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RIP eRiders Make a Slash at US Tech and NGO Conference
The Advocacy Project's work with eRiders, particularly the Roma in East Europe, has helped to internationalize eRiding, long considered to be an American concept.
This became clear at the 7th Annual NTEN Circuit Rider Round Up, the annual meeting that brings together IT experts to share news about how IT is being adapted to serve the needs of the non-profit community. The meeting took place in Oakland, California, from April 7-10 2003. AP was represented by AP's Technical Director Teresa Crawford, AP technical coordinator Ginger Bazar and three eRiders from the Roma Information Project (RIP).
Previously the conference rarely attracted more then a handful of international participants. This year, there were over 30 participants from outside the US - representing one sixth of all those who attended. They included 8 eRiders who participated in AP's November 2002 training course that took place in Prishtina, Kosovo with funding from the Open Society Institute.
AP was able to expand on the approach in Oakland at a panel discussion - 'Taking eRiding Global', which drew over 40 participants. The panel was facilitated by Ms. Crawford from AP. Panelists included Maria Metodieva from RIP, Maiya Tsyganenko from Open Society Foundation - Kazakhstan, Bill Lester from Ninth Bridge, Stephanie Hankey from OSI and Tom Battin from Compasspoint.
The session opened with the screening of a new video on AP's Kosovo training, which was produced by AP's Ginger Bazar. The 6.5 minute video provoked interest, enthusiasm and several requests for copies. It will shortly be available on the AP website.
The interest in international eRiding shows how far IT support has come since AP first attended the Round Up in 2000 as a newcomer. Over the last three years, OSI has - with AP's help - exported the eRider model abroad. There are currently over 30 eRider projects under way around the world. This year the two organizations brought it back to their colleagues in the US.
There were also some questions as to whether the US model of tech support for non profits can really be exported. Some US riders said that foreign NGOs must be very different from US groups. In fact, said Mr. Rusiecki from Poland, local communities have much the same need for information and communication the world over. Mr. Rusiecki felt that there was more 'diversity' among organizations in the US then between groups in Poland and the US. Each of the global eRiders feel that the highly personalized eRider model is exactly what they need to bring technology to their communities.
The eRiders had no trouble making new friends and forging connections with other Riders. English was not a barrier and they quickly made new friends. New partnerships among US and global eRider are already blossoming. In the coming months Vladimir Petkov, an eRider from Bulgaria, will collaborate with Circuit Rider veteran Dirk Slater from LINC to develop a handbook for NGOs on how to make an informed decision when they choose operating systems. Both have a commitment to open source tools and are working to help better inform NGOs on the options they have. The new guide will be available in the coming months.
A veteran of the US Rider community remembered feeling 'isolated' when he first attended the circuit rider conference. Maria Metodieva, from the Roma Information Project, answered that as a Roma she knew how it felt like to be isolated, but that here - at the conference - she felt a part of the eRider community and included. No one was discriminating against her for being Roma.
Training: AP helped to develop a three-day training for eRiders after the Oakland conference ended. The session were led by Jude Kaye, a veteran trainer from the organization Compasspoint, who led her class through the cycles of change that organizations must go through before they can really integrate technology in their work. The training focused on strategic planning, change management, training of trainers and technical troubleshooting.
RIP eRiders, Maria and Gabi, have already developed training programs with the NGOs they are supporting and learned valuable skills at the Compasspoint training on how to structure their instruction, deal with different learning styles and measure their success.
First eRider Articles are Published on the Web
Four RIP eRiders have written articles about their work for the Tech Soup web portal. The portal is managed by Compumentor and aims to provide tools and information for non profits to help them make better use of technology in their work.
The four articles are among 12 that have been commissioned by Tech Soup for a new section on the website called 'Taking eRiding Global.' Five of the 12 articles have now been posted. This is the first time that the Roma eRiders have written about their work in this way. It is also rare for individuals from an informal network as opposed to organization - to come together and produce write articles for a major website.
