BMDnotices Helps People Discover Their Roots
An Air India jet was blown up by a terrorist bomb over 26 years ago off the Irish coast as it was en route from Canada to India via London. A memorial ceremony is held by relatives of the victims and some local Irish people each year on 23rd June in Ahakista in West Cork, Ireland. Frank O’Donovan, Bantry is a regular attending this ceremony. Thus he got to know all the relatives over the years. In more recent years he was told by one of the relatives about a relative of hers in India who was a web designer. Just at this time Frank had the idea for the bmdNotices.com web site and contacted Krishna Dave in India. They explored ideas for the new website and agreed to develop the business jointly and so the work to develop the website commenced.
The website has just been launched and already it has provided an opportunity for people in the USA to find a branch of their family in Ireland. In recent years many of us are searching for our roots, where our ancestors came from and who and where now are our relations and Candi Zizek from West Sacramento, California, USA, is just one such person. bmdNotices.com allows people post or view Messages of Sympathy, In Memoriam messages, family announcements, birthdays, engagements, congratulations, best wishes, and other special occasion messages. Cherished memories of deceased loved ones can be placed in the Remembrance Garden and it was this section which Candi found while searching the internet for traces of her Irish ancestors from Reavouler in County Cork. She says she has been tracing her family roots back to Wales and earlier to West Cork in Ireland for many years. On searching this time she browsed by this new website and “to my absolute delight” she said she found a Memorial page to some Donovan people from Reavouler where her ancestors came from. “This was a real gem and so exciting” she said.
She did also find some Remembrance Garden pages for other people from that area and so she contacted the website and was put in contact with relatives of those deceased from the Reavouler, Cork area. She has added some of her family tree now to the website “in the hope of finding more relatives anywhere in the world” she says, because some of her ancestors from Ireland went to Wales, United States and Australia.
How often do we plan on contacting friends or work colleagues to express our sympathy on the death of their relative but time slips by and we don’t do it. Krishna says “now you can simply go online and post your personal message. If you have an email address for the relative then you can include this and an automatic email will be sent telling them that you have posted a message on the website and giving a link to that particular message”. Again Krishna says “this is a great facility and the messages can be view easily by all the family members”. Similar reminder emails are sent for some other postings too. For security reasons these email addresses are NOT displayed on the website. Of course all categories are searchable under Country, Region, Town, and names of people.
The Remembrance Garden is a place where you may insert a “plot / page” in which details of your loved ones will be permanently displayed. This could carry a tribute to their lifetimes achievements, a poem, photographs, whatever you feel appropriate.
It can be accessed 365 days per year, each year, every year… in other words an online headstone. You and your friends can also add your comments / memories at any time to the page. It can be “visited” daily, no matter where you are in the world.
Frank tells us that “you can search by Country and we only display countries for which Remembrance Garden pages have been set up. You may also search by Region / County and of course by surname, maiden name (if applicable) and first names. On the search results you can choose a name and the relevant Remembrance Garden page will display and the pages can be viewed by friends / colleagues without the need to become a member of the site”. We believe, Frank says that “it is important that people can view all messages without the requirement that they become a member or submit their email address”. Some people naturally do not like having to become members of websites so bmdNotices.com does not require this.
You may post messages on all categories free currently but later there will be a once-off charge for Remembrance Garden pages and the site-owners are seeking people to sell Remembrance Garden pages on good commission in all countries. Indeed this could be of interest to some of our readers who would like a home based business.
Fundraising is an important feature for most sports clubs, voluntary organisations and charities. The website owners tell us that they will offer the facility to fundraisers to sell Remembrance Garden pages and that those organisations can retain most of the income they collect. “Indeed”, Frank says “if they make a good case and are genuine, then we might let them keep ALL the money they collect for the pages they sell”.
Family history and tracing family ancestors is very important to many people nowadays and we saw an excellent example with Candi Zizek earlier. Some people are using the Remembrance Garden as a means of building up their family tree and providing links between pages. For example one can put up a page for one family member and also show the children with hyperlinks to the children’s pages. Working in reverse people are linking relatives on a Remembrance Garden page to their parents page. Many find this of great benefit and it enables other family members to view and hopefully contribute to the family history.
You can view this new site http://www.bmdNotices.com and it is good to hear that Krishna and Frank “plan to have sales managers in several countries by December 2011”. New additional features on the site are also proposed and you can read about these features in this publication later.