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1. Features
2. News
3. Projects of the Month
4. Making A Difference - What Charities Say About
You
5. Background to the Opportunities
6. A Word About Your Initial Meeting With The Charity
7. Final Thoughts
Calling Portsmouth
We now have a number of community groups and charities in the Portsmouth
area looking for support and advice. If you're in the area and would like to
help, please check out P834, P839, P851 and P852 in the Volunteer Opportunities
section. There are a lot more opportunities in the area so go get involved.
If you have colleagues who might like to get involved, please let them know!
If you're from IBM or used to be from IBM, we would really like to hear from
you.
Are you all dressed up with nowhere to go?
Read our new feature on why YOU should volunteer - more (We promise it won't
hurt.) [Broken link removed]
Attract-o-meter
Will volunteering make you more attractive? Check
it out to find out. (We do not accept liability for the results!)
About You
We're developing a profiles section on our website and we need to know more
about you. If you are working, or have worked, on an iT4C project, please email
paula@iT4Communities.org.uk
with your name, the project you worked on and a brief (50-100 word) summary
about you. We promise you your 25 minutes of fame (eat your heart out Andy W).
What have you done for I.T. lately
We want to hear about all your innovative projects for charities and community
groups. Are they replicable? Could you use them to help other charities? Tell
us more.
Are you bi-lingual?
A charity in Southwark is looking for South Asian language speaking IT volunteers.
Contact simon@iT4Communities.org.uk
for more info.
Partnerships
The ICT Consortium, delivering resources to the voluntary and community
sector, continues to go from strength to strength. iT4C is a key part of this
group and we're working with partners, and you, to make all our local communities
a better place. For more info on this project, take a look at www.ictconsortium.org.uk
Is anyone listening?
Many of you have contacted us recently to say that you're having quite a
lot of difficulties in contacting charities. We know that this can be really
frustrating. It would be really helpful to us if you could always email us with
project numbers of charities who have not replied to you. We can then chase
them up and weed out "dead ends" more effectively so that you won't
waste time in trying to contact charities whose projects are no longer available.
Make a Difference One Saturday
Saturday 30 October 2004 is CSV Make a Difference Day, the UK's largest
day of hands on volunteering. Supported by Barclays, CSV Make a Difference Day
encourages people to try volunteering for one day in an activity that will have
a direct positive impact on the local community.
Meeting in the Pub
If any volunteers are interested in a London volunteers meeting, please
email your friendly iT4C co-ordinator Paula at paula@iT4Communities.org.uk.
We can also set up a London regional network e-list to help organise an initial
informal (pub) meeting and for general discussion. If you feel up to trying
to get something off the ground in your region then do, please, contact paula@iT4Communities.org.uk
and we'll do what we can to support regional volunteer networks.
Project of the month
Multicultural community organisation in Portsmouth want to develop brochure
website to reflect multicultural ethos
Quickie of the Month
Charity in Telford needs help with resolving a domain name issue
Northern Project of the Month
Advisory service needs advice and technical help with her Lotus-based dairy
system, Lotus Organiser 6. This is a project for a Lotus expert who can analyse
the current set-up, adjust the configuration or advise on upgrade if necessary
and also help with longer-term planning
The Little Bit Different Project of the Month
Hearing impairment support charity in Worcestershire seek redesign of existing
brochure website and additional interactivity including online booking. Design
flair is important for this visually-oriented group. Staff have a significant
expertise in accessibility issues which are also a priority so would suit volunteer
wishing to improve skills in this area
Martini (anytime, anywhere) Project of the Month
Awards charity needs to add interactivity to existing website including
members area with file storage, content management etc. Suitable for local or
remote volunteer
Rural Project of the Month
Learning support charity needs experienced strategic expert to help plan
long-term national ICT strategy
Yet More Interesting Projects
1. Youth charity in Nottinghamshire seek web designer to assist/train young
people to design and develop website>
2. Youth charity in Portsmouth needs advice on making best use of new network
3. Essex advocacy organisation needs brochure website built from scratch
If none of these projects are your cup of Java, check out Volunteer Opportunities online for a full list.
"Jon was very fast and skilled at working out what we wanted and admirable in the speed with which he met our needs." - Priory Court Community Centre and Jonathon Wong
"The benefit to the Charity is immeasurable. Andy has provided a time effective and essential vital tool with which to work with. We are very grateful." - St Columba Group Therapy Centre and Andy Kennedy
"This has been hugely beneficial to the Millennium Volunteers Project. The MV Project has relied on posters and leaflets to promote itself to young people in North Tyneside. Now that we have a website we expect to attract a lot more people to the project. As a result, more young people will be engaging in volunteering opportunities and gaining a national Millennium Volunteers Award." - Millennium Volunteers and Janet Kerr.
"Thanks to our iT4Communities volunteer Panikos we have been able to develop an online Referral System. Not only will this make for better partnership working but it will also improve access to our service and help us to better manage the demand for our service. It has taken nine months and hundreds of hours of generously donated voluntary work but now we have a system which means people should be able to request advice and get it. As a bonus our iT4Communities volunteer has also helped us with other computer problems. Without him, we would never have got this far and it has been a great learning experience for us all." - Hitesh Patel, Halton CAB.
See the Home Start Meon Valley case study [Broken link removed] to find out how Graham Munro made a difference.
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.