CoAid Relaunches Website; Leverages Social Media For Humanitarian Work

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LITTLETON, CO 21st June 2010 -- Community Aid Relief and Development (CoAid) announced the official re-launch of their website, www.coaid.org, today. The new website follows a $25,000 grant from Chase bank which they won recently on Facebook.

"We leveraged the power of social media to win the prize. It was a lot of hard work, but well worth it", said Steve Neill, president of CoAid. "Actually, only a fraction of the grant has been spent on the website. We’re using most of the prize for our work with communities affected by war and natural disaster worldwide".

The new website offers improved layout, navigation, and a new section for videos and other media. By using an open-source software tool called Drupal, CoAid created a cost-effective web site that can be updated by authorized users very quickly and easily.

"Having our people in the field able to update the website is important to us. We need them to communicate with our donors and supporters in a timely manner", said Neill. "For example, our workers can send updates instantly using Twitter. These messages appear within minutes on the new site as well as our Facebook pages".

CoAid, a relatively new relief and development organization, has relied heavily on the Internet to spread its mission and values.

"There’s no doubt about it", added Neill, "the low cost of using the web to build our brand and create awareness of what we do has been key to our early success".