Mzalendo Revamped!
Greetings everyone, and happy new year!
As you may know, Mzalendo started off as a discussion many years ago that quickly took on a life of its own.
We have been incrementally adding feature and content purely as volunteer work but with limited resources it has been an increasing struggle to keep Mzalendo up to date and functional.
We are happy to announce that as of this year we have secured a small grant from the Omidyar Network to revamp and revitalize Mzalendo, adding features and functionality that will make it an unparalleled resource in monitoring statistics and information on past & present aspirants and members of parliament.
Below is the roadmap. You are welcome to send in your comments and suggestions or email us at comments@mzalendo.com
Some of the features we intend to add include the following:
- Total revamp of the look and feel
- Collection of additional data: constituency populations, registered voters and votes cast, MP quotes, activities & calendar
- User logins using OpenID (Facebook, google, yahoo, twitter)
- User & comment rating
- Verified MP logins – to prevent masquerading
- Polls
- SMS commenting
- Constituency & district maps
- CDF fund & project tracking
- Graphs & statistics
Execution will being in February. While revamping the technical side of the website is important, we also need your help and participation as far as content – after all this initiative is also about encouraging Kenyan voters to be more active in monitoring their MPs – so keep submitting reports about your MP’s performance, send us your stories so that we can share them on our blog, and let us know if you’d like to be a regular contributor to the site.
