World Development Information Day 2006
SANGONeT NGO Portal Turns One
(This article was first published on the SANGONeT NGO Portal on 24 October 2006.)
Today is World Development Information Day. The date signifies an important event on the SANGONeT calendar as we celebrate the first birthday of the SANGONeT NGO portal and our weekly newsletter, NGO Pulse, both of which were launched exactly a year ago today.
The United Nations General Assembly instituted World Development Information Day at its twenty-seventh session in December 1972 with the objective of drawing public attention on an annual basis to development problems and the importance of strengthening international cooperation to solve them (resolution 3038 (XXVII)).
The Assembly decided that the date for the Day should coincide with United Nations Day, 24 October, which was also the date of the adoption in 1970 of the International Development Strategy for the Second United Nations Development Decade.
In 2004 and 2005 SANGONeT hosted special events in Johannesburg to celebrate World Development Information Day and highlight specific initiatives aimed at raising the profile of the South African NGO sector. A key focus of SANGONeT’s 2005 event, linking by digital video conference, NGOs in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, as well as Seattle, was the launch of the SANGONeT NGO and Development Information Portal, a one-stop Internet information resource for and about the NGO sector in South Africa.
The SANGONeT NGO Portal has five core objectives, namely to create a community media platform for civil society exchange; support the strategic development focus of the NGO sector; enhance the institutional capacity of the NGO sector for increased financial sustainability and programmatic impact; map civil society and its activities through PRODDER; and promote the benefits of ICTs in support of the work of civil society.
The establishment of the SANGONeT NGO Portal was the culmination of SANGONeT’s years of experience of working in the online environment. Since inception in 1987, SANGONeT has developed a wide range of online resources to highlight development and civil society issues in South Africa, the wider Southern African region and the African continent in general.
These initiatives have always offered an independent civil society perspective on key development issues. They also provide the necessary framework for SANGONeT to continue playing the strategic role of knowledge manager of the South African NGO sector, as well as rebuilding the reputation of the NGO sector.
The introduction of the NGO Portal represents SANGONeT’s response to the financial and institutional challenges facing many local NGOs. This problematic situation, as well as the absence of a strong national NGO coordinating body, has led to a severe leadership crisis and the increasing marginalisation of the NGO sector in South Africa. Furthermore, up until now there has been no consolidated knowledge repository (neither online nor offline) that seriously maps the scope and impact of the South African NGO sector.
In response to this situation, the SANGONeT NGO portal serves as a gateway to the South African NGO sector and other development stakeholders. It provides NGOs with a virtual media platform and strategic tool to disseminate, communicate and access information of relevance to the institutional capacity of civil society and promotes a progressive development agenda aimed at addressing the systemic causes of poverty, inequality and underdevelopment.
Under the leadership of the portal’s editor, Fazila Farouk, and as a result of the commitment of a dedicated team of information coordinators and a growing number of influential NGO content partners, the portal has achieved significant results during the past year. It has gained widespread local and international recognition as the online community platform for the South African NGO sector, has already attracted 175,000 visitors that have viewed more than 1,3 million pages.
Furthermore, 30% of this total constitutes international visitors. Thus, in addition to enhancing the internal capacity of the NGO sector in South Africa, the portal elevates its profile in the global arena.
In addition to the number of people that visit the portal, a significant 7,000 subscribe to the weekly e-mail alerting service, NGO Pulse, which is the news arm of the portal and includes links to aggregated as well as original news stories.
The portal also incorporates the PRODDER Directory, which lists information about more than 2,000 NGOs and development stakeholders. Currently there is no other comparative product that provides reliable validated information about NGOs and other development roleplayers in South Africa.
The portal continues to benefit from, as well as contribute to the success of, other strategic SANGONeT initiatives such as the annual SANGONeT “ICTs for Civil Society” Conference and Exhibition, South African and regional Thetha ICT Discussion Forum series, NGO Website Awards, the Gauteng-based NGO CEO Circle and the latest SANGONeT initiative, SANGOTeCH, a project aimed at introducing a wide range of ICT solutions at significantly discounted rates to the NGO sector in Southern Africa. These initiatives highlight the scope of SANGONeT’s experience and expertise in serving the NGO sector with ICT and information services.
