George with his web site team of Ana and Tody
AMTEK Helps Feed the Soup Kitchen
One of my (George) goals in coming to Albania as a missionary was to utilize my experience in the business and the high tech world to help people and companies here compete in the global economy. My best avenue to contribute in this way has been through web site development. Albania is still a long way away from developing an Internet economy inside the country, but many companies here want to use the Web to reach out to companies and investors in the Western Europe and North America. In the meantime, interest in the Web will inevitably grow in Albania, and these forward thinking companies want to be ready.
To that end, we started AMTEK sh.p.k , a joint American/Albanian company that specializes in web design and consulting. AMTEK focuses on serious Albanian businesses that want web sites that represent their companies inside & outside Albania. What started out as some simple consulting and web design has flourished into a business that currently has designed and implemented more than 15 web sites for Albanian businesses in the last 16 months.
Another benefit of this program has been that the companies we work for expect to pay for these services. It started out as creating web sites for companies that supplied the Soup Kitchen with kitchen equipment and, as a result, getting a big break on the price of the equipment we were buying. Now, Albanian businessmen are very happy to find out that we run a Soup Kitchen and the money they pay for their web sites goes directly to feeding the poor. This aspect of our mission is really starting to grow and the following table shows some of the web sites we have finished and that are live at this time:
We also have another web site that we created and now support. It's a web site for one of our fellow Orthodox missionaries who had bone cancer and has now passed away. This web site's address is: www.prayforlynette.org . We thought, upon learning of Lynette Hoppe's cancer a 2 years ago, that a web site focused on Lynette's situation might serve as a place for people to learn about what was happening with Lynette, to send her prayers and well wishes, as well as to let Lynette share her thoughts and feelings as she faces this dreaded disease. Now that she has passed, this web site offers an amazing collection of Lynette's writings.
George and Pauline with Lynette Hoppe at the Soup Kitchen office during her blessed
visit to Albania. This is where we support her web site.
