"Vital Voices"

On June 6, 2000 the Woman net program of the "Open Society" institute organized the round table "Public Initiatives and business: partnership perspectives". A famous American financier philanthropist George Soros took part in it. The key subject of the round table was the advancement in Russia of the international initiative "Vital Voices. Woman in Democracy". This initiative put forward by female politicians in 1997 aims at uniting women who are the heads of public organizations, who are at the top of large corporations, who hold prominent state positions, who have succeeded in political career.

The objective of the unification is to extend the woman's part in economic, social and political development at the global, state and local levels. The "Vital Voices" task is to create a partners' net between private companies and public initiatives all over the world. In practice such partnership relations take the form of professional trainings, probation periods and consultations for women, technical, technological and financial support of women's initiatives.

Such partnerships help the participants to find people holding the same views and ideas, to establish useful relations, to consolidate their image. The fact that there were women representatives of many American and north-European companies in the international "Vital Voices" conference, which took place in October 1999 in Reykjavik, speaks for the prestige of participation in the initiative for business circles.

Russian women knew about "Vital Voices" just in this conference. And in May 2000 some of them were invited to the seminar, which was organized by Podesta. com firm within the framework of "Vital Voices". The participants of the seminar got an opportunity to learn free of charge some methods of coalition creation.

At present such famous legal companies as "Clifford Chance Puender", "Akin, Gump, Hauer & Feld", "Arthur Andersen", "Baker & Mckenzie", "Chadbourne & Park", "Coudert Brothers", "Leboeuf, Lamb, Green & Macrae", "Milbank, Tweed, Handley & Mccloy", the "Price-Waterhouse-Cooper" financial consulting company, the "Marriott Hotels" net, the I-REX International Council of Exchanges and Investigations, the "Open Society" Institute (the Soros Fund) have agreed to support the "Vital Voices" initiative. The fact that the "Open Society" Institute has become an institutional partner of the "Vital Voices" initiative allows hoping to widen the supporters' circle of this initiative in our country.

You can learn about the "Vital Voices" initiative in details on site "Vital Voices: Women in Democracy" (http://usinfo.state.gov/vitalvoices/). Besides, in the nearest future the information in Russia will be placed on site "Open Women Line" (OWL) (http://195.128.92.114).

If you intend to support the "Vital Voice" initiative, send you suggestions to the address: OSI-Russia, Women net program, 8, Ozerkovskaya naberezhnaya, Moscow, 113184 or by e-mail: genderintegration@osi.ru with subject "Vital Voices".

We will inform you in the magazine pages how the "Vital Voices" initiative spreads in Russia and what opportunities are given to public organizations within the framework of this initiative.

by Natalyay Babich