Charities Newsletter
Issue 7

iT4Communities Team made a beeline for Sunderland in the North East in July and exhibited at the International IT in the Community Conference. It was good to meet North East-based volunteers and charities face-to-face. This presented the team with the opportunity to say 'thank you' in person as well as hear in person the challenges and successes being experienced by both volunteers and charities.

Photo: John Davies, Anne Donnelly and Collin Edwards (Volunteer)
You Can View More Photos online

One notable north-east charity, St Oswald’s Hospice in Gosforth, recently received help from a volunteer with managing their data. Henry Pearce assisted their IT department in making their system more reliable and helping staff access information quickly and easily. Darren Harvey, IT manager for the charity, said that the project had been very successful and “Henry had exceeded their expectations in the project”.

Another North East volunteer, Colin Edwards, helped Sedgefield & District Citizens Advice Bureau put together a website. An important criterion was that Bureau staff would be able to update the site themselves. They were thrilled with the result. Sandra Richardson from the Bureau said, “Colin did a marvellous job. The website is spot-on. We’ve had no problems with it and it even came with a manual so we can easily make changes ourselves. The site is proving to be a very useful and informative resource for our clients.”

Of his experience Colin said, “It was good to work in a different sector to usual, seeing first hand some of the problems charities deal with on a day to day basis, and I gained great satisfaction from helping to solve some of those problems.”

These charities received media coverage which raised awareness of their organisations' activities. Your organisation could be one of these. If you are interested, in how we can facilitate this do get in touch with Nigel at info@it4communities.co.uk.