Techo

TECHO is a nonprofit organization that mobilizes young volunteers to eradicate the extreme poverty that affects more than 80 million people in the region.

Brief description of the company

TECHO is a nonprofit organization that mobilizes young volunteers to eradicate the extreme poverty that affects more than 80 million people in the region. They work in Latin America’s most marginalized areas, building transitional homes and implementing social inclusion programs to empower slum residents with the tools they need to improve their quality of life.

The challenge

As TECHO grew in Latin America and particularly in Argentina, their website became a vital tool for promoting their activities, communicating their campaigns and recruiting volunteers.
The site’s structure and content were not well-organized. The website was static, so each time they wanted to update anything, they depended on technical resources.
In addition, several new functionalities were identified and they were difficult to add to the existing website.
Lastly, the site had an old-fashioned look & feel, and TECHO wanted to redesign it completely.

Solution

A team composed by a functional analyst, a graphic designer and two developers worked during 6 months to complete the project.
Hexacta suggested to implement a content management system (CMS) and develop some custom modules to cover all the functional needs that were not available in the standard CMS.
After doing some research on open source products, Hexacta recommended and selected Drupal to replace the existing site.

Some of the activities involved were

Design of a new image for the website, including graphics pieces (styles, images, layouts) as well as a whole new navigation and site structure.
Configuration and customization of the standard Drupal installation.
Development of new features such as event calendars and volunteers registration. These were written in PHP.