Dear Visitors of Russian Women Abroad!  

Only a couple of months ago, we proudly announced the relocation of our website to our own server. Unexpectedly, there was a misfortunate side effect that happened to RWA. One day, without notice, our website disappeared from the Internet… I soon started receiving emails and telephone calls from frequent visitors asking me: "Why doesn't RWA work?" Upon request, my host announced that “RWA is a high resource website, whose traffic exceeds the stipulated norms...”

It became clear that the size of the site itself, the forum, data bases and everything located on this server did not effect its shutting down. The real reason was the following: RWA (mainly because of our forum!) has gradually reached a VERY HIGH daily traffic, which significantly exceeded the bandwidth allocated to us. Even though we have only 700 members, registered on our women's forum, our site and forum has, in average, from 3000 to 4500 daily hits!!! It's very important, that our site is simultaneously requested by a large number of visitors. This causes an interruption in the work of the server, which RWA has been sharing with other websites.

As our frequent visitors know, RWA does not bring any significant profit. Since its foundation three years ago, I have been working on my project for free in my spare time. Later, Lena and Nina joined me to help with the design and some technical issues. For these 3 years, I have never asked anyone for help. Neither had I thought of solving the financial problems of my website (and especially, my own problems;) at the expense of Russian women, for whom I created RWA. I was sincerely happy that I was doing something really good in my life: hundreds of emails and letters assured me that my website and forums had helped many Russian women, saving them from loneliness and desperation, helping them to find friends, necessary information and even to escape abuse.

When I shared the problem, that happened to RWA, on my General Forum (it survived because it was still located on our old, free server), many friends of my website, who managed to locate this forum, offered me their help. With the money that I received from these people, I was able to quickly return RWA to the Internet! You can find the names of these people on our womens' Forum under “Announcements”.

Even though we succeeded in saving RWA, we all have to keep in mind that the website will require more and more funds to meet the demands of our rapidly growing traffic, and also to take care of those who donate many hours, of their personal time, working for RWA. A small monthly fee ($1-$2) for using our forum would probably become the most obvious solution to our financial problems. There were a number of “pros” and “cons” for this option. The main argument “against” implementing a fee was that our Russian visitors might find it difficult to effect payment (simply because of absence of the lack of use of credit cards in Russia). Besides, there are some women living abroad who cannot afford even a little fee. Very often though, these are exactly the women who are in need of help…