All of us that have lived any length of time away from places, friends and family that we grew up with know that transnational lives are not easy but they are powerful. They are powerful both for the individual by creating opportunities to take the best of both cultures and societies and powerful as bridges between those societies. Here at IOM we want to help diasporas to be agents for change in both societies of origin and destination by providing iDiaspora as a global online platform which can equip them with the tools they need. Unlike many of the platforms and tools currently available that are often targeted at specific communities from a given country or residing in a certain country, or both, iDiaspora will be truly global allowing you to connect with, learn from, and collaborate with individuals and groups from a variety of backgrounds all working to maximize the potential of transnational living. iDiaspora will allow you to create your own networks within and across traditional communities to share and generate new ideas and initiatives across forms of borders.

But we don’t want to just create another website, we want to build a dynamic workspace that responds to the real needs of individuals and groups working in this transnational space. Thus we want the development of the platform to be a participatory process where the end users get the opportunity to shape the design of the platform and to decide what kinds of tools and resources it will provide.

As first step in this participatory process, IOM has created an online survey to collect inputs directly from members of transnational communities. The survey takes only between 10-15 minutes to complete and will provide use with crucial insights into the priority elements of the platform most needed by diasporas and expatriates. This in turn will allow IOM to invest in elaborating the most useful tools first and slowly build and expand on them as new needs emerge. The survey is currently available in four languages including English, French, Spanish, and Russian, with more versions on their way shortly, so you can answer the questions in whichever language you feel most comfortable in.

If you have more ideas and inputs than the survey can capture and have time to support the development of the iDiaspora platform further, at the end of the survey there is an opportunity for you to sign up as part of the iDiaspora Team. Once you sign up, IOM will reach out to you when there are further opportunities for guiding the development of the platform. These opportunities might include follow up questionnaires, online discussions, or testing of new functionalities. But all that will be further down the road.

As they say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and we hope that you will take that step with us by lending us a few minutes of your time and embarking on the journey to create a new interconnected global community of diasporas.

 Take the survey now!