Donald Lobo from CiviCRM directed me today to a new version of the very handy Prodder Directory of Southern African NGOs, which SANGONeT launched yesterday at http://beta.prodder.org.za.

This is exciting news for me since we at Kabissa also are using Drupal and CiviCRM as the backbone of our own online community website for African civil society. I like the look and feel of the new Prodder site and am pleased that CiviCRM is finding broader use in Africa.

Browsing the site, I was also intrigued to see that a print version of the Prodder Directory is available. What a terrific resource! I have floated tihs idea in the past for Kabissa: wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to offer a print edition of the Kabissa Member Directory, on an annual basis and also in custom print runs for specific purposes - eg in support of national, regional or sectoral networks, or to distribute at conferences.

SANGONeT official press release follows.

I wanted to point out a few improvements we made recently to the site, which should make it more fun and easy to use. Please come and explore, and let us know what you think! Report problems via the beta link in the logo above or contact us by email.

Many people ask us all the time about Drupal, the platform used to develop Kabissa 2.0.

Our friends at Lullabot have announced The Lullabot Learning Series available on DVD. I have not yet seen the DVD but the short trailer video on their website is very useful in explaining quickly some of the most important benefits of Drupal.

OK, I know many people will arrive here at http://www.kabissa.org and ask just that question. What happened here? This site is completely different!

Well, yes! As Kabissa members and insiders know, the Kabissa team has been working for many years to design and create a new website. The Ford Foundation and OSI Information Program gave us some wonderful grants to work on web projects, and we collaborated with a range of very skilled and devoted programmers and leaders in the tech field to get from there to here.

Change can be scary and I know many members arriving here today might be asking themselves some questions. I have tried to anticipate them in this blog post, and Sokari is working on a Kabissa Guide to more completely explain what the new site offers to members and others with an interest in African civil society. Keep the questions coming and we will update the Kabissa Guide to make sure everyone is happy and knows about all the wonderful things they can do here now!

Social Networking for African Organizations

We have been dropping hints about "Kabissa 2.0" for a year now, and now finally we are able to share the fruits of our labors. We hope you like what you see!