SPACE assists Kudumbashree launch it's new portal

SPACE, the Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment, was instrumental in creating Keralashree (http://www.keralashree.org), the employment portal of Kudumbashree, the successful poverty alleviation programme of the Government of Kerala. The development of the portal was undertaken by a Virtual Micro Enterprise (VME) under SPACE initiative, and was completed in two months' time with popular Free Software. The low cost of development and deployment as well as the quality of work shows the potential of the VME model and the use of Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) proposed by SPACE. The site, developed after a request from Kudumbashree, is developed as an labour exchange, and has interactive features that make it easy for the various stakeholders to use it. The coding was done by a VME affiliated with SPACE, and was developed using popular Free Software applications PHP and MySQL. The site provides a database of Kdumbashree members registered under the project. Prospective employers can choose from the list of available members according to their needs and the skill sets of the candidates. The Kudumbashree project is socially relevant since it aims to provide a link between potential employers and job seekers from economically challenged families.