Case Study - The Relatives & Residents Association

The Relatives & Residents Association provides support and advice to older people in residential care settings and also to their relatives.They wanted help to design and implement a website to promote their services and help with fund-raising. At the time Aniuska Dominguez had recently moved to London from her native Cuba and was keen to use her web development skills and gain experience working in a British office environment.

Alice Bellamy from the charity describes the project:

Project Summary

To establish a new website for the Association as a means of publicity about the work carried out by the Association. It also provides information and allows people to make donations and register as members.

Project Delivery

Aniuska was a very devoted and hard-working volunteer. She came in 1-2 days each week on a flexible basis, and was more than ready to help on occasions where her expertise could assist us in other matters not directly related to the website.

Lessons learnt

It was easy to co-operate with Aniuska. This was essential so that she could clearly understand our needs, and not impose her own ideas without working together with us. She was very competent in her technical skills and was able to advise us on the best route to follow in various situations. Despite not having a great command of English, Aniuska grew in confidence in communicating, and was ready to learn. The only regret I have is not having had enough time to learn more from her skills and technical knowledge. 

Outcomes

The benefit to us is enormous. A website is such a vital element to any organisation today, and gives us an easily accessible public face to present to funders, callers to the helpline and policy makers. It helps them to take us more seriously. Aniuska has created a relatively simple, but clear and smart website.