One of the articles, written by eRider Gyula Vamosi from Hungary, has been highlighted in Tech Soup's newsletter, By the Cup, which goes out to 27,000 subscribers. Gyula recalls how he persuaded Roma parents in Hungary to e-mail their prime Minister Medgyeddy Peter, and how the Prime Minister replied. 'The latest Pentium IIII computer will probably not change the world, but a single e-mail from the Prime Minister might,' writes Vamosi.
The series was developed for Tech Soup in partnership with Tom Battin at Compasspoint. New articles will be posted in the next few weeks. Combined with the new section was an online forum on Taking eRiding Global that attracted the highest number of visitors and postings for a Tech Soup Forum ever. All the RIP eRiders actively participated during the week long forum.
eRider Support for Delegation Preparation for Joint OS/World Bank Conference on Roma in an Integrating Europe
Several eRiders have been invited as delegates to the joint OSI/WB conference on Roma scheduled for the end of June in Budapest. Along with their participation on the delegations they are each providing support for other delegation members helping them to participate in the recently set up Virtual Learning Environment developed by the World Bank. This online forum is a space for discussion and debate prior to the meeting and will stay live for one year after the meeting to encourage continued collaboration.
Most of the delegation members have never participated in a online forum such as this and eRiders are supporting them to make use of the technology. This builds on work done by the eRiders who have established online discussion forums in their own countries. Gyula was the first eRider to try this with Roma Community Center leaders in Hungary. Enisa has been developing the same kind of collaboration with the NGO Forum in Macedonia. The eRiders themselves participated in a highly successful week long online forum on Global eRiding hosted by Tech Soup.
Enisa is also working with Azbija Memedova in Macedonia and the Roma Women's Initiative of the Network Women's Program of OSI on the women's forum that will take place the day before the joint OSI/WB conference. She is working to prepare bios and promotional packets about each of the female delegates who will attend.
Bulgaria - Maria Metodieva
Maria has focused her work on supporting a network of Roma organizations working on desegregation issues. With support from the Roma Participation Program at OSI these organizations have put the issue of equal access to education squarely on the agenda of the Bulgarian government.
After a long week of travel Maria visited five RPP grantees located throughout Bulgaria. While most had received some technical equipment and some training very few had trained staff and even fewer felt comfortable using technology in their work. She has begun a series of two day crash courses for NGO staff using their computers and focusing on their immediate tech needs. She had her first trainings in Stara Zagora at the Rainbow Foundation with four Roma and four Bulgarians including two young Roma women and in Montana In Montana with Sham she trained 10 Roma staff members including seven men and three women. The first round of trainings focused on Word, e-mail and the Internet. Advanced training is planned in Excel and technical english. While in Stara Zagora she also spent time with their Executive Director discussing the larger ICT needs of their organization and installed a printer for them that had been sitting in a box since it was purchased.
Maria has been working with the Equal Access Foundation which is a Roma led organization based in Sofia and works on national desegregation issues to develop an information strategy for communicating with the other NGOs working on desegregation.
Each RIP eRider has spent part of their time on working with Roma women's NGOs. Building on the work being done by their eRider colleague in Macedonia they have focused on bringing together young Roma women to collaborate on a survey on sexual taboos. Maria has facilitated several meetings with a group of young women who would like to implement the survey project first undertaken in Macedonia. As there were just two active Roma women's groups in Bulgaria and none working with young women Maria brought together 10 young Roma women university students from the four largest cities in Bulgaria to begin discussions on the issues. Her work has been supported by the Women's Program Coordinator in Bulgaria, Dora Petkova.
The Roma program of the Open Society Foundation in Bulgaria has approached RIP to consider taking on an eRider associate to manage that will work with six of their grantees. The eRider would be managed in the field by Maria. This possibility is still under discussion.
