Now, a website has been put to use for an unheard purpose; for tracking whereabouts of its emigrants. This is the brainchild of a South African website developer. What motivated him to do so? It borders more on the human side and less on the profit motive.
Developed by Bernhard Smuts, Wheredidwego.com aims to track where the South African emigrants are heading for, what are their present state and the skills they possess when they left South African soil and what are the new skills they acquired in a foreign land?
Bernhard Smuts, like any other person of his age and upbringing, is having a strong familial connect. The growing number of friends and relatives leaving the country, hit by the economic slowdown pained him. He got to know about their leaving South Africa, only after they left. Even if he did know about that, nothing much could have been done from his side to prevent it. Once that had become a faith accompli, Smut thought about what best he could do to keep in touch with his relocated friends and relatives to continue with the bonhomie. That led him to create the website.
Smut is clear about what his aims. This is not to preach doom or gloom but to have a spot light on the current trajectory the country is passing through. Undeniably some of the friends and relatives are doing far better than what they could have possibly done in their own country. Some of them acquired new skills and managed to get lucrative jobs, others started businesses and are doing creditably. Still others, looking for a good opening or whiling away time hoping for a break.
Tracking the people online was never easy since some of them did not leave and trail to chase. Facebook often came to his rescue in tracking the whereabouts of the people. While analyzing their feedback, he came to know majority of the people would not have wanted to leave the country, but crime, safety, and economic situations forced them to leave for the sake of their children and families. It is always a gratifying to note many people have built for themselves amazing lives overseas.
The site’s data is user-generated and filled by the expatriates in a basic form. Then the data is verified to the email address for preventing false data getting reflected in the database. That way the database is close to 100% accurate giving allowance for some marginal discrepancies. He has subjected the database to analytics, where he found that a large number of people were leaving for software and IT-related jobs, followed closely by teachers and the engineering professions. Majority of the relocation were to Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Canada.”
