VONNE

Infrastructure Organisations who support particular hard to reach groups will see new, additional support coming on line and being made available to them in the forthcoming weeks.

Some of the support means are being funded by the Capacitybuilders Improving Reach project I am overseeing and a couple are directly VONNE funded. They include;

• An ICT Helpline which will not only help with basic technical and communications issues but will also assist with strategy and policy queries.
• A number of workshops will be run based around ICT for Communication. They will look at the New Media tools freely available and examine where voluntary and community organisations have used these well.
• A number of Infrastructure organisations will be approached with an offer of free on-site support from an ICT specialist. Under a Digital Mentors programme, they will be helped to develop an ICT Strategy, a full staff and volunteer training needs analysis, an asset inventory and an annual ICT budget.

The Infrastructure organisations being particularly targeted to benefit from this support are those who provide services for the following hard to reach groups; black and minority ethnic groups, refugee and migrant groups, faith groups and isolated rural groups.

The 2007 Regional ICT Strategy for the VCS will also be receiving an update in order to map the developing needs of our sector over the next 3 years.