IREX Home Page (English edition): http://www.irex.org
IREX Home Page (Russian edition): http://www.irex.ru
IREX-sponsored public access e-mail sites: http://www.irex.org/pubsites.htm

Get the latest information on IREX in the US-NIS Organizations section of the Website.

The project is funded by a $1 million grant from USIA (United States Information Agency) and $200,000 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Another $500,000 in goods and services will be donated by NIS and American universities, computer companies, and publishers, including the donation of 1,000 books by Internet publisher O'Reilly and Associates.

The 40 new public access e-mail sites will be modeled on ones already established by IREX in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Vladivostok, and Moscow, Russia and Bishkek, Kyrgyz-stan. The one in Bishkek offers a glimpse of what these public access sites can grow into.

Kyrgyzstan Freenet
http://www.freenet.bishkek.su

The Kyrgyzstan Freenet was started in September 1995 when IREX fellow Jonathan Korn established a public access e-mail site at the National Library in downtown Bishkek. The site has grown to 500 registered users-- mostly students and professors, although anyone representing a local non-commercial or educational organization can open an e-mail account for free. The Freenet is based at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University and has remote servers at the National Library, Slavic University, and the Kyrgyz-American Faculty, with more scheduled to be added in the coming months. The Freenet is funded by a grant from the Eurasia Foundation.

A World Wide Web site has also been created as part of the project. The site includes some issues of an English-language student newspaper, The Bishkek Flash, and back issues of the Kyrgyz News Digest, an electronic bulletin prepared by students at the Kyrgyz-American School. In the future there will be home pages for various non-governmental organizations active in Kyrgyzstan.

A major focus of the U.S.-Eurasia Internet Access and Training Project will be to teach NIS scholars and civic organizations how to publish documents on the World Wide Web. In Moscow IREX, working with the Center for Curative Pedagogics and the State Public Historical Library, has established an OpenWeb Workshop.

OpenWeb
http://www.irex.ru

The OpenWeb Workshop is a computer classroom, located in the Historical Library, where local NGOs can come to receive training on how to publish documents online, scan images, and create their own organizational home pages on the World Wide Web, free of charge. Several organizations have already established their own home pages, including:

• Memorial, a nation-wide human rights organization which was created in the late 1980s to recognize the millions of Soviet citizens imprisoned in the Gulag
• The Committee �Civic Assistance,� which helps refugees in the NIS
• Yunpress, a journal written and illustrated by kids
• Pautinka, an electronic network of youth organizations from around the NIS,
• XXI Century Lawyers' Association which sponsors professional education and training programs
• Committee for Soldiers Mothers in St. Petersburg
• Association for Engineering Education

IREX has also recently published, and uploaded to the Internet, a Russian-language Internet primer. FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions): E-mail and Internet in Russia, the CIS, and Baltic Nations is a very useful 30- page publication, available free of charge in the NIS. FAQ includes:

• a brief overview of e-mail and the Internet
• a listing of some of the major e-mail providers and academic networks
• a handy how-to guide to buying modems and connecting to a telephone line
• a list of some organizations that offer technical assistance to NIS scholars and NGOs seeking Internet access
• a glossary of Internet acronyms and technobabble

For more information or to order a subscription, see our publications page.

Center for Civil Society International [email protected]