The mission of Janastu is to e-nable the social development sector to pro-actively manage community-based knowledge. The 'let it be people' approach will provide a model where participatory management enables community based knowledge repositories.
Participation is networking, collaboration, dissemination, communication, building applications...
Community is focus group, beneficiaries, associates, members, co-ordinators, managers...
Knowledge from MIS, surveys, monitoring & evaluation, events, documentation...
Janastu is the social development unit of Servelots. Janastu takes ICT solutions and services to organisations in the social development sector. Servelots is a software development company established in 1999, whose main focus is to develop the web based online community support service PANTOTO. Janastu will focus on community empowerment projects by helping organization customise the PANTOTO software for their needs. In addition, PANTOTO communities will facilitate online community spaces, where people and organizations can network, communicate, gather and disseminate information related to particular social development issues. Janastu comprises of a team of experts in social, gender, environment, rural development and health issues.
Non government organizations (NGOs) working with underserved communities use information as a tool for empowerment and capacity building. As a result NGOs are constantly creating, capturing, analyzing, organizing and disseminating information. The resources that an NGO allocates to this are relatively large.
Technology has demonstrated ways to gather and disseminate information. It has, however, remained closed for NGOs because using technology has been expensive. Solutions that are available revolve around technology and not on the needs of the beneficiaries or the NGO.
Who can help manage information needs of a group of people who are not computer savvy? How can we provide solutions for people and organizations that do not have resources to develop custom solutions? Janastu is trying to answer these questions for organizations in the Social Development Sector.
