Case Study

Name of Charity:	Sedgefield & District Citizens Advice Bureau
Name of volunteer	Colin Edwards, Wisdom Multimedia
Project Aim	Website Redesign
Project Delivery	Approximately 4/5 years ago the Bureau had a website designed by Newcastle College as part of one of their media course studies. The site was very useful in providing information to our clients who had internet access. A student at Newcastle College undertook the website updating function for us as required. As time progressed and the student moved on we were left with a website that we were not able to amend and as we changed our advice sessions times the information on the website actually became more of a problem than a help to us. On contacting IT4 Communities we were put in touch with Colin Edwards, an iT4C volunteer who has been, from the start of our project, very helpful in assisting us to re-establishing our website. Colin lives near Newcastle which is some 25/30 miles from Sedgefield but on 3 occasions has visited us to provide hands on advice and training. Primarily contact was made via e-mail and phone and in doing so the project was able to progress at a rate appropriate to Colin (as a volunteer with other jobs) and us who were having other issues to address within the organisation. As a result of Colin’s assistance the newly revised now more user friendly website is back up and running, and we have had some training on updates – and have carried some out - and Colin has produced a training manual for future use. Additionally he has set up a bulletin board so we can post on it problems that we may be encountering. Needless to say we could not have done this without his help. Being a CAB and very reliant on the work undertaken by volunteers, could I also thank iT4Communities for providing us the link to Colin.
Lessons Learnt	When entering into a project of this sort ensure – as should have been the position when the original website was set up – that training is included!
Outcomes for the Charity	The organisation now has a website which is user friendly which we can update s and when necessary to ensure that the information provided is correct and current.