As a follow-up to our launch event at the Hub last Friday here comes the presentation which is separated in 3 parts:

• Background about CDI, its history, impact and operating model
• Summary of the digital inclusion research
• Outline of the pilot programme for CDI Mobile

As presented during the evening, CDI is now taking its trusted and tested PC-based model to the mobile internet. Our vision for CDI Mobile is to enable people in low-income communities to use, design and develop mobile apps for social change and community action. In order to achieve this we will start with small groups of young people in deprived communities in the UK who are not in employment or formal education. CDI will be developing a new curriculum that takes advantage of the multimedia and geo-location capabilities of smartphones as well as the attractiveness of these devices to young people.

Any comments on this blog or on Slideshare are highly welcome. You can also email me or Mauricio directly via the address shown on the last slide of the presentation.

Part 2 of the conclusions. After having explored the digital inclusion value chain and the evolution of technology during my analysis, I had a closer look at the theories of social change underpinning the work of different digital inclusion players. From a CDI point of view this is essential since as an organisation it has always combined technology with citizenship/ social entrepreneurship education.

The first time I noticed that different actors were using different theories of change was when I read Tim Davies‘ analysis and summary of an RSA seminar held in May 2009 on the topic of on Digital Inclusion and Social Capital. This impression was then further confirmed during a conversation with Nick Booth about the sector and his new initiative Help me Investigate. While Tim Davis listed 10 different theories and approaches in his blog entry, I would just like to focus on 4 sub-groups combining some of these approaches:

1. Basic skills & focus on the individual
2. Grass root media & giving people a voice
3. Investing in the connectors/ community activists/ digital mentors
4. Community development/ social entrepreneurship education for everybody

From my point of view these 4 groups give different answers to the same question: How can we achieve social change through technology?

1. Basic skills & focus on the individual

From my point of view this approach is different from the others in the sense that there is no explicit social focus, but that all attention is given to the individual, his or her learning process and achievements in learning technical skills.
Activities: Teach and learn technical skills. Tim described it very well: “deliver packages of tried and tested training in operating computers and the Internet which recipients can then use to develop further engagement. A basic skills approach might cover things like using the mouse, using Windows, visiting a website and sending an e-mail.”
Theory of social change: No explicit one.
Challenges: How to make technocal skills relevant to social context of learners? Limited or no focus on using technology as a tool for democratic and social change.

2. Grass root media & giving people a voice

This approach seeks to give people tools and skills to tell their own stories through digital means, thus to give them a voice in their local communities.
Activities: Train people to express their thoughts and to document their life realities through technology
Theory of social change New voices of previously silent and excluded groups or individuals will attract attention attention of decision makers and influence the public discourse by unlocking local knowledge.
Challenges: How to move from voicing a concern to effective local action? Who is targeted with the new information? Who listens?

3. Investing in the connectors/ community activists

I have grouped slightly different concepts here, but the underlying philosophy is that only a small group of people will actually actively create social change and thus it is most efficient to support these connectors and activists. Or as Tim put it: “Investing in the connectors as the best returns will come when you build links between networks. Connecting networks will drive digital inclusion more than putting funds directly to the most excluded.”
Activities: Identify people who are already involved in community and teach them to use technology, so they can be more effective in achieving social change.
Theory of social change: Existing community activists achieve more social change as individuals
Challenges: How to mobilise people to become active who are not yet mobilised? How to establish new networks for change?

4. Community development/ social entrepreneurship education

There is not necessarily one approach to community development, but the underlying philosophy I would want to focus on is that potentially everybody can become a community activist and that everybody can help to change a system.
Activities: Structured process to make people conscious of their environment and to give them social mobilisation skills including technology
Theory of social change: New networks are created in the community and new people create social change
Challenges: What if people don’t want to become active in their local community? How can people become aware? Is this resource efficient? What if communities are no longer geography based?

As you can see each social change theory faces different challenges and there are different circumstances which make one or the other more suitable or more effective. It’s not a question whether one or the other is right or wrong, but it depends on what is the objective of activity?

