Hello Everyone I just got the final green light on a potentially VERY exciting opportunity for any of you web designers out there, which I wanted to share as soon as possible. Please share this info with other lists or designers you know. I�m sorry this is a bit long, but this is a multi-faceted project � there�s a lot of info you need to know before you decide to get involved. It is all based on the e-gold as a trade currency.
(NOTE: Even if you�re not a web-designer, this info will still be of interest to you, for the purpose of beginning to understand the kinds of future market opportunities that will be available to you thru http://click4africa.com and the rest of the lia4 network.) A BIT OF BACKGROUND Off-list, I�ve been dialoguing with a few of you about the huge potential market for templated websites in the African market. In fact, at Life in Africa we�ve also been working on developing a customizable templated personal website product specifically for the African mass market. The product is called �Micro-Success: the Universal Personal Webbed Sight.� What we�re aiming to eventually have is a web-product that is simple, brief, functional and modifiable for a range of need-based objectives, dirt cheap, super simple to build and run from any webcafe (Africans don�t have computers at home), and designed to foster the flexible creation of emotion packed, locally produced content. What has been even MORE complex for us than designing the micro-success websites conceptually, is designing a strategy to deliver it to the masses. Last night in Kampala, the final pieces of Divine Purpose finally fell into place: we�ve embarked on a joint venture with a local church, whose congregation has committed to working with us until all of their members are online and plugged into our viral African traffic system. Since the church includes all ages, professions, and levels of education and socio-economic status, this gives us an incredible opportunity we did not recognize until the past few weeks, to move forward on the participatory design of all 12 micro-success template sets at a go. This will in turn provide an enormous jumpstart on some of the other market creation plans we�ve got. Hence the opportunity now for 12 template designers to set a huge foot into the door of the very special, limitless African development market. WHAT WE NEED The templated sites we need will be 1-7 pages depending on the functionality required for each site version. The versions are as follows, designed to serve the needs of the various population segments mentioned: 1. MicroWarrior � a church/mosque leader and ministry as an entity 2. MicroChild � for dependent orphans and homeless children 3. MicroLearner � children/youth/adults in need of educational support 4. MicroFamily � Families with food and shelter needs, and home based and (African) market based micro-business ventures 5. MicroMother � Just for mothers (especially widows with children) 6. MicroHealer � environmentalists, farmers, herbalists, doctors, midwives 7. MicroArtist � artisans, painters, graphic designers, musicians, entertainers, cottage industry 8. MicroWriter � writers of stories, poetry, columns, editors, typists 9. MicroBuilder � Builders of the online and offline worlds (from web designers to brick makers) 10. MicroMerchant � Sellers of goods (virtual or real) 11. MicroServant � Commercial service providers, servants of God, social entrepreneurs, manufacturers of developmental products 12. MicroGathering � organizations, associations, projects We�re asking each of the 12 designers who get onboard now to commit to producing an initial 20 sites in the version you are selected for, using at least 3 different modifiable template designs that clients can choose from. All 20 of these sites may or may not be for members of the same church (we�ve got a mosque outreach program also brewing, and another 7 churches in East Africa are already signed up thru their East African coordinator to be next in line). Using this approach thru the religions organizations, our time frame for getting the first 240 African micro-success sites online is 4 months. This collaborative process and these sites need to be designed for local empowerment and impact, not just for online market appeal. Meaningful functionality for the African beneficiary is thus primarily where our input will come into play in the site design. The creative and technical aspects are otherwise completely up to you. The content collection and creation process will be collaborative between you and the church, with our role at LiA being one of �piece-builder,� alerting both sides to the cross-dimensional issues and opportunities we are able to spot as they arise (re: the online vs. African market, culture, needs, etc.), and helping to resolve unseen conflicts before they happen. The people from this first church will be accessing the internet from our training center during this process. Together with you as we go along, we�ll be teaching them the basic web-skills they need to communicate with you, get their content together, and manage their sites once they are built. Our aim is to equip these key church representatives with enough of what they need to know to get OTHER churches onboard, and train their representatives to do the same, creating an offline viral marketing effect to match the one we�ll be creating online. Once we�ve got 20 sites in each category and have monitored their performance, we�ll hopefully move into a final 2 month stage of development/fine-tuning, taking the best of each version to build a common interface, that will make the sites easier to mass-produce and modify. This will be a collaborative project between the 12 participating designers and all of us here at LiA (including the church representatives), plus whoever else we can collectively recruit to help. WHAT�S IN IT FOR YOU? In addition to the personal rewards involved in being a part of a humanitarian endeavor of this potential magnitude, this opportunity will mean very wide publicity for you and your web design business. For starters, we will be publicizing this collaboration (and the designers involved) on all of the 7 sites in the LiA4 network. These sites are in turn each designed to promote the individual micro-success sites in a number of innovative ways. We�ve been building a very unique traffic system to promote all of them for over a year. As that machine moves into full gear, you can expect to see a number of repeated dramatic jumps similar to what you see at the link below. We�ve just begun on that front. http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=s12Click4Africa&report=12 In short, our objective is to create nothing less than a viral developmental miracle with this first set of sites, which means they are going to be blasted ALL over the internet and beyond� your own ad as the designer will be on each of the 20 sites you�ve designed. In other words, lots of potential traffic and a very wonderful portfolio builder for you. At the same time, you will also be building relationships with the key people at the grassroots who will initially be helping us take this concept Uganda and Africa wide. As the market opens up, that will mean new opportunities that are impossible to foresee now. Finally, thru http://click4africa.com you�ll also have the opportunity to begin learning where and how to market yourself to the wider African poverty alleviation market online right away. FINAL COMMENTS Let me be clear that we are NOT looking for the most �professional� or �talented� web-designers for this collaborative project using the �old� standards you may be used to competing by� we are looking for the most helpful PEOPLE who know how to design website templates. Understand that this is a humanitarian project and thus an important RESPONSIBILITY should you be selected to get involved. Many human hopes will be raised, and this group is quite poor. It is extremely important that all of those selected will go the extra mile to make sure their African clients� individual objectives and unique challenges are met. We cannot disappoint them with empty promises. You must be willing to learn to understand their reality, and know that it won�t always be easy. At this point, we have no way to know if this plan is really going to work or not, nor how far we will be able to take it. Nobody has tried this before, and only God knows just how empowered He wants these African churches and mosques to be. If nothing else, I can guarantee you from experience it�s going to be a LOT of fun to be a part of the collective impact we�re going to make, on at least these 240 lives! INTERESTED? Please send an email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] including the following info. - The 2 micro-success versions that interest you most, with a brief reason why - Links to 2-3 of the SIMPLEST websites you have built (you define simple!) - Links to examples of any templates you�ve built - 2 client references who we can contact - A brief description of any community empowerment work you�ve been or are currently involved in, online or off. - Please indicate whether you would also be able to provide free hosting for the 20 websites you design. (this is not a requirement, but we will be needing some extra space!) PLEASE SHARE THE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS OPPORTUNITY WITH OTHER LISTS, OR OTHER WEB-DESIGNERS YOU KNOW. We look forward to hearing from you! Yours Sincerely David Ewaku Chief Operations Officer The Life in AFrica Foundation Tel: +25677505654 ===== Biulding Africa's new E-conomy through the internet www.lia4.com www.lifeinafrica.com www.lia4uganda.com www.micro-success.com www.internet4change.com www.click4africa.com www.visions4africa.com __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