Romania - Nora Costache
Nora has focused her work on young Roma women who will also implement the sexual taboo survey, a network of Roma NGOs based in Cluj, database consulting with Romani CRISS and arranging several training opportunities for her groups with a US based eRider who will be working for a month in Romania.
The eRiders are starting to field requests from groups. The health program coordinator at Romani CRISS asked Nora to provide them some advice on the improvement of their database. Currently they have to manually design their charts for each monthly report on number's of people served, types of services, areas they targeted. They did not really know where to start when it came to developing a DB that would help automate this.
The Roma NGO network currently has 20 members. They have received initial funding from RPP for their work. Nora has met with their director and begun a series of assessments with their members.
Allen Poole, a US based eRider from Portland, Oregon has been doing volunteer work in Romania since 1996. He met the RIP eRiders at the Oakland conference and immediately asked if he could work with Nora in Romania providing some pro bono training and support to some of the groups she works with. Nora is helping to facilitate his training of some of her groups in database development and the use of ICTs for collaboration.
Working with NWP grantee Letitia Mark, Nora has brought together 15 young women who are interested in looking at the issues of freedom of choice and sexual taboos in their communities. These young women are developing a proposal to implement the sexual taboo survey begun in Macedonia.
Macedonia - Enisa Eminova
Enisa has focused on supporting Azbija Memedova and the Roma Center of Skopje. She is aiding Azbija to develop a printed and online directory of Roma women activists and organizations in the region. Currently no directory like this exists.
As part of her work she is collaborating with Miro, RIP eRider from Slovakia, to develop an offline and online database for the directory which will make updating easy and the information accessible to anyone with a web browser. Enisa and Azbija are collecting directory entries from women through out the region. So far over 100 women have responded.
Coordination of the Roma Women's website which currently lies with the Roma Women's Association in Romania is being move to the Roma Center in Skopje in the next few weeks. In the short term updating of the site and management of the content will fall to Enisa. She will work with Elvis Hajdar from the Roma NGO eRoma on the technical aspects of the site.
Over the last two months Enisa has also helped to moderate the RNVO discussion list. Currently over 15 NGO executives currently post to the list. In the past problems had erupted becuase list members had posted personal attacks or concerns to the list. Enisa arranged a meeting with the list members, discussed the purpose of the list and changed the list from unmoderated (everyone can post) to moderated (post have to be approved by moderator before they are sent out). Members agreed this was a good solution and would prevent future misunderstandings.
Communications around the 8th April - International Roma Day were also better coordinated with Enisa serving as a central hub for at least 10 organizations who wanted to publicize events and coordinate their work. Their experiences using e-mail, fax, phone and SMS during the campaign against police brutality in February has had a trickle down effect. With encouragement from Enisa groups are building on the connections they made during the campaign and using ICTs better in their work.
Good progress has been made with the Freedom of Choice campaign begun by Enisa and her colleagues who are also young Roma women university students. After a series of platforms in 10 towns in Macedonia the group staged a central platform in Skopje. Enisa prepared a power point presentation for the group that highlighted graphically the issues of the cult of virginity.
Hungary - Gyula Vamosi
Gyula has focused his work on continuing to support several Roma Community Centers, the desegregation network in Pecs, the Roma women's group ARANJ and the development of a region wide petition calling for more transparency and input into PHARE funding and decision making.
The Roma Education Network with support from Gyula recently submitted a proposal to PHARE for funding of their work. To date they have worked without outside funding. Gyula facilitated a meeting of network members to look at the proposal development process and what they learned working together. From his report:
'This was a long process that they went through where they learned many things: like how to treat resistance of the other, how to avoid and treat conflicts, how to work in a group, what is fundraising and why it is important, how to communicate with each other and donors more effectively and professionally through the use of e-mails, how and where to find necessary information on the web. Fund Roma Arts School fulfills an important role in REN because of their more-or-less well established capacities. So I also needed to work more with them since they were the organizations collecting and sharing the most information. I trained both the leader and the staff. In the end I managed to persuade them to subscribe to DSL with their own funds which will be running by the beginning of May.'
