We all wish to live in a perfect world, where there is no fear, violence, and discrimination of any type. The reality is, however, different.
We all hear or see violent crimes happening around us. Some of us even became a victim of it. Whether fueled by hate, discrimination, or something else, many of these crimes go unreported. The reporting process can be a horrific and traumatic experience for the victims.
Lance Boer, a web developer from British Columbia built WordPress websites for non-profit organization Literacy Alberni, is helping victims of violence to report anonymously accidents involving harassment, racism, and bigotry.
WordPress website fighting racism and discrimination
Isn’t it incredible you can do so many cool things using WordPress? Literacy Alberni came up with a great idea with a meaningful purpose. They decided to create reporting sites to help fight racism and discrimination by using WordPress forms. We interviewed their web developer Lance Boer to tell us all about it!
The beginning
Lance was originally going to school to be a teacher. Several years ago, he started getting into web design development on the side. Eventually, that became what he was more interested in.
“I turned it into the career form there. Did not finish going to school to teach and moved into WordPress-based website development stuff. I have been doing that for I don’t know, quite a while now. It just seemed to be more lucrative than teaching, so that was an easy decision. And I really enjoyed it.”
Lance revealed he just recently ended up working on a project funded through the government. He is actually teaching through the online program, web development, and web design. Eventually, it came back around to the teaching. Can’t escape it, Lance. 😊
After Lance and his wife came back from the US to British Columbia, she ended up working for this non-profit organization first as a tutor. As the organization grew, they were looking for someone to do their website and other tech stuff. This is where Lance jumped on board with them.
Providing support to community
“The Literacy Alberni just became the organization in our area as part of the provincial government’s anti-racism advocacy branch. The project that came through with Literacy Alberni was setting up these reporting sites for two of our communities because we have a lot of indigenous people and a lot of immigrants in these small towns. There is a lot of incidents of racism, unfortunately.”
The organization hopes these reporting sites will help the community provide better support services to those traumatized by discrimination.
The ongoing anti-racism and anti-hate efforts include constant education about how racist structures affect all human beings and the processes of reconciliation and decolonization.
We were curious about how many people on the average report such as cases in the area (hoping for the lowest number possible).
“We’ve just barely started promoting it. So far, I think we’ve only had 3 reports come in. I am not sure what it’ll look like once it’s spread more. We are working on a campaign to get the word out. We hope we can keep a track of that a little bit. You know, the bad stuff that’s going on, so we can figure out how to improve it and stop it from happening.” We really hope you will accomplish that Lance!
Helping victims to report incidents
A crucial piece of our forms is having the ability for victims, and witnesses to upload photos and videos of the incidents. [Ninja Forms] File Uploads was a lifesaver.
Other form plugins had complicated processes but with this add-on, it took about 2 minutes to get file uploads working straight into a Google Drive account. Having it just here connecting to drive makes it super easy, and super easy for the non-technical people getting involved in this.
The whole thing was just incredibly simple and such a relief for me. It allowed me to keep the budget tight, so the client has plenty of money left over for more advocacy work.
We also really needed to make sure the forms could be multi-step because our target users potentially have low literacy rates. We need them to not feel initiated by a huge wall of text, especially because they might be filling out the form after a traumatic experience.”
We love to see Ninja Forms fulfilling the purpose and we are proud to be a part of such an excellent idea. Let’s just hope that despite the great purpose these WordPress forms serve, there won’t be a necessity for filling them at all!
What’s next?
“We just got funding for me to do a client management system for them that’s going to be WordPress based. It is a whole big project trying to manage all the clients that we have plus all of the funding agreements and reporting requirements, and trying to get some of that automated because they are a pretty small organization with a lot of moving pieces. So that’s the next thing coming up.”
This sounds like an exciting project, and our team wishes you a smooth execution with no major complications!
Lance also runs the Cascadia South, a digital marketing consultancy focused on small businesses. If you need someone to build your site or need a project consultation, reach out to them and check all the services they are offering!
Learn more about Literacy Alberni
This small non-profit organization is located on the unceded territories of the Tseshaht and Hupacasath First Nations, in the City of Port Alberni, British Columbia. They are committed to respecting, promoting, and advancing the values of equality, equity, diversity, and safety.
The majority of their clients are immigrants who are new to Canada. Most of the organization’s work involves helping them improve their language skills and getting them connected to the community.
You can see what they are up to on their Facebook page or check their official website, to learn about the courses or activities they are organizing. If you would like to support their work, you can donate or become one of their volunteers!
