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Thank you for reading, rating and commenting on our proposals!

I think this is a wondefull project and I hope it will get good funding. It will be very usefull for Latin America too. Specially in the rural areas but also in towns and cities where access to the internet is not affordable for an important part of the population.

Congratulations and keep on trucking!

Community Portal 2.0 for community organizations in low-income neighborhoods in Caracas (Venezuela).

By FormaComuna

Describe your project:  * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

FormaComuna will launch a hyper-local portal named Barrio Web, as a platform for advancing social development programs run by community-based organizations working in 4 low-income neighborhoods located in Caracas metro area. The portal will feature a series of tools for publishing news regarding social development programs, communicating with stakeholders, and keeping information flow with donors and government agencies, as well as for assisting members on 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 an application for managing information flow with key stakeholders: organization members, target community, donors, government agencies, and mass media.

A major aspect of the program will be fostering communication between the member organization and the community being served. A collective weblog, 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 that want to keep track of such events, and generating informative minutes following important meetings or actions.

Finally, FormaComuna will develop and implement a learning management system to deliver a modular course on tools and applications for administering the micro-local website. Four fundamental course sections will engage participants in learning how to take advantage of web tools for accomplishing their organizational goals: Using a Content Management System for Community Organizing, Using CiviCRM for managing relationships with key stakeholders, Tools for generating and publishing community news and planning community development programs.

Who would want to use it, and why? * (830 characters maximum, approximately 125 words)

The project targets members of community-based organizations working on local development plans at 4 different low-income neighborhoods in Caracas.

Our promotion team will educate community development activists in using web tools and generating micro-local citizen media websites. We will emphasize the benefits of increasing public transparency and accountability, making easier to work collaboratively in a project, bridging with organizations working in similar projects, and strengthening community's ties.

Participants should introduce other community members into the use of Internet citizen media for community organizing and advancing social development projects. The project will provide a laptop to each participating organization; video-cameras and audio recording devices may be available for loan.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?  * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

Project team members have the knowledge, skills, and relationships required for making this project successful.

FormaComuna team members have worked for several years promoting community organization and community media among low-income population at Caracas.  Theses experiences give us strong relationships with community leaders that will help to promote the project. We are able bridge different community-based organizations spread thorough Caracas metro area by partnering with the community network Radar de barrios.

Program director is knowledgeable in curriculum development and IT uses in education and has taught how to produce community education audiovisuals in low-income neighborhood; worked with community spokespersons from high poverty neighborhoods in order to get their news into a national broadcasting network; taught Social Work students how to promote community media among low-income population. IT coordinator has experience training community organizations members in Internet usage. Community participation coordinator has experience producing content for citizen media and teaching citizen journalism to low-income people.

FormaComuna has the capacity to overcome the challenges of launching a micro-local portal for organizations serving low-income neighborhoods adapted to the living conditions of Caracas low-income population. For instance, we can:

 (1) Assist program participants in getting Internet access by means of an agreement with the government agency in charge of information technology centers.

(2) Tailor web tools and practices taught in the program to the real needs of

the Caracas' community organizations.

(3) Assign recruitment responsibilities to people respected among community organizations besides her/his political viewpoints and design outreach policies that ensure participation from members of organizations along the whole political spectrum, assuring inclusiveness and democratic pluralism.