So the next thing I did was to re-do my mapping of digital inclusion players along these different theories of change:

In this diagram CDI is alone with its focus on community development and social entrepreneurship education. However, when you look outside the field of digital inclusion, organisations like the Citizenship Foundation and people like Kevin Harris use the same or a very similar philosophical approach.

The next step for me was then to match the theories of social change with technology platforms in order to understand better how  digital inclusion players are positionined. The result of this exercise was this technology & social change matrix:

There are two conclusions you can draw from this:

1. CDI’s approach to social change is probably not used anywhere by existing digital inclusion players in the UK.
2. There are many – and often very good and effective – players involved in provision of IT & Internet skills training as well as in digital media skills training.

Talk About Local’s approach to combine digital media training with a focus on supporting social enterpreneurs and existing community activists has rightly received a lot of attention in the part few months, since it promises to create significant value. Also David Wilcox’s Social by Social guide and game is leading edge in this space.

For CDI the conclusion of this exercise was that given the number of strong and successful players in the IT & Internet and digital media spaces, there was little it could effectively contribute – despite its different approach to social change.

The larget opportunity – and the largest experiment – would therefore be to test its social change theory in a space that so far no organisation has consistently occupied: mobile Internet and apps based on smartphones.

In order to illustrate that I’m not completely insane with this suggestion I would like to point to 3 initiatives that have already started to combine mobile applications with social change: FixMyStreet by London-based MySociety, Apps for Democracy by iStrategy Labs in Washington D.C.  and iBurgh by the Pittsburgh municipal public administration.

On the technology development front: When I met him last week Ken Banks from FrontlineSMS told me about current beta-tests for Google’s App Inventor for Android which will hopefully allow non-geeks very soon to build mobile apps…

Based on this analysis the decision for CDI’s prototypes and pilots was taken to create CDI Mobile.

I will be talking about this a bit more during the research launch event in 2 weeks, but any comments on this analysis and mapping are highly welcome!

It’s been a while since my last blog post, but I have been very busy making sense, analysing and writing the final report for our feasibility study. So now it’s more than time to share my next wave of posts with the world, in order to explain the reasoning of what we have decided to do next. [We wil be hosting a report launch event on 18 September 2009 for more information, please click here.]

The first one is around what I would like to call the “digital inclusion value chain”. I know it sounds very corporate, but basically one thing I set out to do was to understand how different organisations & players create value in the space – and how this has actually changed over the last decade. An even though few people talk about this in the space of digital inclusion there is of course a market for ideas and resources where some people are more successful than others in surviving. So you might also call it “historical development of digital inclusion activities and their value today” to keep it simple I call it value chain.

I started to come to grips with this when I talked to some two veterans of digital inclusion:

• Julie Harries from Cosmic in Devon and;
• Gary Copitch from People’s Voice Media in Manchester.

Both organisations are relatively small, but what makes them different from many less successful organisations in my view is that they survived because they constantly adapted to changes in demand, fundring sources and policy initiatives. Let me illustrate what I mean with this.

From its initial starting point in youth ICT training Cosmic has expanded to:

• website services
• 3rd & public sector IT training services
• IT technical support
• IT consultancy

From its founding activity of provinding information sources for community organisations PVM has expanded to:

• Basic ICT skills training
• ICT procurement
• IT technical support
• Social media & community reporters

While Cosmic and PVM do not offer exactly the same type of services, there are many overlaps especially around IT technical support and training. So to sum up my visits and conversations with many different people I have create how the UK digital inclusion value chain has developed over the last decade or so:

As you can see I have added a timeline to illustrate when the respective services reached their peak of attention and value before becoming increasingly commoditised. So while access to IT was considered a high-value and high-priority activity in the late 1990s, social and digital media skills are seen as leading edge today.

Equally when you look at activity levels and focus today (which you could equal with mind share and new resources dedicated to it) areas like Internet cafes and computer recycling services have nearly but disappeared in the UK market, while they were vibrant only a few years back. Also website design services has declined sharply due to the creation of free and easy-to-use webtools like WordPress which allow nearly everybody to create and often even customised websites themselves:

I think you won’t be surprised to learn that initiatives like Talk About Local, MySociety and the Birmingham Social Media Surgeries are receiving a lot of attentioned because they are very well placed in the current buzz about how to use social media effectively in politics, community development and campaigning. Channel 4’s public innovation fund 4iP is investing in many of them because theyclearly address a current need.

