks about accessibility, neurodivergence, or disability does not feel right to you, please tell us. Outside perspectives are essential here, and we know that even with good intentions, framings can land badly.
What you need to bring: lived experience that the site claims to design for, and the willingness to share honest feedback. We recognise that this kind of consultation is real work and are committed to compensating it where we can. Reach out and we can discuss what kind of engagement makes sense for your time.
For technical and design collaborators
The site uses several digital tools that have room to grow: the Explorer’s Toolkit, and the My Temple Buddy app.
Front-end and accessibility. If you work in web accessibility, inclusive design, or front-end development with a focus on neurodivergent or disabled users, we will value your input on the site’s design. Specific audits, suggestions, or contributions are welcome.
What you need to bring: relevant technical skill, and (ideally) some sympathy with the project’s values. This is not a venture-backed startup; we cannot offer significant financial compensation. But we can offer credit, a real project to point to in your own portfolio, and the satisfaction of contributing to public-good cultural-heritage work.
How to reach out
For any of the above, the contact form below is the best first step. Tell us:
- Which kind of collaboration interests you
- What you would bring (briefly — two to three sentences is fine)
- How we can reach you and when you tend to be available
We try to respond within a few days. If we are slow, please follow up — sometimes messages get lost.
If your situation does not fit any of the categories above but you think there is a way you could contribute, please reach out anyway. The categories are non-exhaustive. Some of the most valuable collaborations come from people whose contribution we had not anticipated.
What we cannot offer
We want to be honest about the limits of what this project can offer collaborators.
- Significant payment. My Temple Buddy is not funded. We can sometimes offer modest compensation for structured work (especially user testing and translation), but we cannot pay competitive professional rates. For paid professional engagements, we would need to find external funding first — and we are open to grant collaborations that would make this possible.
- Institutional affiliation. We cannot offer university affiliations, research positions, or institutional credentials. We can co-author papers and publicly credit contributions, which counts academically but is not the same as institutional employment.
- Fast turnaround. This is a long-term project run by a small team alongside other commitments. Decisions move at the pace of a small project, not a venture-backed startup. We aim to be respectful of contributors’ time, but progress is gradual.
- Universal expertise. We know what we know, and we know what we do not. For matters outside our expertise (legal advice, structural translation between languages we do not speak, technical work we cannot evaluate), we will defer to collaborators or recommend others rather than pretending.
Being upfront about these limits is part of the project’s commitment to honesty with its collaborators. If what we can offer matches what you can bring, we would love to hear from you. If it does not, we hope this page at least makes it clear what kind of project this is.
Making Chinese temple culture accessible, while building a rigorous framework for documenting these spaces, is bigger than what two people can do alone. If something on this page speaks to you, please trust that feeling. The worst that happens is a brief conversation. The best is that the project gains something it could not have reached on its own.