In a follow up visit to the Zlalavo Community Center Gyula found that most of the staff were unable to check email and did not use the web regularly. He put together a training for them focusing on the concrete work of finding background material for one of their current proposals. Using several search engines including one in Hungarian he showed them how to find relevant information on the web. In the end they found a text that could be pasted to their material and also found other sources that could be referred to in the proposal. They felt happy about that and saved a lot of time with that. In Zlalavo he was also able to install updated programs on the laptop of the Director and taught him how to transfer files between his laptop and desktop even those too large for a diskette.
A new initiative has been set up by the Roma Political State Secretariat to develop a web portal for Roma civil society. Gyula is working with the ministry and their new web designer to make sure that Roma NGOs have input into how the site is developed and content that is posted.
Based on their experiences with the PHARE funding procedures the Roma Education Network decided to put together a petition suggesting changes to the process and highlighting the lack of input by Roma in the decision making. With their new IT skills the survey has made its way to Roma NGOs in all the countries with PHARE funding including - Macedonia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. The signed petition was presented to officials at the recent OSCE meeting held in Vienna in April.
Czech Republic - Gabi Hrabanova
Gabi completed her first round of training with 11 Manushe members in Ostrava. The two day training focused on basic skills including Word and e-mail. Several of the women currently work as assistants in special schools where a large number of Roma kids have been tracked. Knowing how to use a computer has become essential in their work. Two more trainings are planned for June.
Upon her return to Prague Gabi spent time with Manushe staff to evaluate the success of the training. They looked through the photos from the training and Gabi trained Manushe staff how to scan photos to use in their reports and proposals.
Along with Gyula, Gabi was a participant in a recent RPP and ERRC sponsored meeting on desegregation in Nis, Serbia. Several of the groups supported by RIP attended the meeting. RIP has made it a focus of its work to support organizations working on desegregation especially in Bulgaria. As new initiatives in the region start RIP eRiders are helping them to connect with organizations in Bulgaria who pioneered the educational opportunity movement.
An intern from The Advocacy Project will be working with Dzeno, the Roma media organization being supported by Gabi. Their job will be to continue with the work outlined by Gabi including promotion of Radio Rota with an aim to increasing the number of listeners.
Gabi has worked with the Center for Advance Media to put together an advanced eRider training for her RIP colleagues. The training will focus on digital image manipulation, audio and video files, content management systems and database driven websites.
She has begun a new round of introductions and assessments to additional Roma NGOs she will be working with. Although the Easter holiday has postponed their meetings the groups are keen on her visit and working together.
Slovakia - Miro Olah
Since the last update Miro has focused on several projects including the transition of the website of the Roma Press Agency in Kosice to a more stable and simple content management sytem.
He has begun the planning process of implementing a human rights monitoring system called Martus for Edi Muller's organization, CEREOC, who does human rights monitoring and is concerned about the security of his data. Miro will be using Martus, a recently developed software from Benetech for human rights organizations.
Miro has also been mentoring his eRider colleagues on database development and the process of taking an offline database online. He evaluated two databases developed by American eRiders to see if they can be used with RIP clients.
In Vienna in April, Miro attended the OSCE meeting along with Gyula and worked with their clients to spread the Phare petition to NGOs in Slovakia.
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RIP Update: April 2003
Contents:
- eRider Support for Delegation Preparation for Joint OSI/World Bank Conference - On Roma in an Integrating Europe
- Maria in Bulgaria
- Nora in Romania
- Enisa in Macedonia
- Gyula in Hungary
- Gabi in Czech Republic
- Miro in Slovakia
RIP eRiders Make a Slash at US Tech and NGO Conference
The Advocacy Project's work with eRiders, particularly the Roma in East Europe, has helped to internationalize eRiding, long considered to be an American concept.