So if this is what the digital inclusion value chain looks like today with different degrees of activitiy, I started to ask myself the following question shamelessly copied from Sir Ronald Cohen, co-founder of Apax Partners and Bridges Ventures:

What is the next bounce of the ball for digital inclusion? What are the next topics people are likely to focus on and what are trends in the telecommunication and Internet markets that are relevant to the digital inclusion debate?

One good source to look for trends are Ofcom’s annual Communication Market Reports which are published each year in August. Also the Digital Britain final report and many conversations with people involved in the field, young people using technology and observations of how people are using technology in their daily lives helped.

My conclusion for the digital inclusion value chain was:

• Universal high-speed broadband as a universal utility
• Mobile Internet skills based on the growth in mobile apps and smartphones

So while universal high-speed broadband is the continuation of the access to IT focus in the 1990s, mobile Internet skills are the extension of the digital inclusion focus on skills and training in order to close the Digital Divide. If you need a reminder of how broad the definition of digital inclusion is in the UK, please have a look at this post.

If you are still doubting now that digital inclusion is actually a very dynamic concept, you might want to have a look at the most recent Annual Information Society Report 2009 that was published by the European Commission at the beginning of August. There the EC introduced the new concept of a Second Digital Divide based on the quality of Internet use:

Going beyond basic use of the internet, policy on eInclusion also recognises the importance of reducing disparities in the quality of internet use, the so-called Second Digital Divide. Data show that digital disparities also exist between socioeconomic groups with regard to the types of activities undertaken and the intensity with which they are performed. Results suggest that while all internet users, regardless of age or education, use the internet for communication and for access to information, there are sharp differences, particularly by age, for the more advanced services.

Since we are living in a digital age with new technologies being developed constantly, digital inclusion as a political and socio-economic agenda will not go away any time soon with these redefinitions, but dynamically change over time…

Background: St.Martin’s Estate, Lambeth/ Tulse Hill

My next visit took me back to London. Or more precisely to Lambeth in South London.

Mike Cushman, a research fellow at the Information Systems and Innovation Group at the London School of Economics had been working with the High Trees Development Trust on a very interesting digital inclusion action research project between 2004 and 2006: PENCEIL or “How People Encounter E-illiteracy”

The research papers produced by Mike on:

• Non-users of computers in south London: their experiences and aspirations for use
• I’ve Never Tried It because I Don’t Like It: enabling technology choices

as well as Mike’s presentations and lectures about the subject are amongst the most interesting and grounded contributions to the digital inclusion debate I came across during this project.

Mike Cushman wrote an area profile for PENCEIL which gives an idea of the basic economic and social data and also took pictures of the area:

“Located South of Brixton tube station the oldest parts of St.Martin’s Estate, Abbots Park and High Trees, were built in the late 1950s and 1960s.  The estate consists of 1282 dwellings including low-rise deck access blocks, four 6-storey tower blocks and a small number of houses. he estate consists of 1282 dwellings including low-rise deck access blocks, four 6-storey tower blocks

Analysis of data from the 2001 Census (Office of National Statistics, 2004) describe an estate which suffers considerable, but not extreme, economic hardship and the residents are largely drawn from groups whose lives are characterised by disruption and have limited resources to cope with adverse events such as redundancy, ill-health and school exclusion. The residents, typically, have low status jobs and poor qualifications. They suffer considerable overcrowding and have low car ownership. There are many single parent households and the residents are highly diverse, ethnically.”

Despite significant improvements and investment in regeneration Tulse Hill has seen a range of gang related crime including stabbings and shootings amongst young people in the area. In January 2009 one local resident stated that the violence was as bad as the one he saw growing up in violent suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Organisation: High Trees Community Development Trust

It all started in 1998 when three local residents, one of them Janice Owens, lead a campaign to ensure that the old and derelict St Martins Library Centre was used as a community resource. High Trees Community Development Trust was registered as a charity in February 2000 and received the library building as its asset. and received the library building as its asset.

