Oxfam Canada

Oxfam Canada is pleased to announce the launch of their new Plone powered website: www.oxfam.ca.

Oxfam Canada builds lasting solutions to global poverty and injustice. Oxfam Canada works with allies in Canada and around the world to change the policies and practices that perpetuate human suffering and supports organizations in poor communities overseas in their struggles to secure basic rights.

Those familiar with Oxfam know that Oxfam UK decided on Plone a couple years ago, and funded in part the development of many popular Plone products: Kupu, CompositePack, Multisite and LinguaPlone. Oxfam Canada's switch to Plone means that the entire family of Oxfam regions are now using Plone including Oxfam America and Oxfam Australia.

Roger Musselman, Oxfam Canada’s Coordinator in charge of web development stated, "the new site will give us far more flexibility and is already gaining good reviews from Oxfam members, volunteers and web visitors. The site is far easier to navigate and people like the clean look and feel."

Oxfam Canada partnered with Jazkarta, a leading Boston-based Plone vendor, to create the website.

Nate Aune, Jazkarta’s Project Manager noted, "with only one month to create the website design, develop new content types, procure a hosting provider and migrate the content, we knew that we were under a tight timeframe. But the non-technical Oxfam Canada staff were able to learn Plone's authoring tools quickly with minimal training and migrate the content themselves.”

Using Archetypes and Zope 3 component architecture, we were able to rapidly develop new content types and leverage several add-on products to deliver a dynamic website on time. This is a testament to Plone's powerful out-of-the-box functionality, flexible development framework and rich library of 3rd party plugins", said Aune.

The new site is a big jump for Oxfam Canada. As Robert Fox, the organization’s Executive Director wrote in an e-mail from Nicaragua where he’s meeting with program partners, "I haven't had a chance to explore every corner of the site, but that which I've seen pleases me immensely.  I have to run but I wanted to send this quick word to thank you for all your work. I know that we have much more to do, but there's no doubt we now have a platform from which we can do it."

See the new website at http://www.oxfam.ca