Other initiatives such as the research project on ICT trends in the South African NGO sector, implemented in conjunction with Arthur Goldstuck of World Wide Worx, as well as the online workshop on ‘Communication Centered Website Design’ for NGOs that was conducted on 31 August 2006 by Seattle-based Michael Gilbert, also contribute to increased understanding and application of ICT and online resources in support of the work of the South African NGO sector.
To expand the reach of SANGONeT’s online information activities, as well as to cater for the information needs of NGOs without Internet access, SANGONeT plans to produce a newspaper version of NGO Pulse on a quarterly basis. The success of NGO Pulse the online newsletter has inspired the Media Diversity and Development Agency (MDDA) to fund a feasibility study, implemented by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE), to examine the news and information requirements of the NGO sector as well as the financial viability of the newspaper. The feasibility study will be concluded by the end of 2006.
Looking ahead, the biggest challenge facing SANGONeT is to ensure the ongoing relevance and credibility of the news and information published on the portal. Related to this challenge is some reluctance on the part of NGOs to readily part with information about the impact of their work. However, this is an important challenge to SANGONeT’s work in general, and specifically the portal, as progress in this regard will contribute to the overall transparency and accountability of the NGO sector. The third challenge facing SANGONeT is the current limited scope of the Internet in South Africa. The impact of the portal will never reach its full potential unless more people are brought into the online environment.
In 1972 the United Nations General Assembly decided that by improving the dissemination of information and the mobilisation of public opinion, through the introduction of World Development Information Day, would lead to greater awareness of development problems, thus promoting efforts in support of international cooperation for development. As we celebrate World Development Information Day in 2006, SANGONeT continues to support the strategic objectives of the Day through its commitment to the ongoing implementation of the NGO portal.
- David Barnard, Executive Director, SANGONeT.
(This article was first published on the SANGONeT NGO Portal on 24 October 2006.)
Today is World Development Information Day. The date signifies an important event on the SANGONeT calendar as we celebrate the first birthday of the SANGONeT NGO portal and our weekly newsletter, NGO Pulse, both of which were launched exactly a year ago today.
The United Nations General Assembly instituted World Development Information Day at its twenty-seventh session in December 1972 with the objective of drawing public attention on an annual basis to development problems and the importance of strengthening international cooperation to solve them (resolution 3038 (XXVII)).
The Assembly decided that the date for the Day should coincide with United Nations Day, 24 October, which was also the date of the adoption in 1970 of the International Development Strategy for the Second United Nations Development Decade.
In 2004 and 2005 SANGONeT hosted special events in Johannesburg to celebrate World Development Information Day and highlight specific initiatives aimed at raising the profile of the South African NGO sector. A key focus of SANGONeT’s 2005 event, linking by digital video conference, NGOs in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, as well as Seattle, was the launch of the SANGONeT NGO and Development Information Portal, a one-stop Internet information resource for and about the NGO sector in South Africa.
The SANGONeT NGO Portal has five core objectives, namely to create a community media platform for civil society exchange; support the strategic development focus of the NGO sector; enhance the institutional capacity of the NGO sector for increased financial sustainability and programmatic impact; map civil society and its activities through PRODDER; and promote the benefits of ICTs in support of the work of civil society.
The establishment of the SANGONeT NGO Portal was the culmination of SANGONeT’s years of experience of working in the online environment. Since inception in 1987, SANGONeT has developed a wide range of online resources to highlight development and civil society issues in South Africa, the wider Southern African region and the African continent in general.
These initiatives have always offered an independent civil society perspective on key development issues. They also provide the necessary framework for SANGONeT to continue playing the strategic role of knowledge manager of the South African NGO sector, as well as rebuilding the reputation of the NGO sector.