The 10th Anniversary Report 1998-2008 gives a good overview of the past 10 years while the 2008-2012 Strategic Plan sets out the priorities for the next 5 years. From its humble beginnings the library has now become a vibrant adult learning, afterschool support and community centre which has turned the vision of its original founders into practice.

After years of being a lead trainer on IT and personal development, Margaret Jarrett has recently been become the new director of High Trees. A local resident and mother of 5 children she has been involved with High Trees for a long time. Stephen Kearney, Cyber Cycle Centre administrator and maths tutor, has been living in St Martins Estate since 1980 and was a great source of information for me. He was very generous with his time, showed me around and explained to me in detail the dynamics of the area and the estate in particular.

Activities

Adult learning Centre

High Tree runs a range of successful courses in key skills, ESOL, IT and personal development. In recent years they expanded the reach beyond the estate and became as a Preferred Provider of Adult Learning Services with Lambeth Council. They also started delivering adult learning provision in 15 Children Centres in South Lambeth.

Cyber-cycle Centre

High Trees also acquired the basement in Burnell House on the estate which was transformed into the Cyber-cycle Centre. During 2008 Red Ochre and the Development Trust Association conducted a feasibility study which identified a need for serviced office space for  local start-ups and social enterprises. As a result the Cyber-cycle Centre is now being rented out to different associations.

Prince’s Trust

After the successful completion of a pilot project in 2008 the Prince’s Trust and Lambeth College are running a range of courses for young people excluded from school.

Young People support – Safe Zone

There are a range of other activities run for and by young people locally including twice a week a popular “Safe Zone Homework Club”, a summer holiday programme called “Summer Safe Zone” as well as the “Right Track Saturday School” where young people write and record their own music. [The Summer Safe Zone 2008 was documented on video and once this is up on YouTube I will update this post]. High Trees is also the Lead for the Children’s Fund Being Healthy Projects.

UK Online Centre

High Trees is also a UK Online Centre and offers local people free access to the Internet. In 2008 a local resident completed a fundraising campaign in order to acquire an AbilityNet kit that upgraded one computer for people with sensory and physical impairments. one computer for people with sensory and physical impairments.

Users/ customers

As reflected in the 10th Anniversary report a broad range of people come to High Trees and according to Stephen about 9,000 people use the centre per year.

I think what is especially noticeable about High Trees is the large number of young people attending the centre with more than 50% of all monthly visitors younger than 25 years. Apparently the centre so popular with local young people that High Trees had to start thinking even more on how to work with them and whether a youth-managed space would be feasible.

Since the centre was set up there has been no vandalism by users who clearly consider the space as part of their community according to Margaret and Stephen.  Unfortunately, this is not one of the indicators that is being measured anywhere by funders.

Enterprise

As reflected in High Trees 5-year Strategic Plan entrepreneurship is one of the focus areas in order to achieve more financial sustainability for the centre. Beyond that there are a few examples of entrepreneurship-based projects:

• Youth Enterprise Project delivered by Red Ochre in which High Trees participated
• Community led evaluation of Stockwell URBAN II European Funding as documented in the 10th Anniversary Report. For this project High Trees recruited, trained and employed a pool of Community Researchers to undertake local work around community development, engagement, consultation and involvement. Five of these community researchers established a social enterprise after the completion of the project.

Volunteers

Until today High Trees is still very much a locally rooted and supported organisation with trustees and supporters being recruited amongst local residents. Especially for the different Safe Zone activities young local people are getting involved as mentors and tutors.

Challenges

In 2008 financial sustainability was clearly a challenge due to various multi-year funding streams running out, but it appears that the decline in revenues has been stopped.

Another challenge raised by Stephen and Margaret is the increasingly narrow focus on certain output targets by funders especially from the public sector. Often some of the funding requirements are actually counter-productive. One example: High Trees has to charge people for IT and adult learning courses if they are employed or not receiving any benefits. Due to the large number of people qualifying for free courses, the administrative costs of collecting fees are actually higher than the total amount of fees collected…

Final thoughts

While not expecting too much before I went, I was (positively) surprised by the passion, range of activities and success of High Trees. When Stephen showed me around the estate he told me that for the first 8 years living in St. Martins he was not aware that there was a community centre just a few hundred metres away from his flat. Today you cannot walk around the estate without people greeting him or asking him for advice. When they renovated the Cyber-Cycle Centre he was thinking about installing a panic button, now he laughs at the idea.

