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1. Six Degrees of Separation Initiative
2. News
3. Projects of the Month
4. Making A Difference – Feedback
5. Background to the Opportunities
6. A Word About Your Initial Meeting With The Charity
7. Final Thoughts
As another Volunteers' Week ends, iT4Communities is launching its Six Degrees of Separation initiative inviting you to circulate the joys and challenges of IT volunteering through your personal networks and if you're already volunteering, you know it makes sense! But do your friends and colleagues know what they're missing?
Perhaps you are already discuss your volunteering with friends and colleagues, but what we're asking you to do this week is forward this Newsletter to just 6 of your friends and colleagues and ask them to forward it to another 6 and so on . . .
Spread the word!
If you've been sent our newsletter and are new to iT4Communities, do browse our information about volunteering. If you'd like to sample the opportunities available, you can log on to explore our volunteer opportunities using one of the following temporary IDs* sixdegrees@iT4Communities.org.uk or 6degrees@iT4C.org.uk or register with us now.
If you already volunteer with iT4C, why not check it out anyway case studies can be a great way of picking up tips and avoiding pitfalls.
*Please note that these are not valid email addresses but will allow you to browse our system. If you can't receive HTML newsletters, please note our latest newsletter is always available on the website.
iT4Communities has always worked in partnership with other charities and organisations to support the community in addition to our focus on volunteering. More recently, we've been working with these groups in a partnership called the ICT Consortium - delivering ICT resources for the voluntary and community sector. Our aim is to improve voluntary and community sector ICT infrastructure so that voluntary and community organisations are enabled to achieve their missions more efficiently and effectively through the better use of ICT. For more information on what this means to you and the charities you support, please check out www.ictconsortium.org.uk.
North of the Border
Many thanks to those of you in Scotland who have expressed an interest in publicising the work of iT4Communities. We're currently working on expanding our services north of the border and will be in touch with you all soon. In the meantime, if anyone else is interested in helping recruit more volunteers (or volunteer opportunities), please contact simon@iT4Communities.org.uk.
Employee Volunteering
One strand of our work with the ICT Consortium is about planning a much wider reach of IT volunteering and supporting more and more local charities. To do this we need to increase the amount of employee volunteering as well as individual IT professionals. Since November 2002, over 1800 of you have signed up to iT4C. Our core sponsors include IBM and Microsoft who use iT4C as a central plank of their employee volunteering programme. We're now looking for more companies to get more involved. If you would like to act as an ambassador for your company and get them more involved with iT4C, please email me (simon@iT4Communities.org.uk) and we'll work together to make it happen. More volunteers = more volunteering = more support for the community = better for everyone!
How Are We (You) Doing?
Over 1800 volunteers, over 800 projects since launch and between you you've contributed over £400,000 worth of support to the community. That really makes a difference. Check out our case studies to see just how much of a difference.
Apologies
On a personal note, please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to some of your emails. We appreciate your support and interest and try our best to deliver the highest quality of service but sometimes the number of tasks swamps the number of iT4C team members to do them! Normal service will be resumed shortly. In the meantime, please continue to let us know where you're up to with projects and about anything else you want to discuss.
Media charity require strategic plan and ICT audit for substantial overhaul/upgrade of currently unstable mixed Mac/PC network with Mac OS X server. PCs run Win XP, Some OS X Macs but most Macs too old to run OS X. Mixed environment needs to be retained. Volunteer would need skills and an open mind on Mac/Unix/Linux options to plan implementation of a stable network using limited resources.
Equal rights organisation needs a volunteer to help them improve and upgrade their (slow-running) computer network. They're also looking for help to build the skills to manage their own website.
Yet More Interesting Projects
1. Hackney organisation would like IT professional to tell IT like it is.
2. Children's charity in Poplar need urgent audit of very buggy Exchange Server
network
3. Media charity in Aberdeen need IT help... and lots of it
4. AIDS charity in EC2 seeks website-database integrator
5. Norwich charity seeks Access database guru
If none of these projects are your cup of Java, check out Volunteer Opportunities online for a full list.
