Hello All,
PLEASE TAKE A MINUTE OR TWO TO READ THIS
I am a high school student in America participating in the Google Highly Open Participation Contest 2007 (http://code.google.com/opensource/ghop/2007-8/) and am working on a task for Drupal. The task is to research how Drupal is used in Africa to demonstrate that Drupal is used worldwide.
I am posting this to you either because you are an Africa group, have an African Drupal site, or have been using Drupal for a while and are knowledgeable (or all three)
I figured you would be a great resource to tap into since you live in Africa and would know most about this. If anyone here has sites I would love to see them (also I presume since you are in the Drupal community and live in Africa you might know of other African Drupal sites and if you do please please please post them or email me!) I have already discovered a few on my own and in addition to any others that you have I would really appreciate if you could take just a moment and browse the following Drupal websites based in Africa. If you see anything that you particualrly like please post back or email me with your favorite and what you liked about it. If possible please include what the site does that makes good use of Drupal features.
An example of this would be Liberdadi because it uses Drupal, connects to the community in a creative way that helps the community keep in touch and up to date and is well organized. (information on uses of Drupal features would be great too but I am not familiar enough with the features of drupal to identify them myself)
It would be a HUGE help if you could take a few moments to do this and it would help publicize your sites and get them more publicity/hits too!!!
The sites that I already have are:
+ Liberdadi - The Voice of Cabo Verde's People
+ Filmmaker
+ Suuch Solutions
+ Burtronix - Drupal Programming and Web Development (South Africa)
+ Free High School Science Texts (South Africa)
Summary: Please visit these sites and write me a review of which you like and why. Also it would be amazing if you could say what Drupal features they use well and what makes them uniquely African (if anything). Finally, if you know of other African Drupal sites please link me to them and include the same information as you would if you were doing one of the above sites.
also there is a deadline on this so the sooner you can get back to me the better!!
Many thanks in advance and the more people who do this the better!!!!!!
Comments
Durban Scouts
Hi yoniwiz
I've had a Drupal site for almost two years now. It's a news and information resource / community blog for people who live in Durban, the third biggest city in South Africa, located on the east coast.
You can check it out at:
http://durbanscouts.za.net
I'm busy working with 3 other sites, but they're not finished so I can't give those out unfortunately!
As for the ones you've mentioned, they seem fine although the content is a bit sparse (except the free school texts one). I will advertise this post on Muti.co.za (Africa's social aggregator) and hopefully more people will respond, as I know there are plenty of South Africans using Drupal.
Cheers,
Mark
Abahlali baseMjondolos
Here's another good one:
The landless people who live in informal settlements in South Africa have an organisation fighting for their rights, called "Abahlali baseMjondolos" or "people who live in shacks".
I guess you could say Drupal has been a very important tool for the dissemination of information, without it they wouldn't be able to have such a powerful online presence.
See:
http://www.abahlali.org/
Mark
Will gladly assist
Please feel free to contact me directly - we have done over 300 drupal sites (from large corporates to UN sponsored non profits)
unfortunately we're closing for the holidays but i will be back on the 7th Jan
Mail : willem.econsultant at gmail.com
Web : http://www.eConsultant.co.za
Ps. all the sites you can see on our showcase are drupal
http://econsultant.co.za/home/showcase/webdesign
good work
Nice work there buddy. Lots of sites!
Brief response
I am at school at the moment but thanks for the sites and keep them comming! I will take a look later today and if you could include anything about the features of Drupal, briefly what they do, and how they are used on the site(s) that would be great.
The information you guys are pointing out about how they connect directly to the lives and the important roles these sites play is very very helpful!
Thanks so much!
-Yoni
On my site I use a couple of
On my site I use a couple of standard modules, nothing fancy, just image and img_assist, event, etc.
From what I can gather, Abahlali is much the same! ;)
Youth music site
We've put up http://www.kznywb.za.org/ , an attempt at creating a community around the KwaZulu-Natal Youth Wind Band which is based in Durban, South Africa. The site was initiated and created by current and past band members. We customized one of the base themes, using a striking shade of orange (ducks). Forums and user profiles come standard with Drupal. We added support for events (using the Events module I think), and using the Acidfree module we easily set up galleries, and there's even the potential to upload audio.
Setting up the site was easy - none of us were Drupal experts. Getting people to buy in wasn't so easy, hence the low activity on the site. In our defence even the Facebook group which was subsequently started is poorly attended :-/ At the moment we're taking a break, so there's no info about events and the site is in need of some attention. That's not Drupal's fault though :-)