ssukumar
1 minute ago

Dear Friend:

OurVillageIndia.Org is a portal, a knowledge repository, for rural India being developed by a dedicated team of Indians in India and Indian Americans.

**It’s a platform where all who are interested in the development and well-being of India’s villages -- the villagers themselves as well as people in India and abroad, NGOs and the corporates -- can share information on all the 600,000 plus villages of India, by repositing and retrieving information.

**It’s a place where PIOs, NRIs and RIs can find their roots, learn what is going on and adopt villages/districts for rural development

**It’s a place where you can find SMEs (subject matter experts) on water, education, agriculture, livelihood, training, health, energy, ecology, sanitation and waste management.

**It’s a place where you can find role model villages and districts.

**It’s place where you can find new technologies and methods (solar energy, vermicompost, etc.)

**It’s a place where you can find NGOs, which are doing work in villages.

**It’s a place where you can find success stories.

**It’s a place where you can get information on how to replicate sustainable development in villages.

Its mission is to help accelerate sustainable development in rural India by building up a network of social entrepreneurs, donors, volunteers, role models among individuals, NGOs, projects and village folks. The portal has 2001 census data on all the villages (plus cities and towns) in India.

All of us, I am sure, wish to see rural India well developed by 2020. A total transformation to take place, in a sustainable manner, requires addressing the needs at the bottom of the pyramid. This calls for effort by many to pool resources: money, people and knowledge.


OurVillageIndia.org is a platform to facilitate this transformation.
Please visit http://ourvillageindia.org/ . You will see that the portal is still under development. A lot, lot more of work remains to be done to make it a full fledged knowledge repository, for rural India.
You will observe that census data 2001 has been uploaded for all the villages. The rest of the data will be supplied by registered members of the site in a collaborative manner. The site will also list most of the known NGOs and allow missing NGOs to enter their own information.
The site will have 4 main entities: Villages, NGOs, People and Projects.
The site will list all the villages in India in an easy to use format. Once you locate a village of special interest, you will be able to read information on the following: census data, geographic location, infrastructure, local government, history, prominent people, interested volunteers, changemakers and NGOs. Also, you will learn about past and current projects. You will be able, if you wish, to associate yourself with that village as a volunteer or as a friend. If you are interested in publishing more information about that village, you will be able to request publishing rights for that village. If you are interested in a particular project, you will be able to send a request to the project owner to be included.
Any NGO starting a project in a village can provide details about the project and solicit help from other people and other NGOs associated with that village. Each project will showcase its goals, timelines, status, estimated budget, current funds and expenses incurred. When a project is completed, the project-initiator will be able to report on its impact and the lessons to be learned for the future.
In order to complete the task, the organizers of the portal are looking for dedicated volunteers -- IT qualified -- who are willing to commit to spend time (minimum 4 hours a week) on the project.
A prospective IT volunteer needs to have experience in the following areas:
ASP.net 2.0 plus, Visual Studio Express 2005
C# (no VB.net please)
Familiar with OOP concepts
Familiar with SQL Server 2005
Familiarity with Content Management Systems.
The task of the IT volunteers is to develop tools to help other volunteers at the village level to prepare and upload content to the OurVillageIndia.Org site.
IT volunteers are welcome from any part of the world -- India, America or any other country.
If you are an IT person and would like to volunteer, please let me know and I will put you in touch with the organizers.