WOMEN'S INFORMATION NETWORK Moscow The Network was registered by Moscow Registration Chamber in April 15, 1997. Its registration number is 064734.

Address: P.O. box 65, Moscow 121019.
Contact person: Tatiana Troinova, Director;
tel./fax: (095) 291-22-74;
e-mail: tatiana@ttg.msk.su

The Women's Information Network as a form of activities was founded after the First Independent Women's Forum in 1991. The work initiated by Moscow Center for Gender Studies and SAFO ("Free Association of Feminist Organizations", currently FALTA - "Feminist Alternative"). In early 1993, after the Second Independent Women's Forum Women's Information Project "Archive. Data Base. Library (ADL)" was founded.

In the framework of this project informational activities of women's movement of Russia started its real development. In early 1996 ADL was transformed into three new organizations in accordance with the types of activities; Women's Information Network (formal short name is ZhenSet) was formed out of the sub-project Data Base.

Since the very beginning of its independent activities the goals of ZhenSet has been: maintenance connection between the organizations of the Independent Women's Forum; dissemination of information about their work; making contacts with other acting organizations of the Independent Women's Forum and, thus, building coalition within women's community.

For reaching the goals mentioned above the following types of activities has been chosen:

• creating a concept of informational provision of women's movement;
• creating a structure of informational provision;
• maintenance the data base on women's movement of Russia and CIS.

The main priority for ZhenSet is collecting information about women's organizations, publications and events in women's movement. This information is processed and put into Data Base (DB). Since the very start of their activities participants of ZhenSet made a lot of efforts to make the collected information accessible and useful for everybody. For this reason consumers version of DB was created, and many organizations of Russia and CIS were provided with it (according to the list of contacts: 90 organizations from 22 cities).

Six training workshops were held in the process of disseminating the DB. They were on working skills for processing data base; in addition, women's issues on a local level were discussed at the workshops. Those events were a contribution to strengthening relations between local organizations.

One of the important activities for ZhenSet was processing a program product, which allows to make annotated Directory on organizations with all necessary codes (in accordance with the information from Data Base). This printed material is given to the organizations which do not have computers, and to the state organizations and foundations which deal with women's issues. This is the way Zhenset work on educating those organizations on women's organizations.

In the early 1998 DB was transformed into the type of "home pages" and put into Internet;

its address is: http://www.rc.msu.ru/winet.

Currently ZhenSet is working on Directory on women's organizations of Russia and CIS which will be completed in February 1998.

One of the latest initiatives of ZhenSet is a newsletter "About Us and Our Activities". This is a live description of organizations and their activities which is disseminated by E-mail and regular mail. If you wish to receive a newsletter, contact us.

Like most of resource organizations, ZhenSet holds consultations on fundraising and writing of applications for grant.

The work of ZhenSet is supported by Eurasia Foundation, USAID, Global Fund for Women, NIS-US Women's NGO Consortium, and the Embassy of Netherlands.

Tatiana Troinova