Success came about because Dennis put so much time and effort into the work he did. Patience with people who do not understand IT and in particular the language was also very important - this project helped people overcome some of their 'technical phobias'.
Appropriate Technology Asia/Database by Dennis Todd
The project ran extremely smoothly thanks to Edward's commitment and professionalism . . . We are absolutely delighted with our new website and have received extensive positive feedback from site users already even though the site has only been live for 4 days. We feel that the site conveys a professional image of our organisation and will help us to raise our profile within the field of mental health, both nationally and internationally.
We are currently in the process of nominating the website for a national award in the UK charity awards this year.
I've just had the final meeting with Edward - quite emotional as he's been so good to work with.
National Phobics Society/Website by Edward Jung
And congratulations to Edward from all of us here at iT4C on landing a job with a major homelessness charity!
Check out the case studies on the iT4C website for more comprehensive feedback, tips, pointers and pitfalls.
We have had telephone conversations with these charities (or the brokers providing the opportunities), and have filtered out any requests that were clearly inappropriate for volunteers. In the Volunteer Opportunities section we have included information about the type of charity, the location (or suitability for remote working) and a summary of the request for IT advice/assistance. If you are interested in volunteering for a particular opportunity, please click on the Volunteer button adjacent to the details of each opportunity. This does not commit you to the project at this stage but will enable us to send you further information.
Opportunities are categorised by location (London, North West, North East, West Midlands, East Midlands, SouthEast, SouthWest, Scotland, Wales). We're working on better ways of representing the projects/locations but all feedback is welcome. Apologies in advance if we've offended anyone's geography. Please bear in mind that I'm not a geography guru and what you think is East Midlands might have been added to West Midlands. It's worth looking at other areas near you.
We've also classified projects by skill type, e.g. website, database, strategy. This does mean that some projects don't fit easily into categories so if you're a multi-tasking kind of volunteer or have special talents, check out the ALL category and find those hidden gems.
We will respond to offers to volunteer on a first come, first served basis and we will try to respond to all of you as soon as possible but this may take a few days depending on the number of responses and other activities. Your patience is appreciated. In some cases, we may provide multiple volunteer details for a particular project. We will also let you know if your opportunity has already been taken (assuming we've been told). We will deal with offers to volunteer as quickly as we can but we cannot guarantee to respond to all applications immediately.
Projects will remain listed until someone confirms acceptance. In some cases, volunteers have expressed interest but a project has not, for whatever reason, been confirmed. If you contact a charity about a project and they tell you it's no longer available, please let us know (sometimes they don't).
If there isn't an opportunity near to you, please bear with us. More charities and projects are registered each week. If you have any specific questions, please email Paula at info@iT4Communities.org.uk
At your first meeting with the charity you will need to check out a number of issues:
Getting this stuff right at the outset is worth the time spent and makes sure that you can then concentrate on delivering a great project
iT4Communities is a project to help the IT industry and IT professionals help communities. It depends largely on you as individuals and employees to deliver the expertise. We're here to provide the web-based resource and answer questions. We will try to provide you with introductions to charities and work with you as a group to develop best practice. You are the ones with the skills to change the lives of individuals, groups, to make a difference in your local community. If you have any suggestions about iT4Communities and/or this newsletter – please do get in touch, we want to hear from you.
Let's go to work...
Simon.
Simon Davey
National Director, iT4Communities
e: simon@iT4Communities.org.uk
w: www.iT4Communities.org.uk
IT 4 Communities is an initiative
to encourage companies and individuals with professional IT skills to volunteer
these skills for the benefit of the community, and is supported by a partnership
of key IT sector organisations.
We aim to achieve a significant and sustainable increase in the number of companies and IT professionals volunteering their skills in their local communities, and to maximise the effectiveness of this volunteering input in building the capacity of local charities and community groups.