Besma walked into the WBFN office about two years ago… and she was asked to make an analysis of our database, and to advise WBFN on how to design a better one, if we were granted the funds for development. We had no idea of what would follow…

Besma is not the usual WBFN member. She sets her goals, and then does not slide off even one inch until she has reached it. She had us sitting around the table, and in seemingly endless and hilarious sessions, she kept hammering us to formulate what we saw as our goals, until it really was formulated down to the core of our institution, and we had defined our membership to the finest detail. She has this gift of never losing sight of what she wants to achieve; the only trouble was that she had to deal with a bunch of chaotic and spontaneous thinking volunteers. So, it took a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of laughter, and incredible hard thinking from all sides around the table to get this moving. Finally, a document was crafted by Besma in which she wrote down the core of our discussions: our goals, and the different steps to translate this into ONE all-purpose database, instead of two or three (depending on how you look at it!). She formed different teams for testing, migration, merging and compiling the fields.

Despite the fact that she was pushing hard to get the system done to a workable level, there were several setbacks. Development took much more time than planned, and for security reasons several aspects have still not been resolved. This enormous project has still not reached its end phase, although Besma ends her term in DC. Other reasons this project has been slow in its process could be due to language barriers and also the fact that other volunteers with an IT-background found jobs and had to leave the project. Despite these glitches, Besma worked hard at keeping the project going. She had something in mind which she believed would serve us for many years to come. She envisioned a future of online forums for members and a site to share documents, programs and classes. We do not yet know what the future will bring us, but we are extremely thankful to Besma; she made us rethink the whole goal and process of our organization and put it into a clear-cut document.

Maaike le Grand

Ce n’est qu’un au revoir!