Empowering local communities in Belarus to control local authorities through mapping
- Abuse & violence
- Civil rights
- Citizen participation
- Crime prevention
- Criminal justice
- Gay Rights
- Corruption
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Alaksiej
Lavoncyk
facebook.com/vasileuski
Linking Media
, MI
, XX
1‐5 years
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Scaling (the next step will be growing impact on a regional or even global scale)
Still in idea phase, but looking to launch soon
Before the 2010 elections, a group of volunteers from Belarus has established an Ushahidi-based platform called electby.org. This platform had been the first of this kind really developed in terms of submitting information to it: people could submit info through emails, twitter and facebook posts, and smses; the latter recalling the record of the Belarusian government in blocking access to the Internet media in the "critical days" had been he alternative way of getting the info which has proved really helpful when access to electby.org had been closed from Belarus: people still could submit info and the moderators could post it onto the website. This all info has become visible after the authorities have lifted the ban on the site access later this day. Although it hasn't changed anything in terms of elections results, it had permitted the people disagreeing with the state policy understand that they are not alone - and contributed to the decision on imposing sanctions on the Belarusian authorities.
We understood that we can use this tool wider to illustrate the scope of the human rights violations in Belarus - including registering violations of the citizens rights by courts.
The electby.org has helped to show the scope of the electoral violations to the public; our project will aim at popularizing Ushahidi and creating a task force which will be available on demand for any initiative willing to install Ushahidi to map certain issues. However it is yet in the stage of an idea - and yet we have 46 people on the team willing to become technical and social media specialists in this task force.
The character of the idea is to make Ushahidi a popular solution in Belarus to map and thus publicize the scope of human rights violations in Belarus. The idea is that all organizations will be able to use the task force to install Ushahidi-based solution in a couple of days to map any issue, and use the task force expertise to promote the platform to potential contributors. This will guarantee replicability of Ushahidi-based solutions for virtually any organizations in Belarus.
The technical specialists will also be able to provide advice on guaranteeing the installed platforms security (against DDoS attacks and similar)
Number of spoecialists trained; the scope of visibility through the social media
Train 15 technical specialists and 30 social media specialists in Ushaihidi
Become known to the Belarusian civic society through establishing the social media communities with min 2000 subscribers
Number of platforms established; number of contributions and contributors
To have at least 2 platforms developed for two different issues mapping: the violations by courts and in parliament elections
To have at least 500 contributions to each platform
To have at least 30 000 unique monthly visits to each of the platforms
101 - 1,000
1001‐10,000
Non-profit
The project is yet in the idea stage. However we anticipate the following issues:
1. the IT security of the Ushahidi-based platforms developed by he task force specialists (DDoS attacks and blockade of access to those resources)
2. the personal security of the task force people as they will be working in Belarus which is the country with one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
We will be working with the people expert in IT security to protect our sites and users.
The financial sustainabiity after the project support is over will be guaranteed by advertising. we will use it to fund hostings and domains. The task force people will be working as volunteers, however the knowlede they will receive in the trainings may be used to seek another employment.
There will be more Internet users in Belarus and mostly all people in e country will have access to Internet. Due to the deepening economic crisis these people will be more involved into political life. There will be less independent media as the pressure on the media will continue, and Internet will remain the main free environment. Most people will be using mobile phones to access Internet, the costs of access will be getting lower.
We will explore other mapping tools as well as the power of the social networks to get in touch with people; we will use sms solutions and twitter to publish all violations under certain hashtag which will easily be seacrhable.
In any case, the team trained will be able to support the Belarusian civic society in terms of mapping, social media, and IT security even if direct application won't be as we have planned.
we have personal contributions which amount to 200 USD monthly which is enough to sustain the hosting and domain costs as well as to cover certain communication costs. We will place ads from Google and from partner sites to be able to cover the communication costs for the management of the project, the domain and the hosting costs. The task force specialists after having been trained ill be available on call for the NGOs and media to offer them consulting at a small fee which will add up to their motivation to work on the project. We will also apply with other funders.
Te specialists on our project are known as new media experts for most civic society organizations and have worked with Internews, PACT, Tachtical Tech, are serving as technical experts for the Belarusian civil sector.
People willing to learn, having basic technical and/or journalism education, gathered with the assumption that of the people gathered, only 10% will actually be working as the job will be the volunteer one. These will mostly be young people aware and actively using mobile technologies, proactive in travelling, freelancers mostly - as the freelancers will be willing to get new knowledge to use it later.
Human resources or talent, Collaboration or networking.
Research or information, Collaboration or networking.
Building the technical, social media, marketing, and IT security expertise of the Belarusian experts to help the civic sector