Barrio Web 20

Barrio Web: 2.0 hyperlocal portal for organizations in low-income neighborhoods

community

FormaComuna will launch a hyper-local portal, as a platform for advancing social development programs run by community-based organizations working in 4 low-income neighborhoods in Caracas metropolitan area. The portal will feature a series of tools for: • • • •

publishing news regarding social development programs, communicating with stakeholders, keeping information flow with donors and government agencies, and assisting members planning and managing their programs.

The portal core feature is a step-by-step application for designing social programs at the community level, and for documenting program implementation progress. The portal will provide one application for managing information flow with key stakeholders: organization members, target community, donors, government agencies, and mass media. The portal will foster communication between the organization and the community being served. Weblogs, podcasts and videocasts featuring community news will be published at the portal. An automated query will track news relevant for the participating organizations and communities. The portal will also feature a community events calendar for posting announcements, sending reminders to people who want to keep track of such events, and generating informative minutes following important meetings or actions.

The project includes an e-learning tool to train members on the usage of the platform. All applications, systems and programming tools that will be used to develop this project are open source. We will use Drupal CMS plus CiviCRM, Moddle LMS (for the trainning component), MySql database and web server Apache. Using Drupal and CiviCRM will save us development time.

How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities? Underserved target audience The project targets members of community-based organizations working on local development plans at four different low-income neighborhoods in Caracas. This population has low participation rate on Internet access (12%), and low frequency of use (twice a week on average). Thus, their involvement in this program will boost substantially their ability to take advantage of resources available in the information society. Two of the needs addressed by the project have been identified as critical by community based organizations: publishing news regarding social development programs, and assisting members planning and managing their programs. Nonetheless, the integration in one single platform of application providing solutions to the four addressed needs was beyond expectations for most community organizations leaders. FormaComuna will provide training to the community organization teams members about usage of the applications. We will be partners in the initial outreach, but after the initial stages (3-6 months), the targeted community-based organizations should take ownership of the project, driving the usage, outreaching new users, and envisioning future innovations. Most organizations will be using computers at community centers. Only few can afford their own hardware and the connectivity fees.

FormaComuna will serve as broker helping community organizations to make agreements with Internet community centers administrators in order to gain preferential access to computers. We already held conversations about this prospect with the government agency in charge of the national network of Internet community centers.

How is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.) Addressing unmet needs Barrio Web has been envisioned as an integrated solution that allow community-based organizations to work methodically in planning, and administering their programs, as well as campaigning for their values and publicizing their accomplishments. This solution will sustain and enhance the progress of community-based organizations’ programs by engaging and inspiring commitment from all relevant stakeholders such as team members, beneficiaries, and donors. There is not other internet service tailored to community-based organizations needs that offer a step-by-step application to plan and manage local social development programs aligned with World Bank guidelines (which are followed by Venezuelan government agencies, as it happens in most Latin American countries). Following those guidelines helps community-based organizations to get their programs funded, and to comply with budget administration rules and reporting obligations. Since Barrio Web will offer a continuous flow of information—in the way of community news—on programs planning, management, and achievements, the portal will help organizations in complying with increasing accountability demands from beneficiary communities, government agencies, and other stakeholders.

What experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project? Team Knowledge & Experience Project team members have the knowledge, skills, and relationships required for making this project successful. We count on a team of experienced software developers that will work on this project. This

team will also provide technical support while the users learn to use the applications and start working on the platform. Our chief programming engineer got 15 years of experience developing software and 3 years working with open source solutions.Most time will be spent integrating Drupal and CiviCRM modules and customizing them in order to serve our users needs. We also plan to devote effort to make the platform user-friendly for non tech-savvy users. FormaComuna team members have worked for several years promoting community organization and community media among Caracas low-income population. Theses experiences give us strong relationships with community leaders that will help to promote the project. We are able to bring together different community-based organizations spread throughout Caracas metro area by partnering with existing community networks. We have identified the major challenges for launching a micro-local portal for organizations serving low-income neighborhoods in Caracas. Consequently, we are anticipating lines of action and building capacities to overcome challenges normally encountered in these communities.

Contact info: FormaComuna [email protected]