BRIDGE IT: Part 7 — The website 2.0
We are four girls all over Europe and our Bridge it! -team is helping volunteers to become better in their work. The aim of Bridge it! is to connect volunteers to each other and to provide valid information and education to them across countries. If you are planning to become a volunteer or if you are already volunteering just be a Bridge and join us here: (https://sticklkata.wixsite.com/bridgeit). Welcome to share our journey in Medium! ❤
After the interviews, we had positive and negative feedback also, so we started to develop our idea, and used the negative feedback to make our website better for the volunteers. First of all, because one of our interviewee told us that our website is not enough interactive, neither attractive — we totally changed the design of it. It was very important, because the template, that we used, could not allow us to make it eye catching, or in general: to improve it the way we wanted to.
So, as we realized this, we searched and find “Wix”. Here we had the chance to find everything we wanted to, even things that we thought is impossible (for example the chat function). As we were developing Bridge it! to make it more attractive, interactive and enjoyable, we did not want to lose sight of to keep it clear and easy to use. Our main goal in this website to connect the people and that our Bridge it! to be like an info bank for volunteers. Down below, I describe how it build up.
As a basic for a website, of course, we have a little introduction about ourselves and about why we do this, but to focus on the more important sites: we have a little site about refugees: here we posted videos, in which they tell their personal stories. This is made to empathize with them, and to understand better their life.
One of our interviewee told us, that it would be very useful to have a platform about the refugee’s culture — we did not think about it before, so we was really happy and grateful for this idea and we created a site for this. Unfortunately we could not finish this, but it is really an important thing to do.
We knew it from the really beginning of our work, that language is the gap between refugees and education — or we could even say, not only for education, but for their life. It is hard to do your everyday schedule if you can not speak the language, and it is the same in the other hand. Even if you would like to help, but you can not understand the other person, it is a hard thing to do. So, to give the chance to make it a little bit easier, we collected a few applications, in which volunteers can learn the basics of different languages.
We could not let go fully our first idea with the organizations, so we started to collect those organizations who work with refugees in Athens. Our list is very in embryo — to make it really good and real, we need to get in touch with the organizations (what we could not reach this far). It is also a feedback from one of our contacts, that we should separate the organizations on the basis of which of them accept new volunteers (even without volunteering experience).
We have a little blog, in which we share our journey. Here everybody can read it, and maybe we can set the bitter people’s mind at ease — that not they are the only ones, who has problems with find the way to be a volunteer.
However, maybe one of, the most important thing is on our website the live chat and the contact platform. Interested people can write us emails, and in the live chat basically everybody can answer to the questions (we, ex- or actual volunteers, or other ones who already found the solution). This is probably the most exceptional change, compare to our old website, because like this everybody can help the other — like a community.
Our aim in Bridge it! to create the website, that is a guide for volunteers, where they can find everything what they need — in one place.
We also created an Instagram site. We mostly use it to introduce ourselves and to show our work (for example in Instagram stories we showed how we created the website). It is also a platform where volunteers (or future volunteers) can contact us; and we would like to extend this with sharing volunteer’s stories.
Our team: Saara Kyllönen, Kata Stickl , Ivana Cervena and Svetlana Lukyanova
Our story: part 1 , part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 8, part 9
