IDP Voices website
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), the leading international body monitoring conflict-induced internal displacement worldwide, approached Online Solutions with a vision for a website that could provide internally displaced people across the globe with the opportunity to communicate their own life stories to the outside world. The concept for the website was to create an informative yet personal information dissemination platform that would enable the IDMC to publish the personal stories and day to day struggles of displaced people thereby enabling planners and policymakers to more fully appreciate the complex and varied impacts of internal displacement and identify new ways to respond.
The narratives held within the website pages are valuable complements to the official information on conflicts which governments and international organisations offer. These stories deal with the real lives of real people. The narrators share their personal experiences, their sensations, hopes and dreams, and the impact for them of being forced from their homes. It was important therefore for the website to speak for the people, both visually and informatively.
Online Solutions designed and developed a website and content management system using Lotus Domino Technology (the current preferred technology of the IDMC) to provide the IDMC with a flexible and scalable solution that would allow for growth as more life stories from more countries are collected. The website also provides visitors with the ability to view and listen to content in languages that are dependent upon the country of origin of the life stories themselves. For example, the life stories of the displaced people of Columbia are offered in English and Spanish, whereas those of the Georgian people are available in English, Georgian and Russian. The system developed by Online Solutions provides the IDMC with the flexibility to publish website content in almost any language.