(FORTUNE Magazine) – Scott Ryan was in a quandary. He couldn't ignore a nagging urge to do more for the less fortunate--but he also loved his career as a financial consultant at Accenture in New York City. "The question was," says Ryan, 27, "Do I become extremely successful financially"--and then donate money--"or actually do the hands-on work?"

Last fall, he got the chance to do the latter without quitting his job--thanks to an innovative year-old volunteer program called Geekcorps. Based in North Adams, Mass., Geekcorps works like a Peace Corps for tech-savvy professionals, minus the daunting two-year commitment. The brainchild of former dot-com exec Ethan Zuckerman and international development specialist Elisa Korentayer, Geekcorps hopes to bring the Internet to developing countries. Volunteers spend three to four months working with small businesses in the West African nation of Ghana; the organization plans to expand to Latin America and South Asia.

Ryan, who has a background in e-commerce, approached his bosses last year to request a leave of absence. Though the company didn't pay him for the time he missed, once he explained his trip, "they encouraged me to go." So after ten days of orientation in Massachusetts last September, he departed for the Ghanian capital of Accra with five other volunteers, including a database programmer from the American Cancer Society and an application engineer from Oxygen Media. (The $12,000 cost of training, transporting, housing, insuring, and feeding each volunteer--and paying a $500 stipend--is covered by Geekcorps donors.)

For three months, home was a ten-room former commercial space in Accra that doubled as the head office for five Geekcorps staffers. The group paired Ryan with Francis Provencal and Catherine McNamara, owners of a two-year-old art gallery called Nuku, who wanted to raise $25,000 to build a Website for the gallery and a cybercafe. "We created a business plan for them to meet with five venture capitalists," says Ryan; Nuku succeeded in getting the funding. "The volunteers can set up very complicated networks," observes Zuckerman, who received 700 applications for 14 openings in the most recent Geekcorps class.

Despite some definite downsides--"everyone had some sort of digestive change at one point or another"--Ryan says he was profoundly affected by the resourcefulness of the Ghanians he met. "They found every angle to create opportunities for themselves," says Ryan, "in an environment where opportunities are scarce."

--Jimmie Briggs