A widget with a purpose

As the final part of my last two blogs about AKVO I would like tell you about their widget. A nice little application you can display on your website or blogger to support a water project! People who already placed the widget on their blogs:

http://newsbieonict.blogspot.com/
http://karinvenner.blogspot.com/
http://benstevensmuo.blogspot.com/

AKVO is a digital platform that facilitates the water sanitation sector, their clients are mostly NGO’s in the Netherlands but AKVO is expanding their platform abroad. A large part of these NGO’s are running water projects in the third world for which they seek funding. All projects have to do with water and have the purpose to help the local population to clean it, gather it or make it controllable. To help these NGO’s to find sponsors and donators, AKVO offers them a spot on their ‘Project’ page. On this page NGO’s they have the possibility to find funding for their projects, through their own personal page. The personal page enables the organisations keep visitors updated on information about the progression of the project, in addition the visitors can subscribe to the projects’ RSS Feeds.

The widget AKVO has developed allows its donators, partners and sponsors to display the project they funded in a small screen on their website. The widget is easily written in HTML and can be displayed on your website or blog, as you can see on my page.

I would like to use this opportunity to encourage you to put this widget on your own blog, so maybe your visitors will donate a euro or two to the project. Just follow the following steps for your blogger page:

1. Go to http://www.akvo.org/rsr/projects/ and choose project you find meaningful and click on it.

2. On the right side of the page you can find page tools, click on een widget maken (make a widget).

3. Fill in your website (www.yourblogname.blogspot.com) and click on selecteren en verder gaan… (Select and go on).

4. Choose your own colours for your widget and click on voorproefje (sneakpreview).

5. Copy the HTMLcode which is displayed in the bottom of the page.

6. Log in to your Blogger and make sure you land on your Dashbord page.

7. Click on Layout (Indeling) and then on Page Elements (Pagina-elementen).

8. Click on Add a page element (een gadget toevoegen).

9. Choose the option HTML/Javascript

10. Paste your HTMLcode in the frame, name your widget and save your changes.

AKVO's Clouds part 2 - Projects

As I mentioned in my last blog, AKVO uses a set of interesting applications in order to facilitate their clients. I told you about AKVOpedia, an opensource Waterwiki which can be used by all who are interested. In this way, AKVO is cloud computing, making it possible for their clients to make use of their business application. In this blog I want to tell you something about another cloud, their online E-bay system for their partners.

When I talked to Luuk Diphoorn, project manager at AKVO, he told me that their partners had 119 projects spread all over the world. When you look at the website now, a month later, 153 projects are found at the website. All of these projects have to do with water and helping the population to clean it, gather it or make it controllable. AKVO’s partners and clients are searching for partners to finance all of those projects and with this cloud, AKVO gives them an opportunity to find them…

When you enter the ‘Projects’ part of AKVO’s website, you can clearly see the purpose of this application. The website displays a list of projects, set up by different NGO’s, companies or initiatives. Some of the projects listed are still searching for financing, others are yet to begin and a few ones are up and running. All projects have their own site, on which you can see the reason for starting the project and its purpose. The websites of running projects display pictures of the progression the team is making, others display pictures of their final result. In this way, every donator or sponsor can exactly see where and how their money is spent. Furthermore, when it is available, additional information about the project is linked in the website through AKVOpedia.

This all sounds nice but not special, the reason I wanted to spotlight this application is as follows. Visitors of these websites can easily donate money through IDEAL (a well known internet money transfer method) without any conditions. Companies, employees, researchers and maybe you can donate one or one hundred euros to a project you find meaningful. Besides this, you can subscribe to the RSS Feeds of this project so you will be updated whenever the project makes progress. When a company decides to sponsor a project, they will be featured as a project funder on the specific project page. Their logo will be displayed on the project page, when you click on it, you will find a special page containing information about the sponsor. In this way, the sponsor is credited for its funding.

When you have read this, you may be aware of the fact that a funding partner can only fund a project because they find it meaningful. On the other hand, you may see that a funding partner wants to let everybody know they funded this project and wants to encourage other companies to do the same thing. To facilitate this, AKVO developed a widget, on which I will write a tiny blog in short notice. Meanwhile, you can take a look yourself at www.akvo.org/rsr/projects/ and maybe donate a euro or two to a project!