The introduction of the NGO Portal represents SANGONeT’s response to the financial and institutional challenges facing many local NGOs. This problematic situation, as well as the absence of a strong national NGO coordinating body, has led to a severe leadership crisis and the increasing marginalisation of the NGO sector in South Africa. Furthermore, up until now there has been no consolidated knowledge repository (neither online nor offline) that seriously maps the scope and impact of the South African NGO sector.
In response to this situation, the SANGONeT NGO portal serves as a gateway to the South African NGO sector and other development stakeholders. It provides NGOs with a virtual media platform and strategic tool to disseminate, communicate and access information of relevance to the institutional capacity of civil society and promotes a progressive development agenda aimed at addressing the systemic causes of poverty, inequality and underdevelopment.
Under the leadership of the portal’s editor, Fazila Farouk, and as a result of the commitment of a dedicated team of information coordinators and a growing number of influential NGO content partners, the portal has achieved significant results during the past year. It has gained widespread local and international recognition as the online community platform for the South African NGO sector, has already attracted 175,000 visitors that have viewed more than 1,3 million pages.
Furthermore, 30% of this total constitutes international visitors. Thus, in addition to enhancing the internal capacity of the NGO sector in South Africa, the portal elevates its profile in the global arena.
In addition to the number of people that visit the portal, a significant 7,000 subscribe to the weekly e-mail alerting service, NGO Pulse, which is the news arm of the portal and includes links to aggregated as well as original news stories.
The portal also incorporates the PRODDER Directory, which lists information about more than 2,000 NGOs and development stakeholders. Currently there is no other comparative product that provides reliable validated information about NGOs and other development roleplayers in South Africa.
The portal continues to benefit from, as well as contribute to the success of, other strategic SANGONeT initiatives such as the annual SANGONeT “ICTs for Civil Society” Conference and Exhibition, South African and regional Thetha ICT Discussion Forum series, NGO Website Awards, the Gauteng-based NGO CEO Circle and the latest SANGONeT initiative, SANGOTeCH, a project aimed at introducing a wide range of ICT solutions at significantly discounted rates to the NGO sector in Southern Africa. These initiatives highlight the scope of SANGONeT’s experience and expertise in serving the NGO sector with ICT and information services.
Other initiatives such as the research project on ICT trends in the South African NGO sector, implemented in conjunction with Arthur Goldstuck of World Wide Worx, as well as the online workshop on ‘Communication Centered Website Design’ for NGOs that was conducted on 31 August 2006 by Seattle-based Michael Gilbert, also contribute to increased understanding and application of ICT and online resources in support of the work of the South African NGO sector.
To expand the reach of SANGONeT’s online information activities, as well as to cater for the information needs of NGOs without Internet access, SANGONeT plans to produce a newspaper version of NGO Pulse on a quarterly basis. The success of NGO Pulse the online newsletter has inspired the Media Diversity and Development Agency (MDDA) to fund a feasibility study, implemented by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE), to examine the news and information requirements of the NGO sector as well as the financial viability of the newspaper. The feasibility study will be concluded by the end of 2006.
Looking ahead, the biggest challenge facing SANGONeT is to ensure the ongoing relevance and credibility of the news and information published on the portal. Related to this challenge is some reluctance on the part of NGOs to readily part with information about the impact of their work. However, this is an important challenge to SANGONeT’s work in general, and specifically the portal, as progress in this regard will contribute to the overall transparency and accountability of the NGO sector. The third challenge facing SANGONeT is the current limited scope of the Internet in South Africa. The impact of the portal will never reach its full potential unless more people are brought into the online environment.
In 1972 the United Nations General Assembly decided that by improving the dissemination of information and the mobilisation of public opinion, through the introduction of World Development Information Day, would lead to greater awareness of development problems, thus promoting efforts in support of international cooperation for development. As we celebrate World Development Information Day in 2006, SANGONeT continues to support the strategic objectives of the Day through its commitment to the ongoing implementation of the NGO portal.
- David Barnard, Executive Director, SANGONeT.
posted by David Barnard at
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