Our projects
Open e-commerce was set up as a social enterprise. Our projects are united by a common underlying idea. Everything we do aims to empower people and help them realise their aspirations.
Part of the income from our website design goes to create links with the community and develop community projects. So far we have engaged with two main areas. Last year we concentrated our efforts with development projects in South America. This year we have engaged with the Brixton community in London.
1. Websites for the Brixton community
We are developing an e-commerce program to offer to the young community in Brixton. This involves training in website design starting from the basics of setting up a website, to developing an e-commerce portal, to maintaining a web presence. This project aims to help the local community in Brixton gain knowledge in website development and use it for work in the future.
2. Websites for the community
We work with various businesses or individuals who want to gain web presence to set up their own websites and learn how to maintain them. We help them improve their internet reach, gain help with marketing, advertising and much more.
So far we have worked with teachers, hostels, institutions and various professionals, who need websites to make themselves known to their target viewers and clients.
3. Online Training
We are building a portal to deliver E-Commerce courses on line and make available all the necessary knowledge to our associates.
Our courses are based on the latest educational techniques available on the web. Known as “social-constructivist”, this teaching method is perfect for discussion forums, blogs, wiki and on-line collaborative activities. It is a collaborative approach that opens educational content creation to a wider group including the students themselves.
4. Our projects in Latin America
We are committed to sharing our ideas face to face with communities around the world. In 2009 we took our expertise and equipment to numerous communities Latin America, helping them develop website development skills.
We embarked on a trip from the North of Mexico to Ushuaia on the Southern tip of South America in Argentina. En route we gave courses, spoke at forums and ran workshops in over 20 different locations about starting an online business and developing an existing business on the web. For each location we visited we set up a website for the local community for them to use and maintain on a long term, even after we left.