This was the diagnosis reached by our friends at the Fundación el Molí as Angel Zambrana, one of its members and one of the creators of the gesmon programme, explains:“the idea was born out of frustration.From the very beginning of our activities at the Fundació Moli de Puigvert we were aware of the need to find a programme capable of handling the specific problems of the people we were helping.

To that end we went in search of companies that develop software and explained the project to them (sap, kritter, etc); we laid out our ideas and they told us that first we had to become clients before we could develop the application together.We progressed furthest with SAP (a partner of INFOLAN); we then searched for other bodies that might like to take part in the project and set our sights on them (Associació DAU y la fundación Drissa), so as to share out the costs.But we did not manage to come to an agreement.

Ángel explains that after a long hard year, they were feeling frustrated and got to thinking, eventually coming to the conclusion that free software would enable them to eliminate the cost of the licence, give access to the source to carry out modifications, and allow them to share it with other people.Two further characteristics were added:that it should be within a web environment and that it should be capable of managing the other sides of the organisation (sales, production, etc.): “together with these ideas we presented the project to social services at the Caixa Catalunya and it was finally approved”.Once they had the financing approved and in order to work out what was required, they looked within AMMFEINA (an organisation which brings together bodies working with mentally disabled people) for institutions that would enable them to define those requirements.

The working group was made up from Fundación Drissa, Asociación DAU, Coressa, Fundación Pere Mata and the Fundació Moli de Puigvert.The result of this work is on www.gesmon.es.Gesmon software comprises:- A follow-up module:a-Patient Data
b Patient follow-up (similar to a CRM with users) that could be termed URM (Users relation manager)

2. A Management module:
a-Individual programme (procedure for setting objectives, evaluation on the social level).
b.-Employment opportunities (Handling the employment opportunities)
c- Services (Social services for which the user is signed up).

3.- Human Resources module:

a. - Human Resources (basic data, employment contracts, work schedule)
b- Training (training received).

Gestmon is a free software programme and, as such, on making the sources available these can easily be adapted to the needs of each organisation. It is now for the Fundación Moli de Puigvert to make users aware of them and so far it has made two direct deployments to test out the software before making it generally available. They hope that more people might like to form a community to continue developing it.

Although the software is free, for the reasons given above, there is a manual on bubok, on sale at 15,89€ (production cost fixed by Bubok). The manual is not sold for profit, as it is can also be downloaded in pdf format from proyecto: www.gesmon.net or on http://sourceforge.net/projects/gesmon/. On lulu.com you can also find both English and Spanish versions as gesmon was created in English and then translated into Spanish.