This became clear at the 7th Annual NTEN Circuit Rider Round Up, the annual meeting that brings together IT experts to share news about how IT is being adapted to serve the needs of the non-profit community. The meeting took place in Oakland, California, from April 7-10 2003. AP was represented by AP's Technical Director Teresa Crawford, AP technical coordinator Ginger Bazar and three eRiders from the Roma Information Project (RIP).
Previously the conference rarely attracted more then a handful of international participants. This year, there were over 30 participants from outside the US - representing one sixth of all those who attended. They included 8 eRiders who participated in AP's November 2002 training course that took place in Prishtina, Kosovo with funding from the Open Society Institute.
AP was able to expand on the approach in Oakland at a panel discussion - 'Taking eRiding Global', which drew over 40 participants. The panel was facilitated by Ms. Crawford from AP. Panelists included Maria Metodieva from RIP, Maiya Tsyganenko from Open Society Foundation - Kazakhstan, Bill Lester from Ninth Bridge, Stephanie Hankey from OSI and Tom Battin from Compasspoint.
The session opened with the screening of a new video on AP's Kosovo training, which was produced by AP's Ginger Bazar. The 6.5 minute video provoked interest, enthusiasm and several requests for copies. It will shortly be available on the AP website.
The interest in international eRiding shows how far IT support has come since AP first attended the Round Up in 2000 as a newcomer. Over the last three years, OSI has - with AP's help - exported the eRider model abroad. There are currently over 30 eRider projects under way around the world. This year the two organizations brought it back to their colleagues in the US.
There were also some questions as to whether the US model of tech support for non profits can really be exported. Some US riders said that foreign NGOs must be very different from US groups. In fact, said Mr. Rusiecki from Poland, local communities have much the same need for information and communication the world over. Mr. Rusiecki felt that there was more 'diversity' among organizations in the US then between groups in Poland and the US. Each of the global eRiders feel that the highly personalized eRider model is exactly what they need to bring technology to their communities.
The eRiders had no trouble making new friends and forging connections with other Riders. English was not a barrier and they quickly made new friends. New partnerships among US and global eRider are already blossoming. In the coming months Vladimir Petkov, an eRider from Bulgaria, will collaborate with Circuit Rider veteran Dirk Slater from LINC to develop a handbook for NGOs on how to make an informed decision when they choose operating systems. Both have a commitment to open source tools and are working to help better inform NGOs on the options they have. The new guide will be available in the coming months.
A veteran of the US Rider community remembered feeling 'isolated' when he first attended the circuit rider conference. Maria Metodieva, from the Roma Information Project, answered that as a Roma she knew how it felt like to be isolated, but that here - at the conference - she felt a part of the eRider community and included. No one was discriminating against her for being Roma.
Training: AP helped to develop a three-day training for eRiders after the Oakland conference ended. The session were led by Jude Kaye, a veteran trainer from the organization Compasspoint, who led her class through the cycles of change that organizations must go through before they can really integrate technology in their work. The training focused on strategic planning, change management, training of trainers and technical troubleshooting.
RIP eRiders, Maria and Gabi, have already developed training programs with the NGOs they are supporting and learned valuable skills at the Compasspoint training on how to structure their instruction, deal with different learning styles and measure their success.
First eRider Articles are Published on the Web
Four RIP eRiders have written articles about their work for the Tech Soup web portal. The portal is managed by Compumentor and aims to provide tools and information for non profits to help them make better use of technology in their work.
The four articles are among 12 that have been commissioned by Tech Soup for a new section on the website called 'Taking eRiding Global.' Five of the 12 articles have now been posted. This is the first time that the Roma eRiders have written about their work in this way. It is also rare for individuals from an informal network as opposed to organization - to come together and produce write articles for a major website.
One of the articles, written by eRider Gyula Vamosi from Hungary, has been highlighted in Tech Soup's newsletter, By the Cup, which goes out to 27,000 subscribers. Gyula recalls how he persuaded Roma parents in Hungary to e-mail their prime Minister Medgyeddy Peter, and how the Prime Minister replied. 'The latest Pentium IIII computer will probably not change the world, but a single e-mail from the Prime Minister might,' writes Vamosi.
