The 2005 was the third year of IRBF, in which a number of ongoing projects have made considerable progress, and new ones were started. We have gained a considerable visibility by getting to know local organisations active in the social movements, and we established partnerships with them. We trained some of them, and we provided a web-hosting to others. IRBF finally is achieving its mission!

IRBF Team

The main IRBF team in the 2005 consisted of: Maria Velichkova, Christina Haralanova, Mathieu Lutfy and Chris Bailey. Additionnaly, on some of the projects, Krassimir Makaveev, Anastas Giokov and Svetoslav Dimitrov, Kaloian Doganov and Alexander Shopov participated, as well as Maria Dimitrova and Elena Stoicheva. Towards the end of the year, team joined Tanya Goranova.

Projects

1. Legal Case Management Software Project, (August 2004 - June 2005) funded by the Information program of the Open Society Institute and aiming to be used by not-for-profit legal advice centres in order to make better follow-ups of their cases, including client consultations and court events.
2. Within the WITT Bulgaria Focal point (September 2004 - July 2005) IRBF performed a needs assessment research, and based on it - a number of trainings for the use of ICTs by women from NGOs.
3. NGO Bulgaria Project, self-funded by IRBF and aiming at providing server space to local organisations for hosting their websites. During this year, two more organisations joined the project.
4. Social Righs Bulgaria website has changed a concept and it has become a more friendly place for people to publish their own information. The aim is to become a public forum where people would publish information by themselves and will disseminate information about their own activities. In order to make this possible, a new publication policy has been elaborated, and a new idea for design is about to be implemented.
5. East of England FOSS in the VCS Project (November 2005 - June 2006). The IRBF team participated in training local UK NGOs in how to use Linux and free software. The Legal Case Management Software became an international software, and it has been analysed for the use of UK aid centres.

Activties

 February 19-22 - Local training (No2) on the strategic use of ICTs by women from Bulgarian NGOs, held in Sofia and organised by IRBF team. Trainers: Christina Haralanova, Joëlle Palmieri.

 April 21-23 - Local training (No2) on the strategic use of ICTs by women from Bulgarian NGOs, held in Sofia and organised by IRBF team. Trainers: Christina Haralanova, Maria Velitchkova.

 April 13-16 - LCM trainings in Sofia and Veliko Turnovo for use of the program by end-users (Bulgarian legal aid centres).

 June 2005 - Needs Assessment Research realeted to the use of ICTs by women from Bulgarian NGOs completed. A 4 page brochure was printed in Bulgarian and English, in order to present the results from it.

 November 19 - December 09 - IRBF team trained representatives from 10 not-for-profit organisations in the East of England to use Linux on their desktop computers. Some of these organisations became interested in the LCM project and started testing it for their local needs.

International participation

Porto Alegre, Brazil, January 14-17 - Participation of IRBF to the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Christina Haralanova participated in the Digital Future media coverage team for the event, which published a newspaper after the Forum.

Ohrid, Macedonia, February 12-15 - IRBF participated to the Ohrid Training Exchange Event and presented the work related to the needs assessment research regarding the use of ICTs by women from Bulgarian NGOs.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 27-30 - Amsterdam meeting of WITT coordinators. Christina became the WITT Boad coordinator for the next year.

Montréal, Canada, July 24 - Speach about IRBF work in Bulgaria, in a conference regarding the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) by Bulgarian women.

Bangkok, Thailand, October 27-30 - Participation in the AWID Forum, How Does Change Happen?. Christina Haralanova gave a presentation regarding IRBF work and the results

Tunisia, Tunis, November 16-18 - Active participation and media coverage of IRBF media representative to the second phase of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS).

Cambridge, UK, November 19 - One day practical training on the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) by the local NGOs were made to 19 NGO representatives. The training was performed by Christina Haralanova and the demo was done by Mathieu Lutfy.