VCS gets online collaboration portal
9th October 2006, 10:25 am
People involved in the voluntary and community sector have a new place to learn, get inspired, meet and collaborate following Engage East Midlands’ launch of www.vcscollaborate.org, a national online social networking site built specifically for the VCS.
The concept of such an online network was developed in response to Engage East Midlands’ pioneering six year research programme into cluster collaboration for the voluntary and community sector. This research identified the significant need, and potential, for better collaboration between voluntary and community organisations.
The network site was developed for Engage East Midlands by e-democracy company Delib and draws on a mix of web functionalities designed to help users collaborate. For instance, the site includes an ideas bank for members to submit ideas and gather support for them, forums for project or issue discussion, resource upload and download for sharing important or interesting files and wikis where members can collaboratively author documents such as funding bids. Moreover, the site allows the creation of thematic networks and secure groups, enabling people to work together on specific issues or even internally.
Jasvinder Dudial, Capacity Development Manager at Engage East Midlands, said ‘the voluntary and community sector is demand-led and there was a demand for a place where individuals and organisations with little time to carry out lengthy research or attend meetings could learn and work together. This virtual space has been created to meet that demand, to help people get support for their innovative project ideas, network and get the best out of working with each other’.
Delib consultant Ben Whitnall said ‘above all, we hope that people will find the site useful: we know we’ll have done our job properly if the tools in the site become another way for people and organisations to better achieve their aims. Of course, there’s a dependency in such social projects on people using the site and being there to work with each other; hopefully, we’ve given people plenty of reason to be there and they’ll start seeing the benefits soon’.
People can sign up to or browse the site now at http://www.vcscollaborate.org