The series was developed for Tech Soup in partnership with Tom Battin at Compasspoint. New articles will be posted in the next few weeks. Combined with the new section was an online forum on Taking eRiding Global that attracted the highest number of visitors and postings for a Tech Soup Forum ever. All the RIP eRiders actively participated during the week long forum.
eRider Support for Delegation Preparation for Joint OS/World Bank Conference on Roma in an Integrating Europe
Several eRiders have been invited as delegates to the joint OSI/WB conference on Roma scheduled for the end of June in Budapest. Along with their participation on the delegations they are each providing support for other delegation members helping them to participate in the recently set up Virtual Learning Environment developed by the World Bank. This online forum is a space for discussion and debate prior to the meeting and will stay live for one year after the meeting to encourage continued collaboration.
Most of the delegation members have never participated in a online forum such as this and eRiders are supporting them to make use of the technology. This builds on work done by the eRiders who have established online discussion forums in their own countries. Gyula was the first eRider to try this with Roma Community Center leaders in Hungary. Enisa has been developing the same kind of collaboration with the NGO Forum in Macedonia. The eRiders themselves participated in a highly successful week long online forum on Global eRiding hosted by Tech Soup.
Enisa is also working with Azbija Memedova in Macedonia and the Roma Women's Initiative of the Network Women's Program of OSI on the women's forum that will take place the day before the joint OSI/WB conference. She is working to prepare bios and promotional packets about each of the female delegates who will attend.
Bulgaria - Maria Metodieva
Maria has focused her work on supporting a network of Roma organizations working on desegregation issues. With support from the Roma Participation Program at OSI these organizations have put the issue of equal access to education squarely on the agenda of the Bulgarian government.
After a long week of travel Maria visited five RPP grantees located throughout Bulgaria. While most had received some technical equipment and some training very few had trained staff and even fewer felt comfortable using technology in their work. She has begun a series of two day crash courses for NGO staff using their computers and focusing on their immediate tech needs. She had her first trainings in Stara Zagora at the Rainbow Foundation with four Roma and four Bulgarians including two young Roma women and in Montana In Montana with Sham she trained 10 Roma staff members including seven men and three women. The first round of trainings focused on Word, e-mail and the Internet. Advanced training is planned in Excel and technical english. While in Stara Zagora she also spent time with their Executive Director discussing the larger ICT needs of their organization and installed a printer for them that had been sitting in a box since it was purchased.
Maria has been working with the Equal Access Foundation which is a Roma led organization based in Sofia and works on national desegregation issues to develop an information strategy for communicating with the other NGOs working on desegregation.
Each RIP eRider has spent part of their time on working with Roma women's NGOs. Building on the work being done by their eRider colleague in Macedonia they have focused on bringing together young Roma women to collaborate on a survey on sexual taboos. Maria has facilitated several meetings with a group of young women who would like to implement the survey project first undertaken in Macedonia. As there were just two active Roma women's groups in Bulgaria and none working with young women Maria brought together 10 young Roma women university students from the four largest cities in Bulgaria to begin discussions on the issues. Her work has been supported by the Women's Program Coordinator in Bulgaria, Dora Petkova.
The Roma program of the Open Society Foundation in Bulgaria has approached RIP to consider taking on an eRider associate to manage that will work with six of their grantees. The eRider would be managed in the field by Maria. This possibility is still under discussion.
- Stara Zagora - Rainbow Foundation
- Montana - Sham
- Equal Access Foundation
- New young Roma women's group
Romania - Nora Costache
Nora has focused her work on young Roma women who will also implement the sexual taboo survey, a network of Roma NGOs based in Cluj, database consulting with Romani CRISS and arranging several training opportunities for her groups with a US based eRider who will be working for a month in Romania.
