A Guide to Community Groups By Sascha Segan Washingtonpost.com Staff December 17, 1997

The Vietnamese Community of Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia page aims to bind together an immigrant community thirsting for news from home. The bilingual page is run by Mike Do, a Gaithersburg computer programmer who came to Maryland from Vietnam in 1980.

"With the Web site, Vietnamese who don't have access to Vietnamese newspapers, radio and TV can follow events and news from Vietnamese Web sites around the world," Do said. His online guest book bears that out with thank-you notes from California and Texas.

Community connections on the Web aren't always so far-flung. Three community groups on Capitol Hill keep an eye on street crime using the Net, in cooperation with the Metropolitan Police Department. The PSA 108 page, serving southwest Capitol Hill, features weekly crime reports and monthly maps showing where crimes were clustered. Michael Quattrone, a graphics designer who runs the PSA 108 page, said he started it to provide a speedier way of getting to crime reports than the usual community newsletter.

"We would get these newsletters every month, and they were kind of cheesy, so I thought -- what a good thing it would be to put this online, where everybody can have current data," Quattrone said.

The neighborhood page allows users to receive crime reports through e-mail and to message each other. More than 180 people now use the e-mail.

Other community pages serve constituencies that can't help themselves. More than a dozen local animal shelters post descriptions of adoptable dogs and cats on the Web. Among the area's best is a page sponsored by the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria. On its Adopt-a-Pet page, a rotating gallery of fuzzy-animal pictures greets visitors. More than 22,000 visitors have seen the cuddly beasts in the past 18 months, according to usage statistics.

The Eyes of Paint Branch page seduces Web-goers with a gallery of maps and photographs of the Montgomery County stream valley, inviting them to join a mailing list and contribute to cleanup efforts. The grassroots group's approach is typical of the many local environmental organizations on the Web: Enchant with images, recruit volunteers, and link to other local environmentally oriented sites.

Volunteers who want a wide range of options can try one of the area's clearinghouse sites, such as Greater D.C. Cares and the Volunteer Center of Fairfax County. D.C. Cares (which provided much of the volunteer-opportunity data for our Community Services section) allows volunteers to fill out a form and be contacted by the group about opportunities. The Fairfax center lets Web surfers browse a long list of openings.

Higher powers are also well-represented on the local Web. At the Christian Cornerstone Network, the D.C. Jewish Community Center and Islamic Resources of the National Capital Area, groups with religious affiliations try to provide clearinghouses for their members. Cornerstone is a directory of local Christian congregations and Web pages. The Jewish center provides listings of its programs. The Islamic page critiques local mosques and even allows Muslims in Bailey's Crossroads and Baltimore to calculate exact prayer times -- fulfilling the Web dream of making the world truly local, while opening localities to the world.