Community Development Gateway (CDG)

CDG is a program to help secure unhindered access for everyone in communities, in any place in a community, to timely, affordable, locally relevant knowledge, information, learning, communication and transaction services through internet based technologies presented in easily understood and applied form.

These public services and others would be made available through one or more appropriately located facility for internet access throughout a community and through a specific local Community Development Portal for each community. Training with guidance and translation support will complement the basic infrastructure.

The information features of the Portal include specific locally relevant material, locally based (environmental, contextual) and locally generated, plus hands-on know-how and training, all relating to actual and potential projects and other situations, activities and issues in that particular community and environment.

Direct links would be made to information in the Development Information Resource (DIR) and other related sources. Appropriate and successful local experience would contribute to the generally structured Development Information Resource.

Each Community Development Portal facilitates information from and interaction with government including transactions and importantly development focused public sector representation in the local community. Where relevant, each portal will aim at communication and other interaction (such as trade, development participation and money transfer) with migrant communities and individuals.

By being a dynamic user-focused resource in substance as well as in form and language, every portal will help promote well-informed choice and action.

The CDG program emphasizes the importance of CDG-skilled communities proliferating dynamically through ever expanding and multiplying clusters of enabled communities based upon geography and other common interests and mutual support. This proliferation will facilitate coordinated development efforts and when appropriate, delegation of responsibilities among communities.

Solertia will provide Development Portal 'templates' for easy local adaptation and operation in cooperation with local and regional educational and research centers, community based organizations, businesses and volunteers as part of an integrated community extension service.