Young budding website developersand designers have volunteered to help the Philippine Internet Users’ Society (PIUS) develop its website www.piusonline.org.

These volunteer web designers are Pigmata Media Inc. and Pinoy Web Startup, which are both partners and advocates of PIUS. Pigmata Media is represented by John Philip Dela Torre and Pinoy Web Startup by Lourdes Marie Casas. Both are into professional website development and internet consulting.

This Frog can leap

Lourdes Marie Casas said “the website we are developing for PIUS is powered by Frog content management system, while at the same time uses CakePHP to come up with a customized community software.” Thru this technology, PIUS will probably be able to lep fog and reach out to more people as it pursues its advocacy.

Casas added that she and her team have “volunteered to support PIUS because of its powerful advocacy, which will eventually help millions of potential Internet users.”

John Philip Dela Torre, on other hand, who also teaches at iACADEMY and College of St. Benilde, said that “as more and more people become Internet users, more new entrepreneurs will also emerge along with the phenomenal growth in E-commerce.

“This will also indirectly widen the demand and business for people like us who are in website design development, social media and network building, and Internet consulting,” he said.

Volunteerism spirit is alive

PIUS Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Michael M. Alunan expressed “deep gratitude to “IT tekkie” people like Marie Casas and JP Dela Torre for their spirit of volunteerism.”

Alunan said that “because of the Internet, the entire world has been reduced to what many say is the global village, whereby anyone can easily link up with anybody, anywhere, and anytime, and get to communicate with each other at real time, at the mere click of a mouse.”

“And with the entry of voice over the internet protocols (VOIP), webcams, skype, etc., it is now even possible to see and talk to each other and even conduct teleconferencing with various people from all over the world,” he said, stressing that the world is now indeed a global village.

“As we talk about the global village and the volunteerism expressed by PIUS partners like Marie and JP,” Alunan said that “we are reminded of our Filipino culture in the traditional Filipino ‘village’ in the countryside, which is still active but fast vanishing.

“This is the Bayanihan Spirit culture, which is an inherent Pinoy trait that we want to revive in PIUS and thru PIUS,” Alunan said. He added, explaining that in the old bayanihan spirit, everyone contributes to the common good or the general welfare, and indirectly benefits over the long-run.