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Inter. Act!: the Future Nigeria

Challenges Entered: 
Following the return of democracy to Nigeria, there has been an explosion of Non-Governmental organizations. We want to employ the social web to build needed credibility and visibility for those NGOs who are honestly committed to making change.

What we want to do is employ the social web, to over a sustained period built much needed credibility and visibility for the most effective of the hundreds of youth NGOs in Nigeria; those ones who are honestly committed to making change. Because Nigeria is still at the infant stage of technological advancement on the average, only the basic web tools can be used - therefore we will be using a website and then a network of blogs.

What we intend to do is to identify those NGOs that are really committed to their goals and get them together. We would work with them towards creating blogs where they will be able to - without any cost to themselves obviously - communicate the ideals of their organizations, continuously state their needs to people who can support, and most importantly, constantly update with activities and programmes they have been involved in and the impact they are making.

More importantly however, rather than a blog aggregator, we will design a highly functional, very attractive website with up-to-date technology (to attract young people) where we will constantly take the very important news and information from these blogs and update weekly. We will not be republishing content from feeds; we will first refine them and re-present them. This website will be the central point for all the blogs, and it is this website that will be massively publicized. In it, there will now be a blog roll where people can link to each specific NGO.

They also get to synergise and engage regularly so that they can as often as possible work together for common goals and as a combined force. Most importantly, this puts them under the much-needed pressure to be pro-active, as they are now in a highly visible network, as well as open to the scrutiny of a larger and very informed audience.

WHAT WE NEED:

A highly creative and up-to-date website (with forums, interactivity, flash etc) A strong media network
Communication equipment i.e. phones etc

Funds:
To monitor the NGOs and get the crucial feedback
To organize an intial meeting to brief the selected NGOs and to organize periodic web meetings For initial publicity of website, after which publicity will be on 'auto-pilot'
To maintain the website content
A list of the most popular Nigerian blogs and website for online-based publicity of websit

Project Details
Project Assessment
Sustainability Model: 
The basic strength of our financial model is that the cost of doing these - both for the coordinators and the NGOs - is put to the barest minimum. For the NGOs, in fact, since they are working through blogs, there is no cost burden. Also, once the website is designed initially and up and running with all the frills, updating can be done in-house. The major cost in fact will be the initial meeting and then the initial media-based publicity for the website; however after these first two cost-based activities, the ongoing publicity will be on 'autopilot' (i.e. self-sustaining) and largely online-based. Subsequent meetings will also be online. As the site becomes popular, especially amongst young people, we propose to allow it generate income through advertising from companies/organisations who want to reach the readers.
Project goals: 
Week 1 - 2: Research and draw up definitive list of the NGOs to work with Week 3: Do a physical meeting with the leaders of these NGOS Week 4 - 5: Work with them to create their blogs Week 6: Finalise the building and then launching of the website Week 7 - 9: Massive online and media based publicity for website Week 10: Do first online review meeting (via forum) with the NGO leaders
Identified Obstacles: 
Getting everyone together for the periodic review and strategic meetings Distance Cost of media-based angle of publicity Building a relationship with the popular Nigerian websites where they give gratis publicity to our site.

Location

Lagos
Nigeria

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