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Sofia, Bulgaria, July 23, 2004. Press release by BlueLink Information Network. The project Environmental Content Sharing in South Eastern Europe (SEE), a partnership initiative of six environmental NGO electronic networks, reached the finals of the Stockholm Challenge Awards programme for its pioneering information technology projects worldwide. The platform, designed by BlueLink for NGO users became one of nine finalists in the "Environment" category. Competition was stiff, and there were 900 applicants for the awards. The objective of the Stockholm Challenge Awards is to attract information technology projects from around the world in order to bring more exposure for citizen-oriented applications. The contest categories are as follows: e-government, culture, health, education, e-business and environment . The winners in each category will be announced in Stockholm, Sweden, frin May 10-13, 2004. The SEE Regional Environmental Content Sharing Pool is a partnership initiative considered to benefit the environmental NGO electronic networks on the Balkans and their users. The partners are:
Through the platform www.see-environment.info the partners share information from their websites or specially prepared publications on a regional level. The process of content sharing is as follows: each partner has its own slice (database for environmental articles) and feeds in English selected items related to environment, sustainable development and the 'third sector.' Through special export and import 'slices' each partner network is able to chose and export from the content-sharing pool and able to use their website to import selected materials from the pool. All posted articles of the regional platform are available online. The website is created and administrated by BlueLink. The content exchange automatically pulls information from various websites by using free software from the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), the APC ActionApps. The regional platform (www.see-environment.info) was created especially for the SEE region, but this type of content-sharing tool can also be used for developing content exchange between neighbouring countries (those with a common language, for example). It could also be a very useful online campaigning tool. "The project efficiency led to access to environmental information improvement and establishment of an independent source of information, as well as e-networking partnership development and empowerment of the democratic practices in the SEE civil sector", said Milena Georgieva, SEE Regional Environmental Content sharing project manager and BlueLink team member. StrawberryNet: "The project had a definitively positive impact on the environmental NGO community in the region. Through information and experience sharing it developed cooperation among NGOs and raise awareness on the need to join forces in order to solve environmental problems in the region". EkoMrezaBiH: "We strongly support the idea of SEE environment content sharing and express our hope that such an initiative will continue to exist and will draw enough donor attention to support such useful activity". Green Forum: "We believe that our model of cooperation and the platform can be used by various initiatives." The Regional Environmental Content Sharing project is financed by the Federal Republic of Germany/Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) (www.gtz.de) and the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) (www.rec.org). For more information: |
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Environmental
Content Sharing in South Eastern Europe
Summary
of event (2-page PDF file) Partners: Bluelink, Bulgaria EkoMrezaBiH, Bosnia and Herzegovina StrawberryNet, Romania QKE, Albania Volvox, Serbia and Montenegro Green Forum |
    
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