Project information
| Status | Finalist |
| URL | Go to website |
| Category | Culture New media |
| Country | Brazil |
| Operational areas | Urban |
| Target groups | Youth, Women, Men, Seniors |
| Fixed connection | Cable |
| Wireless connection | WiFi, GSM |
| Access points | Government office, Business, Home, School, Library, Telecenter, Cafe |
| Interact | Landline Phone, Desktop Computer, Cellphone, Laptop, PDA |
| Software License Types | Open Source |
Project location
Random images Challenge 2008
Comunidad Segura webportal (www.comunidadsegura.org)
- Brief description
Conceived as an interactive tool to encourage the discussion of human security issues and networking among civil society organizations, researchers, policy makers, journalists and the general public, locally and internationally, Comunidad Segura combines news, virtual communities, and the Virtual Library on Public Security and Human Rights with over one thousand publications (http://www.comunidadesegura.org/index.php?q=pt/trip_search/advanced). Our news coverage includes human safety with an emphasis on youth and armed violence, security sector reform, gun control, culture of peace and most recently, peace building in Haiti. We publish stories in four languages, encouraging submissions by contributors and the creation of virtual communities.
- Vision, Objectives and Goals
- okVision
The Comunidad Segura webportal is a live reference for researchers, scholars and experts in Human Safety and related topics in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Objectives:
-To be an international reference with high quality content on Human Security, taking a Latin America and the Caribbean as a point of departure.
-To promote constructive debates, searching for solutions more than merely reporting problems
-To be a source of useful information, highlighting good practices, innovative methodologies and successful public policies
-To present diverse support material for practicing human security people, such as policemen, decision makers, policy makers, experts, media workers. It is also a major source of information for the citizens.Goals:- To include/catalogue more than 1.000 documents from recognized Brazilian institutions and authors in the virtual library by the end of the first year (achieved).
- To set up partnerships and include at least 500 documents from recognized Latin American institutions or authors in the virtual library by the end of the second year of the project (in progress).
- To include bilingual cataloguing, English and Portuguese (in progress)
- To build a mailing list with more than 25.000 subscribers of newsletters and bulletins from the website (achieved).
- To register more than 1.000 users as members with access to the virtual community tools (achieved)
- To publish exclusive content with local and international approach daily in Portuguese (achieved)
- To publish exclusive content with local and international approach at least twice a week in Spanish and English (achieved)
- To publish exclusive content with local and international perspectives at least once a week in French (to be achieved)
- How does ICT contribute to the organisational objectives
ICTs are essential to the very concept of the Comunidad Segura project. Comunidad Segura was conceived as an interactive, open to all, user friendly internet data base, making information readily available. ICTs make this possible, by allowing for the creation of virtual communities, real time chats, discussion forums, storage of documents, event schedules, to build contacts and refer to user profiles, as well as to launch and carry out collaborations and finally search through the various types of content.
- Transferability
- The Comunidad Segura portal is designed to foster the interaction of organizatons of civil society and as such has placed its tools at the service of other organizations. The tools are relatively simple, in the sense that they are open source and that we have not invented them. But the fact is that making these tools available for our target public has a lasting and important cultural impact on how they interact. One important and successful example is the Network of Policemen and Civilians of Latin America, that has enabled police officers to interact at new levels, giving new life to the debate of overall security issues as well as issues pertaining to professional development and reform, showing that relatively simple, open source technology in the right places can bring about significant changes in the culture of an institution or group. This experience is transferable, the tools are open to all groups. We center our themes on security and culture of peace because we believe that information and communicationn technology can promote peace building. But the very same tools and strategies could be used in other fields, such as for example, ecology and public health.
- Project summary
The Comunidad Segura webportal is a platform that facilitates the communication between members of networks already in existence. We foster the creation of new networks and new virtual communities with chats, discussion forums, event schedules and other tools that support information sharing.
We are permanently developing content and new/better tools to help promoting the exchange of ideas and experiences among civil society (journalists, social workers, experts) and institutions of public security.
One of our main tools is a Virtual Library dedicated to finding, gathering and disseminating research, manuals and other resources. For more information on our tools, please see the "Technology" form.
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