The Joomla! project is proud to announce a unique opportunity for you and other members of the Joomla! community to work hand-in-hand with the United Nations to help change the world!
About the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development 2012 (Rio+20)
Our planet is currently facing many severe challenges, such as climate change, water shortages, and the loss of biodiversity. At the same time, billions of people live in poverty and millions of infants die each year of preventable diseases. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also known as Rio + 20, will be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. This conference will draw delegates from all over the world as they explore ways to promote sustainable development that will protect our planet and grow our economy, while also fighting starvation, preventable diseases, and poverty.
The UNCSD has launched a website in support of this important upcoming conference at http://uncsd2012.org. Delegates to this conference from all over the world are already beginning to connect on this website, so that they can share with each other and learn from each other as they collaborate to help save our planet and alleviate human suffering. The UNCSD website seeks to break new ground in two-way communication and interaction between the Conference Secretariat, and governments, other UN agencies and civil society.
Connecting with the Joomla! project
The UNCSD Communications and Outreach Cluster has chosen Joomla! as the content management system for their website. In August of 2010, the Chief of the Cluster, Nikhil Chandavarkar, and Web Focal Point William Bly, met with OSM President Ryan Ozimek as he presented a proposal for collaborating with the Joomla! community in order to develop and enhance the UNCSD 2012 website. This proposal was based on an idea from JCM team members Cristina Solana and Babs Gösgens to enable members of the Joomla! community to donate their time to help build websites for worthy causes.
Nikhil and William are excited for the opportunity to match up their globally oriented website with volunteers from the global Joomla! community. They believe that the shared values of commitment, creativity, sharing, and collaboration make a joint effort with the Joomla! community a perfect combination, and they also believe that this will ensure a great outcome for this joint effort.
Join a team of committed community volunteers
The Joomla! project is assembling a team of qualified community volunteers who want to help contribute their skills to develop and enhance the UNCSD website. If you want to join other members of the Joomla! community to work on this important UN website project, and you have skills and experience in project management, information architecture, user experience, template design/development, extension development, style guide development, search engine optimization, security, or other site building and site administration expertise, here is how you can get involved in this exciting collaborative effort between the UNCSD and the Joomla! community:
- In the first phase of this project, we are seeking volunteers from the community with skills and experience in project management, information architecture, user experience, and user interface. If you have experience in one or more of these areas, please fill out and submit the form below. Phase 1 will begin approximately December 1, 2010.
- Selected volunteers for this first phase will collaborate with William Bly and others on the UNCSD website team to help define their goals for the website and document their requirements.
- Once the first phase is complete and we know the specific type of volunteer help that will be needed to implement the requirements defined in the first phase, another community-wide call for help will be made here at the Joomla! Community Magazine for a second phase of work. This second phase volunteer team will consist of template designers, extension developers, and volunteers in other areas. Selected volunteers from the first phase may also continue working for the second phase.
Be sure to check back for updates on this project in upcoming issues of the Joomla! Community Magazine. Also, please visit the new UNCSD 2012 group on the people.joomla.org website to participate in ongoing discussions about this exciting collaboration between the Joomla! community and the UNSCD 2012 project!
If you have any questions about this project, please either post them to the group linked to in the previous paragraph, or send an email to
Phase 1 volunteer team application form
For the first phase of this project, we are seeking volunteers from the community with skills and experience in project management, information architecture, user experience, and user interface. If you have experience in one or more of these areas, please fill out and submit this form.
Note: If you would like to volunteer for the second phase volunteer team as summarized above, please check back for the Phase 2 volunteer team application form which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Joomla! Community Magazine.
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