The eRiders are starting to field requests from groups. The health program coordinator at Romani CRISS asked Nora to provide them some advice on the improvement of their database. Currently they have to manually design their charts for each monthly report on number's of people served, types of services, areas they targeted. They did not really know where to start when it came to developing a DB that would help automate this.
The Roma NGO network currently has 20 members. They have received initial funding from RPP for their work. Nora has met with their director and begun a series of assessments with their members.
Allen Poole, a US based eRider from Portland, Oregon has been doing volunteer work in Romania since 1996. He met the RIP eRiders at the Oakland conference and immediately asked if he could work with Nora in Romania providing some pro bono training and support to some of the groups she works with. Nora is helping to facilitate his training of some of her groups in database development and the use of ICTs for collaboration.
Working with NWP grantee Letitia Mark, Nora has brought together 15 young women who are interested in looking at the issues of freedom of choice and sexual taboos in their communities. These young women are developing a proposal to implement the sexual taboo survey begun in Macedonia.
- Youth Center, Bucharest
- Roma Students Association "Parudimos", Timisoara
- Romani CRISS
- Roma NGO network
Macedonia - Enisa Eminova
Enisa has focused on supporting Azbija Memedova and the Roma Center of Skopje. She is aiding Azbija to develop a printed and online directory of Roma women activists and organizations in the region. Currently no directory like this exists.
As part of her work she is collaborating with Miro, RIP eRider from Slovakia, to develop an offline and online database for the directory which will make updating easy and the information accessible to anyone with a web browser. Enisa and Azbija are collecting directory entries from women through out the region. So far over 100 women have responded.
Coordination of the Roma Women's website which currently lies with the Roma Women's Association in Romania is being move to the Roma Center in Skopje in the next few weeks. In the short term updating of the site and management of the content will fall to Enisa. She will work with Elvis Hajdar from the Roma NGO eRoma on the technical aspects of the site.
Over the last two months Enisa has also helped to moderate the RNVO discussion list. Currently over 15 NGO executives currently post to the list. In the past problems had erupted becuase list members had posted personal attacks or concerns to the list. Enisa arranged a meeting with the list members, discussed the purpose of the list and changed the list from unmoderated (everyone can post) to moderated (post have to be approved by moderator before they are sent out). Members agreed this was a good solution and would prevent future misunderstandings.
Communications around the 8th April - International Roma Day were also better coordinated with Enisa serving as a central hub for at least 10 organizations who wanted to publicize events and coordinate their work. Their experiences using e-mail, fax, phone and SMS during the campaign against police brutality in February has had a trickle down effect. With encouragement from Enisa groups are building on the connections they made during the campaign and using ICTs better in their work.
Good progress has been made with the Freedom of Choice campaign begun by Enisa and her colleagues who are also young Roma women university students. After a series of platforms in 10 towns in Macedonia the group staged a central platform in Skopje. Enisa prepared a power point presentation for the group that highlighted graphically the issues of the cult of virginity.
- Roma Center of Skopje
- RNVO - Roma NGO Committee in Macedonia
Hungary - Gyula Vamosi
Gyula has focused his work on continuing to support several Roma Community Centers, the desegregation network in Pecs, the Roma women's group ARANJ and the development of a region wide petition calling for more transparency and input into PHARE funding and decision making.
The Roma Education Network with support from Gyula recently submitted a proposal to PHARE for funding of their work. To date they have worked without outside funding. Gyula facilitated a meeting of network members to look at the proposal development process and what they learned working together. From his report:
'This was a long process that they went through where they learned many things: like how to treat resistance of the other, how to avoid and treat conflicts, how to work in a group, what is fundraising and why it is important, how to communicate with each other and donors more effectively and professionally through the use of e-mails, how and where to find necessary information on the web. Fund Roma Arts School fulfills an important role in REN because of their more-or-less well established capacities. So I also needed to work more with them since they were the organizations collecting and sharing the most information. I trained both the leader and the staff. In the end I managed to persuade them to subscribe to DSL with their own funds which will be running by the beginning of May.'
