During my stay in Mushapo (DRC) in the beginning of 2011 the idea was born to create a website specifically for the work of Aktive Direkt Hilfe e.V. in Kongo. The ambitious goal: to create a four-language internet platform in English, German, French and Czech, in order to account for the increased need for funding by addressing extended support for the newly launched project in Mushapo.
Without having an idea, how website programming is working in particular, we already in Congo started to develop a rough concept on how the new website might look and noted it on a single A4 piece of paper. Based on this draft, I continued my work in Germany and, together with Sergio Sanchez, started to explore and structure relevant content in September 2011. Much work was invested: we looked at the image and video material of the last 10 years, selected and edited images, rewrote texts, worked out a new structure on this basis, organized the content, refined the structure etc. ... In conclusion, a labour-intensive process with an active e-mail exchange between Kongo and Germany.
The results were already respectable indeed: At the end of May 2012, a preliminary version of the website of ADH was launched.
With the experiences made with previous versions of the website and the feedback received, we were able to refine the structure of the website and to produce new content. In the meantime, Andrej Berg took over the function as the technical supporter of the website in the middle of 2013. Unfortunately, Sergio (Wordpress) and Andrej (Joomla) work with different content-management-systems, which are incompatible with one another, meaning that current programming of the preliminary version of the website was not transferable, certainly though Sergio’s enormous contribution to the development of website content and its structure!
In June 2014, the time finally came: with its new design, the German version of the website of ADH first saw the light of day on June 19, 2014.
After additional adaptions the texts were approved for translation. A large team of translators were working hard to transform the content from German respectively English into other languages. Sincere thanks to all the voluntary translators: : Jos Voorn, Ernst Wörrle, Patrick Knebl & Michael Singer (English), Christian Moureaux & Dieter Werner (French), Zuzka Tomíčková, Magda Brychcínová, Barbora Bártíková, Pavel Kobrle, Filip H. Härtel, Lenka Schmidt (Czech).
The English version of the website was launched on January 1st, 2015. It was extended by Czech and French language on May 30th, 2016. We mastered the greatest obstacle! Since then, the challenge is only to keep the website up-to-date.
Finally, i would like, also in the name of Aktive Direkt Hilfe e.V., once again to thank
Andrej Berg: www.steadyink.de
&
Sergio Sanchez: www.sergio-sanchez.com
for their voluntary support with the technical realization and programming.