pelle

Since 2005, Sushmita Lahiri, Local Representative of Kalna, has been teaching children at her own house. This week we received some very uplifting news.

Local Representative Sushmita Lahiri writes:

“School shifted from my house to its own building ! ! ! Yesterday, Tuesday the 5th of April 2011 !”

Sushmita writes she has been scrubbing off the old paint during her leisure time, and she was able to hire a painter to paint the first part of the building.

“The children are very happy in the new school! At this moment, only a part of the total building could be made fit for use. Please be assured that as soon as other parts complete and made ready for use, I will let you know!”

Congratulations Sushmita! We’re waiting for more positive news.

Read more about Kalna, and find out how you can help:
http://www.nabuur.com/village/kalna

Sushmita teaching at her house

Dear all,

As we enter the holiday season and the year comes to a close, we’d like to wish you and your loved ones a joyous and peaceful holiday.

The past year has not been the easiest year in NABUURs history. At the beginning of 2010 we knew we had a difficult job ahead: changing NABUUR from a staff-run organisation to a fully volunteer run community. We’ve had to overcome a lot of difficulties, but at the end of the year we’re still together as a group of people who share the same purpose: putting their skills to use where they really matter.

Many thanks go to each one of you for all that you have contributed in this past year: by checking in regularly to see how things are going, by helping communities move forward, getting in touch with new volunteers, and in numerous other ways - Thank you so much!

It’s this sense of community that makes NABUUR work, and it shows:

• As a community, we’re now developing a new strategy for NABUUR, starting at the basis: by redefining NABUUR’s mission and vision, and taking a good look at what needs to be preserved or changed.
• For the occasion of International Volunteer Day, Local Representatives gathered some inspiring stories showing the impact of NABUUR volunteers.
• Last but not least, NABUUR facilitator Maria Zandt was awarded the “Online Volunteering Award 2010” by the United Nations Volunteers Programme, in recognition of her work with the community of Wakitaka, Uganda.

These kind of inspiring examples keep us focused and hopefully mark the beginning of a new and successful period for NABUUR.

Happy holidays, everyone!

On behalf of the NABUUR board and governance team,

Pelle Aardema

The first NABUUR BarCamp will take place during the weekend of February 13-14. It will convene ca. 30 website developers and volunteers from different continents to the beautiful city of Amsterdam. The goal is to bring NABUUR to the next level. A level...

In between clearing out the office, different conferences and meetings (more about that soon) and the all social media efforts you’d nearly forget about the redesign. But it’s still ongoing!

Last month saw the release of a new demo site that has been used for testing the first bits (take a peek at http://demo.nabuur.org)

You’ll notice a few things:

1. The new NABUUR logo!!! I’m proud to present our new logo, which is fresher, brighter than the current logo. Also notice that we’re moving from .com to .org, which fits NABUUR a lot better

2. With the new logo, the colour scheme will also change. Brighter colours and a more contemporary style.
3. The pages are still pretty empty. This is partly caused by the fact that the site is in development. Right now only the first basic functions have been installed. When more functions are added, the pages will fill up. But, as one of the main reasons for the redesign is to make NABUUR easier to use, they should stay pretty 'clean'.

Testing the new site
A number of Local Reps have provided their feedback on the first user cases that were implemented: ‘Sign up as a Neighbour and ‘Register your Villlage’. At the same time the NABUUR team has been live testing the demo with non-NABUUR users, in order to get feedback on the user experience. The collected feedback already lead to improvements in the design. This method of testing (both face-to-face and online) will be used for all the functionality that is developed.

If you have a look, keep in mind this is not a finished site yet, but feel free to test the sign up process. Any feedback is welcome here.

Upcoming functionality
In the meanwhile our team worked on the Village’s project room. A first version should be up in the coming week.

Want to be involved in the testing? Leave a comment or send me an email at pelle [at] nabuur.com

At this moment Erik Bos, the founder of Libre Foundation, is in Peru where he will train two groups of local leaders. A few NABUUR local representatives will be amongst the participants.

This is not the first result of the collaboration between NABUUR and the new Dutch NGO Libre Foundation: in the first week of May, 16 Local Representatives of communities in Kenya participated in a Leadership & Communication training. By doing exercises and role plays, the group learnt a lot about their own leadership styles, open communication, coaching your staff, motivation of volunteers, dealing with conflicts, proposal writing and outside-the-box-thinking.

“I believe that all of us came out of the training with something new and useful to our projects and communities”, said Lillian Muttimos, Local Representative of Budalang’i, “Please rest assured that this kind of leadership training is one that gets immediate results and it would be a good idea to provide opportunities to other Local Representatives where possible.”

New trainings are underway! In November/December this year, a training will be organised in Zambia. And there are plans for trainings in Uganda, Nepal and another group in Kenya. Let's drink to that :-)