By sharing your knowledge, experience and skills and whatever your background there is a person, group, NGO or community who could build on your experience to support their projects.
Create your account and become an active member here or in the log-in panel
- Register if you can offer support to projects in local communities.
- Register if you need support from experienced people for your cooperative venture, local enterprise or activity.
- Join a group which best gives you the backup you need.
- Join a group or groups which best reflect your experience.
- Contribute to the group forums.
- Start a new group and ask questions if you don’t find what you want in the existing groups.
Newtraid – The past
Newtraid was created as a meeting place on the web for volunteers and potential clients. It became evident there was a need for communications to become easier and less formal. We needed to make changes and the web itself showed us the way with the birth of social networking. So, in place of a formal registration of skills and needs you can go to a relevant group. Then start conversations with any number of group members and colleagues.
Newtraid – Continuing need for support
There are a lot of sites out there relating to development issues. However there does not seem to be one where skills and experience can be shared with anyone needing support. If your project needs an input try joining a group and asking a question. Someone out there can help. If you visit the site and think some advice is not the best or even bad, join in and say so.
Newtraid – The new site
The original Newtraid site required volunteer consultants to register with details of their experience in a particular area. On the other side were potential clients who needed to give details of their requirements. The Newtraid administrator would then try and match the consultant and client. This one to one relationship took too long to set up and it was totally dependent on having the right skills within the registered consultants. More fundamentally, it was based on a relationship which didn’t recognise the wealth of experience already found in developing communities. Therefore we have moved from a relationship between a consultant and client to more open communications between all site members to find solutions.
Newtraid now provide better communications and collaboration between members, their colleagues and the communities they serve. Any registered member can create their own groups within the site to fill a particular need and invite others to join.
Most visitors to this site will be familiar with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking sites. Newtraid is dedicated to activities such as community projects, technical issues, project co-ordination, group forums and encouraging others to join in.
There are a basic set of tools on this site, so create an account, log in and explore.
The success of the site will depend entirely on whether it satisfies community needs and your willingness to participate with enthusiasm and perseverance.
Newtraid – The new start
We have created a few key groups but you can start others to cover your particular needs and interests. There isn’t a lot of information in the groups -yet but we know how things on the web can grow rapidly. Although we don’t expect to be another Facebook we do want become a useful tool in a development toolbox — so use us!
Newtraid – a bit of history – how we gave support in the past
As a result of contacts made through Newtraid these projects have been initiated
- Review of facilities at Atutur Hospital in Teso District of Uganda. Report on facility development included in Health Group on this site.
- Construction of Clinical Waste Incinerator at Atutur Hospital by Engineers for Overseas Development.
- Links with The Good Earth Trust and a school in Uganda were established resulting in construction of toilets and three Rain Water Harvesting Tanks at the school in Masaka District, Uganda.
- Contacts within the UK resulted in establishment of The Kisoboka Trust to support Water and Sanitation projects in East Africa. The Trust is now partnering with VEDCO a Ugandan NGO in setting up a food security project in the Masaka district of Uganda.
Maybe these were not major achievements in the context of world needs but they would not have happened without the Newtraid site. How much more support could be given if you were with us!
Newtraid – Support freely given
Newtraid has been based on the idea that there are many people who are willing to provide support for good causes and enterprises on a voluntary basis. We want to maintain that basic principle but there are many situations when there are commercial solutions to situations that can be put forward. There is no problem with commercial organisations or consultants suggesting solutions and giving advice but this should be made clear if, for example, links to commercial companies are included in comments and forums. And definitely no, repeat, no spamming.