In a follow up visit to the Zlalavo Community Center Gyula found that most of the staff were unable to check email and did not use the web regularly. He put together a training for them focusing on the concrete work of finding background material for one of their current proposals. Using several search engines including one in Hungarian he showed them how to find relevant information on the web. In the end they found a text that could be pasted to their material and also found other sources that could be referred to in the proposal. They felt happy about that and saved a lot of time with that. In Zlalavo he was also able to install updated programs on the laptop of the Director and taught him how to transfer files between his laptop and desktop even those too large for a diskette.
A new initiative has been set up by the Roma Political State Secretariat to develop a web portal for Roma civil society. Gyula is working with the ministry and their new web designer to make sure that Roma NGOs have input into how the site is developed and content that is posted.
Based on their experiences with the PHARE funding procedures the Roma Education Network decided to put together a petition suggesting changes to the process and highlighting the lack of input by Roma in the decision making. With their new IT skills the survey has made its way to Roma NGOs in all the countries with PHARE funding including - Macedonia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. The signed petition was presented to officials at the recent OSCE meeting held in Vienna in April.
- The Roma Educational Network:
- Ocsim Nyo Roma Play House Fund
- Roma Arts School
- Savorrengi Roma Parents' Org
- Organization for Roma in Baranya County
- Zalalövo RCC
- Pécs RCC
Czech Republic - Gabi Hrabanova
Gabi completed her first round of training with 11 Manushe members in Ostrava. The two day training focused on basic skills including Word and e-mail. Several of the women currently work as assistants in special schools where a large number of Roma kids have been tracked. Knowing how to use a computer has become essential in their work. Two more trainings are planned for June.
Upon her return to Prague Gabi spent time with Manushe staff to evaluate the success of the training. They looked through the photos from the training and Gabi trained Manushe staff how to scan photos to use in their reports and proposals.
Along with Gyula, Gabi was a participant in a recent RPP and ERRC sponsored meeting on desegregation in Nis, Serbia. Several of the groups supported by RIP attended the meeting. RIP has made it a focus of its work to support organizations working on desegregation especially in Bulgaria. As new initiatives in the region start RIP eRiders are helping them to connect with organizations in Bulgaria who pioneered the educational opportunity movement.
An intern from The Advocacy Project will be working with Dzeno, the Roma media organization being supported by Gabi. Their job will be to continue with the work outlined by Gabi including promotion of Radio Rota with an aim to increasing the number of listeners.
Gabi has worked with the Center for Advance Media to put together an advanced eRider training for her RIP colleagues. The training will focus on digital image manipulation, audio and video files, content management systems and database driven websites.
She has begun a new round of introductions and assessments to additional Roma NGOs she will be working with. Although the Easter holiday has postponed their meetings the groups are keen on her visit and working together.
- Manushe
- Dzeno
- Ondrej Gina - Rokycany
- Ladislav Bilý - Karlovy Vary
Slovakia - Miro Olah
Since the last update Miro has focused on several projects including the transition of the website of the Roma Press Agency in Kosice to a more stable and simple content management sytem.
He has begun the planning process of implementing a human rights monitoring system called Martus for Edi Muller's organization, CEREOC, who does human rights monitoring and is concerned about the security of his data. Miro will be using Martus, a recently developed software from Benetech for human rights organizations.
Miro has also been mentoring his eRider colleagues on database development and the process of taking an offline database online. He evaluated two databases developed by American eRiders to see if they can be used with RIP clients.
In Vienna in April, Miro attended the OSCE meeting along with Gyula and worked with their clients to spread the Phare petition to NGOs in Slovakia.
- CEREOC
- Roma Press Agency, Kosice
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The Advocacy Project develops partnerships with advocates on the frontline and with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In so doing, we take our cue from partners and tailor any support to their needs.