Nabuur
Encyclopedia
The Nabuur Foundation is a non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 based in Giethoorn
Giethoorn
Giethoorn is a village in the Dutch province of Overijssel. It is located in the municipality of Steenwijkerland, about 5 km southwest of Steenwijk....

, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. It aims to help in the development
International development
International development or global development is a concept that lacks a universally accepted definition, but it is most used in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context of human development — the development of greater quality of life for humans...

 of impoverished communities by enabling people from other countries to help the community members through Nabuur's website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

.

Nabuur started operating in 30 October 2001. Its founder, Siegfried Woldhek, is a former director of the Dutch branch of the World Wildlife Fund. Nabuur is an old word in Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

 meaning "neighbor".

Nabuur system

The core of the system employed by Nabuur is the concept of village. There is a simple mechanism at the website for registering a village. Communities in all parts of the world can register in Nabuur's website http://www.nabuur.com and state the issues they face. Such issues might be Aids
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

 epidemic
Epidemic
In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...

s, low literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...

 rates, the construction of water well
Water well
A water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a trash pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump...

s, gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

 inequalities among others.

From that moment on this community is called a village, in spite of the community's current geographical status. Some are as few as 50 people, some as many as a million. Then a facilitator (a volunteer worker trained by Nabuur) is appointed for this village's web page.

Now other users can sign in as virtual neighbors for this village. The neighbors will look for possible ideas concerning the issues raised by the village, and then present possible ideas for the community to consider. If project funding or expert involvement is to be sought, that is for the local community to do—with support from the virtual neighbors.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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