Introduction & Welcome to the Blog

Hello and welcome to our project blog!

We’re building a website to increase engagement with citizen science and volunteering with nature conservation here in the UK.  Our goal is to have a system that can match people to projects, based on a few select preferences, and help to suggest volunteering opportunities that are local and interesting to them.  We started in detail about a month ago and now have a web design team on board, have completed a draft website layout and requirements and we are really looking forward to making progress in the coming months.  We are also working closely with our project partners from the New Forest NPA and National Trust, and have gotten great feedback so far.
We have a workshop coming next week to finalise how we will measure projects and people attributes ahead of getting into the detailed planning stages.  For naming our website, we surveyed over 130 people from volunteering, student and conservation background for their preferences, coming up with the short & effective “nature volunteers”.  There will be another opportunity to participate soon with our logo designs, so watch this space – further information will be posted here. 
Going forward we’re looking at a website launch workshop in may, details of which will be forthcoming soon!

All the best,
Alex

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