New website for Women on Wings

Women on Wings is launching its new website and newsletter. The site will clarify why and how the organization plans to create 1 million jobs for women in rural India. The new site has been developed and realised through the co-creation of a group of independent online operators. Managing Founder Maria van der Heijden on the new site: “The team has pulled off a unique achievement. We are hugely proud of the result.”

Why does Women on Wings want to create jobs in India and how do they go about it? It was a difficult question to answer on the old website. In order to include all of the tweets and blog posts from the founders and experts, the site needed a complete overhaul. After five years of loyal service, the 1.0 site has come to an end.

Visibility through storytelling
Online communication experts Jacqueline Duerinck and Irma van Zand teamed up with Women on Wings to develop an innovative concept in which storytelling and co-creation were central. “Women on Wings does fantastic work,” explains Irma van Zand. “And we wanted to make that work visible in a way that was just as authentic as the organisation itself by using the experiences of the founders, experts and hopefully also the Indian clients and companies that believe in Women on Wings.” The Women on Wings blog experiment proved that the concept was achievable; using storytelling and co-creation to show what the organisation is all about. “Now everyone can share in the experience of how Women on Wings works,” says Irma van Zand.

Website 2.0

To make the stories more visible, the site was constructed in WordPress. Various plug-ins and widgets were used to enhance the CMS capabilities. Han Hegeman, technical developer: “We linked experts and partners to customers and new business, and vice versa. All parties were linked in turn to news, blogs, social media, photos and video. This was how the network and all of the (image) stories of Women on Wings were made accessible.”

Co-creation
The unique feature of this project is the way in which it came about. Jacqueline Duerinck, project manager: “Women on Wings works on a voluntary basis, or by using huge discounts, with experts and suppliers. In the same way, we sought an internet supplier. Partly due to the economic crisis, we were unsuccessful, but our experience in recruiting experts has shown that independent operators are often prepared to give up some of their time for a cause they support. Using Twitter and our own network, we were able to put together a fantastic team of experienced independent online experts. I’m hugely impressed with the site, and I doubt whether a large internet agency could have done better.”

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