Common Cause: Kashmir Emergency Shelter Support Network

Common Cause

Kashmir Emergency Shelter Support Network

Reference sites (own windows):

This is a very modest collaborative communications project, which has been quickly hammered together to support exchanges of information and materials between ad hoc set of concerned people and groups who are specifically trying to network to see what can be done in support of the 12 October call for help from Islamabad. It sets out to make use of the web and a certain number of easily accessible (and free) communications tools, which are briefly explained here.

What you see here at this point is just a first step and intended just to get us going at a time when things are moving fast and otherwise risk to get lost; we can expect further changes and improvements as we move ahead. (For background on this general team building and knowledge sharing approach, we invite you to check out the New Ways to Work site at www.xWork.org.)

The Emergency e-Forum

This is an emergency; so we have to work with what we can put our hands on fast and with some confidence. It also has to be easy to get at and free. So our first step was to set up an informal eForum on the web in the hope of providing an easily accessible shared central library and communications center to help us all to follow the flow. We chose to do this using the YahooGroups software on the grounds that we have experience with it, that it does its job(s) pretty well, and that it is free and easily accessible. (It's far from perfect but we can work with it.) Here are the highlights.

Click the Working e-Forum link to your left to see how the whole thing works.
Click the Message Center link to access the full collection of all messages that have been received here since 12 October.
The shared library provides a handy collection point for documents and reports.
The Graphics Library does the same for images, photos and plans.
Click here for Addtional images and plans.
Finally there is also a place to store links/URLs to groups and programs that might b of use, which is here.

Accessing the eForum: These materials may be freely accessed by anyone who makes there way to the site, however to post to the group and participate more actively you need to sign in. You can do this by clicking here to send a blank email, and then following the easy step by step instructions. It will take you just a few minutes, and if you have the slightest problem get in touch with us here at The Commons (click Contact on the top menu) and we will do our best to help.

For reasons of convenience we are lodging this forum under both The Commons: Open Society Sustainability Initiative and the New Ways to Work project. In both sites the Common Cause section opens up to other cooperating programs and related fora.

More active networking

In parallel with this eForum, we are creating a Skype audio group for both free point to point audio contact, and as quickly as possible group audio-conferencing. You can see more about it by clicking the Connect link here on the top menu of this site.

If you have questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with

Eric Britton at Skype (ericbritton) (You can also click the Skype icon on the menu.)
in Europe +331 4326 1323,
in North America +1 310 601-8468, or
via eric.britton@ecoplan.org

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