The list of projects that the Humanitarian OSM Team is currently working on, can be found here. You can get project details and ways to contribute by visiting the project's webpage.
The first step towards contributing to OSM is to switch to OpenStreetMaps - switch2osm is a good place to start. It explains the benefits of OSM, how to load the OSM data and gives an overview of OSM.
Once you have made the switch to OSM, the next step will be to understand the process of mapping and learning the basic OSM techniques
- These video tutorials are a great way to understand the mapping process.
- The beginner's guide to OSM covers all the basics that are required to begin mapping.
These are some easy to use, basic editing tools recommended for beginners:
- osmbugs.org
- mapdust.com - Volunteers can look for bugs of varied importance and proceed to fix them.
- fieldpapers.org - Volunteers can just upload information to this site and someone else will then add it to OSM. This project is a continuation of WalkingPaper which is another good project worth looking at.
The following are recommended for volunteers with basic experience of OSM:
- Potlatch - Potlatch is a flash based editor.
- JOSM - This is more popular among the advanced users and is a desktop application.
- Anyone can provide:
- At a small scale, numbers for roads that are already traced.
- At a higher scale, street names and main Points of Interest.
- Local Volunteers with access to the necessary tools (Internet connection) can contribute to the maps directly by editing the maps based on their knowledge of the community and adding notes to make required changes.
I don't think Switch2OSM is a great site to use for getting people started in this context. It is mainly aimed at users of OSM data rather than contributors.
HOT's activation work is organized through this site: http://tasks.hotosm.org/ I'd suggest going through the process there and including the tools required to contribute there. (The editors either iD or JOSM are the ones you need)