Working Together to Celebrate the Difference You Make - Esri Ireland & The Wheel

10/4/2011 12:09:00 PM

"The Wheel" is Ireland’s support and representative umbrella network for community, voluntary and charitable organisations. Esri Ireland approached them with a view to delivering location-enabled services that support and encourage community & voluntary activities.

Each year the Wheel conduct a national campaign entitled “Better Together”. Better Together aims to build support for voluntary and charity organisatons clubs and associations across Ireland by encouraging the public to connect with and support these good causes, to help keep our communities strong.

The Better Together Campaign was officially launched today by TD Joan Burton, Minister for Social Protection and was well attended by partners of the wheel, supporters, voluntary, community and charitable organisations.

The campaign centres on a website www.bettertogether.ie where charities, clubs and associations showcase their work through short inspirational videos. Last year their online map showed the location of 211 community and voluntary groups and links to their videos on the Better Together site.

For 2011 The Wheel decided that they needed to make the map function much more interactive. Esri Ireland has collaborated with The Wheel to provide an innovative and location-enabled facility that integrates geographic information with social media providing a much richer online experience.

“Interactive maps are nothing new to us or our customers but recently we have identified at new ways to harness social media channels such as Twitter, Flickr & YouTube that may be a useful form of information to voluntary organisations” commented Andrew Rea, Business Sponsor & Head of Professional Services, Esri Ireland.

With the new Interactive Map, additional data and features have been added. The map can track geolocated tweets using specific hashtags such as #btg11 or #charityhero, to show how support is building for a cause. Those wishing to support a particular cause can generate geolocated tweets at www.mapmy tweet.com. This provides real time insight into dynamic twitter conversations as they happen across the map and creates a great buzz around the video competition.

In addition users can indicate how the public can support a particular organisation (vote for their video, donate, volunteer), or locate the nominees for the Ireland’s Charity Hero Competition. The Better Together Campaign runs from 4th October to 11 November. You can check out the Interactive Map for yourself at www.bettertogether.ie.

Both Esri Ireland and The Wheel have plans to collaborate on further strategic projects to help connect people in the community over the coming months.

Below Left to Right: Deirdre Garvey (The Wheel); Andrew Rea; Tanya Ten and Joanne McLaughlin (Esri Ireland) pictured at the Better Together Launch 4th October.