New Innovative Middle East Microfinance Bank Website

"A microfinance bank to assist Palestinians in West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere" :) brand name not public yet!

The Microfinance Bank aims to enable people to grow their businesses and region in order to provide jobs, incomes and futures. The Bank believes when people have a chance to work and earn money, their families flourish – and when families flourish, communities and nations will flourish, in peace and safety.

Micro-finance institutions have shown an excellent capacity to adapt to the most challenging of circumstances and have equally shown tangible signs of growth at a time of overall global economic decline.
The bank will have two core commitments;
• Improving the quality and dignity of life for Palestinians
• Changing outlooks – nationally and internationally

The Microfinance Bank aims to be a force for stability in the region as well as an engine for sustainable growth.

This is about how Palestinians see themselves as much as it is about how the world sees Palestinians.

This is about intelligent giving so that rather than entrench dependency you instill independence.

This is about hope, and the peace that comes from hope.

Principles
1. Be sustainable – in the opportunities you create, the infrastructure you enable and the relationships you build
2. Do no harm
3. Build capacity not dependency
4. Transparency and accountability are key
5. Measure your performance and effect; adapt if necessary

Key focus: create employment!

Palestinians are in a crisis that, if unchecked, will engulf Israel and the rest of the Middle East. Unemployment, illiteracy, inadequate food supply and healthcare and now a growing threat of radicalization is an everyday reality in Gaza. In West Bank, Palestinians fare somewhat better yet still face economic, education and employment restrictions. In Lebanon over 400,000 Palestinians in refugee camps – some fourth generation – lack basic services.

While the world is preoccupied with peace talks and negotiations, life continues for nearly one and a half million people in Gaza, three quarters who are under twenty five, as well as another two and a half million people in the West Bank and those Palestinians in Lebanon.

The Bank:

- Believes that access to education and economic opportunity are not concessions, political collateral or policies to be granted and withdrawn at will. These are immovable rights which exist above political or religious affiliation.

- Acknowledges a challenge; to intervene now so that in the future you are no longer needed, to build capacity rather than entrench the helping hand.

- Believes in economics and civil society before politics. Its single political stance is the belief that Palestine should be allowed to exist, thrive and prosper. As too should Israel.

Design the website graphical templates for three pages of the website for the Microfinance Bank. It is not a traditional consumer facing website, and it won't have any transactional banking functionalities. Rather, the website will represent the values, and the initiatives of the Bank, and described above.

Take the template on http://osc4.template-help.com/wordpress_30418/ as a good starting point, but do not feel constrained by it too much.

The website will be in in multiple languages, English, Arabic and Hebrew.
The CMS used for the website will be WordPress.

Adjectives describing the site: business like, uncluttered, visually straightforward

3

The following wireframes are representative of the structure of the web pages. You are welcome to follow them, or to provide a coherent alternative.

Home page wireframe
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davido…5203673271

Detail page wireframe
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davido…203673359/

The third page, no wireframe example, should be that of lists, like press releases, job opportunities, news, media clippings, videos, etc.

Examples of the types of photos that will be used on the website:
- wealth: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-ph…d-figs.php
- homeland: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-ph…t-view.php
- family: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-ph…rn-men.php
- traditions: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-ph…ng-tea.php

A few websites that can be taken as examples, or inspiration, with similar orientation:
http://coexistfoundation.net/coexis…/index.htm
http://www.portlandtrust.org/links.html
http://www.fordfoundation.org/about…governance