engleski

Building Online Local Communities: European Case Study “Krizevci.info”

In this paper we summarize six-year long experience of a small local non-governmental organization (NGO) in conducting successful not-for-profit social, cultural and media projects intended for the benefit of local community in Križevci, Croatia, Europe. All the projects are citizen-oriented and grouped into main five project areas, so-called “Five P.O.I.N.T.s”: (1) Križevci.info Platform, (2) Direct Actions, (3) Education, (4) Culture Shock, (5) e-Publishing. During the given timeline, at least two of the projects coexisted in the community and became partly interconnected. All of the projects were ICT-driven, while the positive user feedback from one of the projects drove to success of the other. Different user groups were targeted by the projects, e.g. uninformed high school graduates and financially challenged students (Education), Down syndrome children (Direct Actions), young local artists seeking affirmation (Culture Shock), all citizens (Križevci.info), foreign tourists (e-Publishing), etc. Online collaboration between other local and regional organizations was also a vital part of knowledge sharing, and P.O.I.N.T. aimed to provide continuous and free internet hosting services to all the NGO partners in order to enforce these goals. Future development efforts will include fully functional implementation and deploying of new web-based social media platform for sustainable online local community.

local community; social impact; internet-based media; voluntary work; non-governmental organization

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