Plans for the LNAK Website

The LNAK executive committee is actively working to upgrade our website. Thank you to the KliK committee, formed by the previous executive committee, for their initiative to improve LNAK’s digital communication. Everyone agreed that the website needed to be improved. However, there were various opinions regarding the best approach. The current executive committee has examined the work done by KliK so far, together with society’s input, and has considered a number of options as to how to move ahead.

As a result, we have started work on a new LNAK website, which will serve Latvian Canadian individuals and groups, strengthen our ties with Latvia, and support the growth of Latvia as a country.

There was a special LNAK board meeting in November, at which it was agreed that:

- the LNAK executive will take the lead on the website project.
- we are going to create additional web addresses so that if anyone is looking for information on Latvian Canadian society, the website will be easy to find. The new addresses, latviansincanada and latviesikanada, and the existing address www.lnak.org/net will eventually lead to the same website.
- there will be specific sections dedicated to politics, culture, and education.
- development of the site will be entrusted to IT specialists residing in Canada, along with volunteers.

How quickly we can develop the new site and create new sections will depend on financing and workload management.

To help us accelerate the process, in January LNAK applied for a grant from the government of Latvia’s Society Integration Foundation (SIF), to enable us to further develop the website and improve the graphic design. We are hoping for some good news in March when SIF announces the grant recipients.

The development of the website will happen in stages:

- we are working on implementing a central calendar for Latvian community events across Canada; in the meantime, you can always find the Latvija Amerikā calendar (in Latvian) on the www.lnak.net site.
- we are creating digital forms that community organizations will be able to easily use to:
        - add their organization’s information to the organization section of the website
        - post articles to the website
        - add their events to the events calendar
- we are going to organize the LNAK news posts into categories, such as culture, education, politics, and business so that it is easier to locate the news that interests you

 We are also hoping to add some new sections that will help us all network individually and professionally, and facilitate stronger ties with Latvia:
        - a database of Latvian Canadian professionals in various categories (eg. doctors, lawyers, florists, and researchers).
        - a new section on opportunities in Latvia, including re-emigration, internships, and business.

The new website (latviansincanada, latviesikanada) will be maintained in parallel with the existing www.lnak.org/net page. We hope to integrate the sites by year’s end. We invite you to join us on the journey as we develop the new site both visually and content-wise.

LNAK has also submitted a second project to SIF, to procure financing for a lecture series to take place in various cities across Canada. Right now we are planning seven lectures on a variety of topics (politics, culture, entertainment), with lecturers from Canada as well as other countries.

All of the lectures would be available across Canada via Zoom. The first lecture is in Toronto on Saturday, March 25 at 2:00 pm EST. Viesturs Zariņš will be giving a talk about his analysis of the last Canadian census, as well as Latvian Canadian participation in the last Latvian parliamentary elections.