Login
NEWSLETTER
FEBRUARY 2011
---------------------------------------------
THIS MONTH'S TOPICS
1. FROM THE SERVICE: Opportunities to support the tenth anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers (IYV+10)
2. TIP: Helping organizations plan, create and manage their website
3. EXPERIENCE: Developing a website for the Association of African Entrepreneurs
---------------------------------------------
1. FROM THE SERVICE: Opportunities to support the tenth anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers (IYV+10)
In the scope of the tenth anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers, IYV+10, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme is looking for online volunteers to help collect information on developments related to volunteerism in the following countries:
Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Nicaragua, Panama, Republic of Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, United Kingdom, Vanuatu.
Knowledge about the volunteerism sector in the country as well as language skills in both the local language and English are required.
The opportunities have been published on www.onlinevolunteering.org. For more information and in order to apply, go to the Opportunity Search page and enter “IYV+10” in the Keyword search field.
---------------------------------------------
2. TIP: Helping organizations plan, create and manage their websites
Many organizations recognize the increasing importance of a well-designed, user-friendly Internet presence and seek the support of online volunteers in designing or redesigning their website.
Here is some advice on how online volunteers supporting website-related tasks can maximize the sustainability and impact of their work, empowering organizations to keep ownership of their websites:
Understanding the requirements and planning the project: Ask for a project plan and make sure that you understand the objectives, target audience and requirements before starting with the website design and development. If there is no such document, help the organization draft a plan that also includes the most appropriate software solutions, tasks for online volunteer programmers, etc.
Assembling a team for the design and development: While a simple website can be developed by a single online volunteer, for larger and more complex websites it is more effective to assemble a team of volunteers with specialized expertise in web design, web development, information architecture, etc. If you feel that further support is needed, let the organization know and offer your support in identifying volunteers with the right profile. The team of online volunteers can work under the guidance of the organization as well as of an online volunteer with experience in IT project management.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Suggest that the organization includes a volunteer specialized in SEO who, in close collaboration with the design and development team and the content developers, helps increase visibility and traffic to the website.
Website security: Alert the organization to the vulnerability of its website and the importance of ensuring a safe user experience, and suggest they involve an online volunteer specialized in website security to probe the website and detect security gaps.
Developing capacity: Online volunteers not only share their expertise to build the organization’s website, but also to develop its capacity in managing it. Even if the organization has not specifically asked for it, you can offer to train its staff, draft guidelines and provide a detailed documentation of your work.
---------------------------------------------
3. EXPERIENCE: Developing a website for the Association of African Entrepreneurs
The Association of African Entrepreneurs (AAE) provides information, tools and resources aimed at developing the capacities of small entrepreneurs and supporting economic development in Africa. The organization’s website is the main channel for communicating its services and reaching out to their beneficiaries as well as partners and donors.
AAE assembled a team of 11 online volunteers to support its staff in redesigning the website. Each of the volunteers brought specific expertise to the project: web design, web development and programming, Search Engine Optimization, copywriting and graphic design. “AAE is a fairly new organization. We had extremely limited resources and did not know how to go about it. Then we discovered onlinevolunteering.org. For us it is a blessing to work with these volunteers, and we were truly amazed at their enthusiasm. It has been a profound source of encouragement to keep on doing our work”, says Cornelius Nartey from AAE.
AAE organized the collaboration around smaller tasks and assigned one volunteer the role of coordinating the team’s work. The volunteers prepared discussion papers on technical requirements, system architecture and hosting options, which served as the basis for the organization’s decision making. They also developed an online feedback system and a discussion paper with recommendations for the future positioning of the AAE website. “Thanks to the volunteers’ contributions we have now a number of high quality reference materials and excellent resources for direct implementation on our website”, says Cornelius Nartey.
The close collaboration between AAE and the volunteers fostered learning on both sides. Bruce Fietz, an entrepreneur from Australia who in 1990 created his own information technology company, acted as team leader for the early stages of the project. “The work was challenging in as much as the team consisted of volunteers from all over the world, all with different skills and availability. I had to bring all my team management skills to the job while keeping a hands-on approach to the technical tasks. The process helped me to better understand how to utilise the skills of a diverse group of people to complete various tasks.”
Online volunteer Diana Achieng Orwa from Kenya has an MBA in Entrepreneurship with a level 1 certificate from the Institute for the Management of Information Systems (IMIS), and has been a tour operator since 2005 in a small business that she hopes ”will grow and be a source of employment in various tourist attraction sites in Kenya”. She appreciated the opportunity to share her business knowledge “to help those who may not have had the opportunity to undertake forms of formal education. The African Association of Entrepreneurs seeks to target semi-literate and literate entrepreneurs, known as Focal Change Members, in order to reach rural enterprise owners. I was passionate about the cause. I immediately identified with the needs of this organization and recognized that my educational background and vision congruence would be able to make a positive contribution to the organization. It also allowed me to grow immensely as I was getting different viewpoints on entrepreneurship based on different backgrounds.”
