I’m working with Sjors Timmer on the design of the charity page.
The HTML mock-up of the charity page is here.
It’s still no final, but this is the direction where the site is heading. The intention is to connect (a future of) this inteface to the code to build the site. Our programmer is working on the code. Unfortunately he’s working on ‘invisible’ work, so I can’t really show you the progress.
To explain Helpalot in one minute, I’ve put a short video online:
In this latest 9 Questions interview, we learn about Goodwill. One of the bigger charity organisations in India. Prof.Dr.J.Christopher Daniel elaborates on his Goodwill Social Centre and Helpalot.
1. Can you give a quick introduction of yourself and Goodwill?
The Goodwill Social Work Centre, a professional social work organisation deeply committed to the development of children, youth and women was founded by a Prof.Dr.J.Christopher Daniel,M.A.,Ph.D,a professionally qualified social work Educator and a Practising Social worker in November 1981 in the temple city of Madurai, India with the prime objective of performing a wide spectrum of roles in the development of children, youth and women and undertaking a comprehensive action through professional approach with a preventive, curative and rehabilitative perspective. It aims at utilising positively the scientific methods of Social Work for problem identification, problem solving and problem prevention for the multifaceted development of children, youth and women who are at a disadvantage.
It is a Non-governmental organisation registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act 27 of 1975 and Foreign Contributions (Regulations) Act 1976. Our Centre is a Member of the International Forum for Child Welfare, [IFCW], Child Rights Information Network [CRIN], U.K and ENSCW, Belgium and World Association for Non-Governmental Organisation (WANGO),USA .
It is included in the NGO database of the websites: www.idealist.org (Action without Borders), www.enscw.org, www.euforic.org and www.glinet.org. Our Society’s Registration number is: 112/1981 and our FCRA number is: 075940124. Please take a few moments to visit our website at http://mfcs.malianfoundation.org/goodwill/
Aims and objectives:
The centre aims to promote the overall development of children, youth and women in rural and urban areas in India, who are socially and economically deprived; to provide family centred home based intensive services to children, youth and women in dysfunctional families in slums and backward areas in India; to sensitise rural and urban children and women on various environmental issues and concerns through education, training and communication; to create public awareness on the rights of the child and women and to work for the promotion, protection and defence of children’s and women’s rights. It focuses education sponsorship; home based care and school placement for children in dysfunctional families; referral services to children for problem children; family counselling; environmental education for children and children and women rights education. It is operational in service provision, training, advocacy, research and information.
Our project activities:
1) Home and School placement, 2) Functional Literacy and Value Education, 3) Educational Support & Sponsorship, 4) Material and Financial Aid to Children, 5) Childhood Enrichment Services, 6) Family Fellowship Programmes, 7) Crisis Intervention and Counselling Services,
Parent Education and Support Services 9) Resourcing and Advocacy, 10) Health Promotion Programmes for Children, 11) Job Search and Placement for Parents, 12) Capacity building and Training for youth, women and men, 13) Income Generation Activities for Families, 14) Non formal employment training for children and young women, 15) Environmental education and communication, 16) AIDS Preventive Education and training for young men and women workers, 17) Children’s rights campaigning, 18) Networking with Local Support Systems and International organisations
OUR CHILDREN’S RIGHTS CENTRE (A children’s Human Rights unit of GOODWILL)
The GOODWILL has set up a Children’s Rights Centre with a prime objective of promoting, protecting and defending children’s rights as affirmed in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child(1989).The intervention strategies include, 1. CRC education and training, 2. CRC communications, 3. CRC research, 4. CRC information networking and, 5. Provision of support services especially endangered children-street children, working children, girl children, children of Dalits (socially oppressed caste groups) and children in dysfunctional families.
2. What do you see as the most important problems for a charity like Goodwill?
On a charity page of Helpalot, people can write evaluations and rate the charity. At first I want to keep this as simple as possible;
Both are only possible with a user profile, so there are no anonymous ratings or evaluations.
This will provide some good information, but the evaluation and rating could be more specified. Because, what will people evaluate? Will people judge the professionalism, their belief of the plausability of succeeding to achieve the charity goals, how nice the blog is, etc.
Evaluating charities is difficult because of a number of reasons, described in this article Drowning in Data by the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The nature of charities in innovative and often aim for long term goals. This makes a good detailed evaluation difficult to set up and expensive for a charity. Helpalot would not be expensive or difficult for a charity and keeping it simple in the beginning sounds like a good idea to me. But I’d like some feedback on this;
I’d like to hear from charities, what do you think is fair and important and from the supporters, what would you like to share?
Some moderator thought Helpalot was not important enough for Wikipedia.
“I’ve deleted the article. Sorry, it seems like a noble enterprise, but not notable enough to have an article, see WP:CSD. We can’t include promotions of non-notable sites and organizations no matter how worthy. It you think you can prove notablibily, which would basically involve news stories etc. about the site in mainstream media, message me. Herostratus 12:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)”
Any ideas on how to prove it is notable or how to otherwise get the page back online?