As it had promised during the last NGO Connection day held at its Microsoft Innovation Centre earlier last June, Microsoft recently hosted a second Connection Day this time in Gozo to address and discuss the specific needs of a number of voluntary organisations who operate on the sister island.
Around 20 NGO's attended this event during which all those present had the opportunity to better understand how Microsoft and its partners can assist NGO's perform more efficiently and at less costs.
"NGO's in Gozo face their own challenges and we want to help them bridge these challenges through innovation, by bring to them our products and platforms with which they can deliver their assistance better and more effectively. This is the reason why following a successful NGO event in Malta, we decided to host another NGO Connection Day in Gozo," said Angela Micallef, Citizenship Manager at Microsoft Malta.
"The feedback following this event was very positive, particularly the post-event networking session which gave us a lot of important insight into the specific ways how GozitanNGO's operate and how we could assist their work through our products and solutions. We have also received requests for follow-up meetings from a number of NGO's and we view this active interest as a good indication that our efforts to reach out to local NGO's is giving us good results. In fact, we can confirm that having seen so much interest, we have decided to repeat what we did in Malta and we shall be hosting the Gozo NGO Day on an annual basis as well," announced Angela Micallef.
The event also focused on Microsoft's Office 365 for Nonprofits, a platform of web-based productivity tools that enable NGOs to work as a team from anywhere and assists them in their fundraising, planning, and service providing. Available as a donation offer to qualifying nonprofit organizations, Office 365 for Nonprofits provides access to professional email, shared calendars, instant messaging (IM), HD video conferencing, screen sharing, and personal online storage. You can also gain the ability to view and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files via a web browser, and can easily set up a public website and Intranet site to support collaboration. NGOs also get on premise Windows and Microsoft Office as a donation.
One of Gozo's NGO's which has already benefited from Microsoft's assistance is the Oasi Foundation. In 2013, Microsoft assisted the Foundation through a donation of a Microsoft operating system and productivity suite, as well as CRM to assist Oasi manage better its Donor/Customer/Patient system a donation valuedat over $61,000.
"Thanks to Microsoft's Citizenship Program, Oasi Foundation found access to software, otherwise unaccessible due to the very limited finances that we operate with," explains Fr Emmanuel Cordina, Director of Oasi Foundation.
"As an NGO working in the prevention, intervention, treatment and rehabilitation of persons suffering from dependencies, Microsoft's assistance has enabled us to reach ICT standards, before considered unreachable. In fact, apart from the traditional software we are now making use of Windows Server 2012 which enables the completion of the server and the networking infrastructure project. OASI is now able to commence work on a Case Management System Database using SQL 2012 and Dynamic CRM 201, as well as Share Point Svr 2013. This in turn is facilitating data management and reporting. Furthermore it ensures multi-level governance and security as requested by standard operations in the area of Case Management," added Fr Emmanuel Cordina.
The Gozo NGOs Association is an umbrella organisation that gathers all the NGOs based in Gozo under its remit which count over 250. Such NGOs focus their work in various sectors such as youths, environment, health, sports, cultural, religious, international, historical and more thus since for every sector of Gozo at least an NGO is carrying out its work the number of people being positively helped in quite a considerable one which has also a positive impact in economic and social terms.
Ryan Mercieca from the Gozo NGOs Association said "The work of the Gozitan NGOs differs from the ones in Malta on the fact of the different social reality between the two islands. In some circumstances some work of certain NGOs may overlap but still be specific for Gozo. A number of NGOs were formed due to the lack of interest by Maltese NGOs to expand their work in Gozo. The extra challenges are present due to the lack of resources and support when compared to the NGOs based in Gozo. On the other hand advantages such as better outreach exist within the Gozitan Community."
"The Microsoft NGO Day in Gozo was a first step, a very important one to be followed by others. Other events organised by Microsoft in Gozo will surely have a positive impact and by time more NGOs will get interested such events making Microsoft an important partner for the Gozitan Community," concluded Ryan Mercieca.