SI MONTHLY NEWS October 2006 Countries
From SI Exco News
Country Reports - Poland and internet
Hello Servas members. I personally asked some friends in the Servas universe to share their stories with the rest of our international group. Here is Ania, the national secretary of Servas Poland and a personal friend. The Polish group, well known as the "Polish Mafia", a deserving reputation after the GA in Barcelona, is a dynamic and strong group. If you have the chance to go to visit them please go. With a very active youth group, Servas Poland is one of my favorites.
Pablo Chufeni
Servas Youth International Coordinator.
Servas Poland on line.
The Internet is the future - this is a phrase we have heard a lot for several years now, in Servas as well. I remember the international meeting in Hungary in 1998 when I first heard it discussed, I hardly knew what was meant, OK, I had been using email by then but not that much either, I still sent and received handwritten letters from my Flemish boyfriend (we both used fountain pens as well).☺
A few years later a new traveller, a young IT enthusiast, offered to create a website for Polish Servas. By then we had realised that it would be a useful source of information, so we gladly accepted. Michał created a website with basic information about what Servas was, its rules and contact information, a nice start, but it was difficult to update and develop, as he moved to Kraków and got quite busy with his career. In spring 2005 we decided that we needed a team to come up with new ideas and to realise them. It was a very successful initiative of up to ten people (a lot of them were on the youth teams in Thailand and/or Barcelona) - we had several brainstorming sessions in pubs or homes, members contributed with texts about our city (Warsaw), some required field trips, like checking out new places to go out to.☺ On the whole, for this initiative the energy, enthusiasm, creativity and, last but not least, COMPUTER SKILLS of our young members were essential.
Anyway, the result is our present website, set up and maintained by Marcin and Paweł, containig, besides rules and contact, information on current events as well as photos, invitations to upcoming meetings, useful tips for travellers. We even received a few texts FROM travellers, who wanted to share their experience of Poland with us. There is also the forum, which allows free expression on all kinds of issues, not necessarily strictly Servas. This, I have to admit, is slow to develop, we have a few great travel reports but on the discussion side it is rather unimpressive. Any advice what to do about it?
From the administrator: "The most time-consuming activity in the process of creating our homepage was building the logical structure of the website and forum. At our regular meeting in a pub we wrote down and discussed all the pros and cons of our existing webpage. Next we gathered all the different suggestions and ideas how to make it better and easier to use and administer. It was meant to serve as our presentation, invitation for new members and a source of information for interested people, all at the same time. We tried to take into account all the needs and wishes, what we havent succeeded in creating were glittering butterflies flying across the page and a big, shiny "I love you!" sign☺ - possibly still to come! After such fruitful brainstorming sessions we, administrators, commenced our work. Paweł almost instantly finalised all the technical aspects of the undertaking, and within a few days we had a working server, able to report that there is no content to be displayed. So, it took me more than two weeks of intermittent labour to transfer all the scattered ideas into a living structure of our brand new webpage and forum - wrapped in neat and tidy robes."
Marcin Ostaszewski
The website has definitely made things so much
easier on several levels, firstly, when we consider
access to information about Servas in Poland - a
growing number of people who apply to become
members say: "we've found you on the Internet and
thought it's such an interesting organisaton". Here
you go, takes care of advertising.☺ Secondly, it
saves time for board and interviewers, you only
need to check if people remember and understand
what they HAVE already read. In one word:
SUCCESS!☺
Ania Zakrzewska, NS Poland
PS: Some of it is also in English, so do visit
uploaded by Amelia
