Digital Inclusion Wales: 2008 Conference Report

09

Stephen Harmes River Dee Community Church ICT Project

To view the presentation from this session, click here

Following Sharon, Stephen Harmes told the audience about his experience running the River Dee Community Church ICT project in Flintshire.

The main points of Stephen’s presentation were as follows:

In late 2006 he set about enhancing the work of community groups that were already using the venue by providing IT equipment and training that was made possible by Communities @One funding. By recruiting an outreach worker, Stephen was then able to extend this provision to new, emerging groups and ultimately aimed to engage everyone in the town of Flint.

As part of his presentation, Stephen looked at the range of outreach community projects that are being provided by the Community Church and which are served by ICT facilities. These projects included:

• Migrant workers drop-in facility: This has supported people who have come to live in Flintshire from a number of different countries, particularly Polish workers. Stephen told the conference how these people had overcome numerous barriers to succeed in their use of ICT.

• Youth provision: As many as 40 young people attend the centre on a regular basis, mostly to make use of the internet access that is available there.

• Residents associations, including two ‘satellite’ outreach community projects at two locations where additional IT training is provided.

• Net Café: A free Saturday internet facility, which is in the process of functioning as a social enterprise. Stephen mentioned that his 2-year-old grandson is a frequent visitor on a Saturday as he is already getting into computers!

The conference then heard how the River Dee project has received a lot of significant local support which has been vital to its development and subsequent success in engaging the community.

Stephen said that the project’s intention is the development of self-confidence in beneficiaries as well as building the project to a point that would enable everyone in the community to be involved.

Stephen closed his presentation by looking at the project’s future. He said that a business plan was being formulated with the Wales Co-operative Centre to help form a social enterprise. The enterprise would see his staff providing ICT training to local businesses, with any income helping to pay for ICT training for the community.