FBR - Free Burma Rangers
The Free Burma Rangers (FBR) is a multi-ethnic humanitarian service movement bringing help, hope and love to people in the war zones of Burma. Ethnic pro-democracy groups send teams to be trained, supplied and sent into the areas under attack inside Burma to provide emergency assistance and human rights documentation.
Bordermedia was asked to provide some new page designs which, once approved, were built into a set of HTML templates along with accompanying CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) files. The Free Burma Rangers’ webmaster then used the files provided to ‘re-skin’ the website himself.
Burma study website
This website provides information for students from Burma on Studying abroad. It is intended to provide information on universities, exams, and international scholarships with the aim of helping Burmese students to choose where to continue their studies.
Bordermedia provided consultancy in a series of meetings, helping to organise the new website structure, before designing 2-3 page templates in Adobe Photoshop. Once approved by the client, these were built into HTML/Dreamweaver templates. Bordermedia then provided half a day’s training in using Dreamweaver with which internal staff can add to and update the website in future.
Bordermedia was approached by the organisation Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in August 2006 about facilitating a series of computer training courses for Burma-related women and youth groups based in Thailand.
The courses would take place between October and December 2006, in three locations in Thailand; Mae Sot, Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai.
It was agreed that the first courses would be focused on Basic Computer Maintenance and Security, with a view to introducing one or two key staff members from each of the approximately 35 organisations, to the main course topics listed below.
- Implementing preventive measures on PC components
- How to keep computers safe from humidity
- Basic Hardware troubleshooting
- Backups
- Windows XP System Restore functions
- Operating system updates
- Removing unwanted programs
- Disk Management
- Viruses
- Spyware/Malware
- Firewalls
- User accounts and security
- File security
- Browser and internet security
- Advanced topics (Computer & program freezes, Blue Screens, What to do when Windows XP won’t start)
The intention would then be that these key staff members would then take responsibility for securing and maintaining their office computers. The groups were kept small – 8 people per group – and were mainly comprised of students from the following ethic groups; Karen, Kayan, Palaung, Pa-O, Arakan, Karenni, Kachin, Lahu, Shan and Mon.
Karen Human Rights Group
Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG) is a small grass-roots organisation documenting the human rights situation of people in rural Burma.
One of our developers undertook a redesign and redevelopment of the KHRG website whilst working for KHRG, which began with an assessment of the current website – looking at its design, speed to download & visitor statistics.
A series of documentation was drawn up including sitemaps & wireframe diagrams detailing the proposed new design & functionality. This was followed by full page mock-ups in Photoshop.
The new website has been developed in HTML and PHP with a MySQL database storing report information. Search & donation functionality has been introduced to the website. A password-protected admin area allows KHRG to update sections of the website themselves, and a Dreamweaver template system has been put into place for updating static website content.
Delivery of the website was followed up with several training sessions, and a training manual containing all the information required for KHRG to update and maintain the system themselves.
Safe haven orphanage, Thailand
The first Safe Haven Orphanage is located at Tha Song Yang, a couple of hours north of Mae Sot on the Thailand / Burma border. Their aim is to provide orphanages that are “safe havens” to children throughout Thailand. A Safe Haven Orphanage is a home that provides disadvantaged children with proper nurture, nutrition, shelter, clothing, medical care, and education.
Bordermedia designed, built & delivered the website in 3 days, with one of these days spent at the orphanage photographing the children.
