Virtual Activism's Annual Report '03

Another Year for Reflection

"Your organisation is making a very significant and concerted effort towards narrowing the digital divide with creating websites for us and organising online workshops for us who belong to the developing world especially small organisations doing work at grassroots level." - Shahida Abdullah. Society for Participatory Well-Being. Pakistan

"Already I have brought more awareness about [IT] security to work, also about what to send through e-mail... Also a number of new volunteers are entering international work as part of a netcorps (cyber youth) and these tools regarding e-campaigns and privacy and security in human rights NGOs will enable me to transfer some of that knowledge and/or have more indepth conversations about how they are engaging technology in their placements overseas." - Fiona Meyer-Cook. CUSO. Perú

Click to access the Annual Report.

 

Introduction:

Another year has passed and it is now time to look back and reflect as we review our accomplishments and remember our shortcomings. Virtual Activism has operated not only without funding this year, but also without staff members, and the burden of its activities has fallen entirely on one person with much-needed but limited volunteer support. In spite of that, Virtual Activism has maintained, and even improved upon, the quality of its work with - and for - its partners.

Virtual Activism's programs have always been planned entirely with our partners in mind, and we have therefore developed activities and programs to meet the needs of nonprofit organizations in many areas of the world. As of this year, we began several new activities, among them the launching of a series of online workshops that are provided free of charge. We realize the importance of providing IT-related information to members of marginalized communities who could not afford to pay for such workshops whether in the Global North or South and we plan to maintain our free-of-charge service. It was delightful to see the impact of those workshops on our partners after their participation, and be told the numerous ways with which they had made use of the information that they had gained.

Throughout the year, our reward has been the supportive and grateful words that we have received from the partners who have benefited from our activities, whether those who have finally been given the opportunity to be on the Internet through our WebWorks Program, or those who have participated in our workshop series. It was also a delight to see a daily increase in the subscriber numbers of our newly launched e-Newsletter, even though we had not sent out notification of its launching. And of course, it was always rewarding to look at the effect Virtual Activism has had on its partners' activities, and how they had benefited from the numerous services we had provided and continue to provide.

We realize of course that there is so much more to be accomplished and that our work has not been perfect. We need to re-think our workshops in terms of time and content, and we need to add new workshops to our series based on partner requests. We need to re-evaluate workshop registration procedures to ensure only nonprofit organizations and civil society members will benefit from them, and we need to be more careful in choosing our partners and making sure that we are not doing work for partners who do not really need it. And of course, we need to devote more time to fundraising and to begin having staff members to help in the ever-expanding activities of Virtual Activism.

We have many more activities planned for 2004. We hope that we can continue to be useful to organizations around the world, and help strengthen ICT-related activities within civil society.

We look forward to 2004 with hope and excitement.

Click to access the Annual Report.