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Proposed by: Sneha Kannan and Divya Srinivasan
Contact: devlinks@mit.edu, Skype:devlinks
Best way and times to contact during RHoK 2.0 Dec 4/5 2010: email, also on Skype 11AM-6PM EST (GMT+5)
Imagine a world where a volunteer in Cambridge, MA could be working with an NGO in Sudan with a project on the ground in Southern India. DevLinks, the first comprehensive and international social network for NGOs in the developing world, wants to make this an everyday occurrence.
Our goal is to create a "facebook" for NGOs. There are hundreds of millions of NGOs wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours because of redundancy in efforts. Through this comprehensive tool we would like to transform social development by bringing NGOs and donors/volunteers together through parameters such as interest and geographical location. We want to take the world, make it flat, and give it wings.
Within the outskirts of Bangalore, we have spoken to at least 4 organizations trying to educate rural children within the same villages. These organizations have had little success and don't even know the others exist. The ability to pool all of their teachers, technology, and money would drastically increase their impact by allowing them to reach far more than the sum of their individual targets.
An NGO in the outskirts of Mumbai wants to provide potable water to the residents of a nearby village. Most likely, it doesn't have the money, man-power, or resources to make a significant impact, especially given start-up costs and an unsteady stream of funding. There are also at least 5-6 other small and underfunded non-profits in the same area targetting nearby, if not the same, villages. These NGOs can collaborate via our social network based on interest and location and exponentially increase their high impact social work by pooling resources and ideas.
After a hurricane in Asia, umbrella organizations like UNICEF and WHO immediately send resources to help. Their impact, however, is limited because of their size and their inability to access smaller villages becomes a problem. These organizations can access this social network to find smaller organizations within the area that deal with specific areas of disaster relief and network.
A volunteer living in America wants to volunteer or donate money to international efforts but doesn't know which organization to donate to or which international oragnizations match her interests. This social network allows her to search for organizations based on location and issue and either donate or contact regarding volunteer positions.
DevLinks will be a social network tool that will acheive the following functions: 1. Facilitate NGO-NGO communication in the developing world. 2. Create a platform through which donors/volunteers around the world can contribute to organizations based on a variety of criteria (geographical proximity, personal interests, etc.) 3. Develop larger NGO-smaller non-profit communication (e.g.: Unicef to local developing world non-profit)
There should be a search filter that can isolate the following critical information: 1. Geographical Location 2. Organizational Interest (e.g. Education) with Subcategories (e.g.: K-12 Literacy) 3. Size and type of NGO 4. Name of NGO/Donor
Info Page
Functionality
Info Page
Functionality
http://wiserearth.org WiserEarth has implemented a simpler version of what we want to accomplish. They are primarily involved in sustainability, whereas our network will encompass all areas in development. But, the networking aspect of WiserEarth is what we are looking for.
We are in touch with numerous organizations including UNICEF that would be interested in creating a user page and networking on our site. We will start with umbrella organizations and first get all of their collaborators on our site and then ask them to spread the word to reach our critical mass. This will be an ongoing project that will hopefully sustain itself after the launch of a prototype.
Please contact us for more detailed specs.
Can we align this with data standards established in ProjectRSS and OpenAction and OpenActionsNetwork?