For me these small stories tell more about community living and about feeling secure in your local area than what any statistic can tell you. High Trees is not a fancy or modern building, but when spending time there you get a sense of the motivations of the initial founders and their legacy which is filled with life by many local residents of all ages.

Cambridge OnLine

Thanks to UK Online Centres, my next trip took me to Cambridgeshire where Kevin Russell, the regional manager for the East of England, treated me like a Brazilian VIP guest (even though I had to disappoint him with the fact that I’m German) and spent the whole day showing me a range of different centres.

Set-up in 1998 Cambridge OnLine is based in the Hester Adrian Centre of the Papworth Trust, a disability charity, close to Cambridge city centre. Andrew Entecott heads the organisation and talked me through the different projects he manages:

e-learning centre

Based in the Hester Adrian Centre Cambridge Online runs a UK Online learning centre that is primarily focused on disabled and elderly people since over the years demand by other groups has declined:

• 200+ new learners go through the centre per year
• 20 volunteer tutors of whom 70% live with a disability
• 2,000 one-to-one tutorials every year

While at the centre I talked to volunteer tutor Jenny and her 90-year old mentee Jane. Despite her high age Jane enjoys trying out new technologies and her iPod (!) and her computer knowledge are proof of that. Jane is using magnification software since she is visually impaired. I had never thought about this before, but seeing a website massively enlarged you realise how important the structure of a website is to navigating effectively (or mostly not) at that size. It was also interesting to watch the role of Jenny, the tutor who started out as a learner herself: she might not have perfect computer knowledge herself, but she clearly knows the challenge of other people giving quick advice that is difficult to follow by a learner lacking confidence and experience.

Community Access Points Cambridge

In 2009 Cambridge Online obtained again the contract to run 20 community access points (CAP) on behalf of Cambridge City Council. While access at all these points are free users need to call the access points to find out about opening hours and in same cases have to book places. According to Andrew usage of the different access points varies quite dramatically. (more info below)

Website

A volunteer of Cambridge OnLine maintains and updates the Cambridge OnLine news website which serves as the homepage for all community access points in Cambridge, but is also used heavily by learners at home. Andrew told me that the real value of the website might not be obvious to search-engine expert users, but that many of their learners really appreciate an easy-to navigate and up-to-date local website that includes relevant information.

Accessibility

Based on its experience in working with disabled computer and Internet users Cambridge OnLine has been running the Switched On Communities project that distributed accessible computer equipment amongst voluntary sector organisations. It also functions as the Accessibility Champion for voluntary and community sector organisations in the East.

Mobile outreach

From summer 2009 onwards Cambridge OnLine will be operating a mobile UK Online Centre taking laptops, tutors and taster sessions to sheltered homes.

Cambridgeshire Library Services

Next we met Steve Capes, Library Learning Services Manager for Cambridgeshire County Council. He is responsible for the running of 8 Learning Centres based in public libraries and the management of 50 Community Access Points (CAP) outside the city of Cambridge. Set-up in 2004 CAPs are located in isolated rural locations often in unusual locations like pubs, post offices, village halls, churches. Equipped with typically 1-3 up-to-date computers (equipment is replaced every 3 years) the CAPs are free to use for everyone.

Interestingly most CAPs are run by volunteers tutors who provide IT support to learners and regularly organise community events including local history evenings like the one pictured in Meldreth in April 2009. (see also Cambridgeshire Community Archives Network). In order to support these volunteers better and to allow for more knowledge exchange the Community Access Volunteer Exchange (CAVE) was set-up in 2009. CAVE recently received further support from the Nominet Trust.

Equipped with all this knowledge about learning centres and CAPs we hit the road to have a look ourselves at the new public library/ learning centre in Huntingdon and the CAP based in the Ramsey Community Information Centre.

Huntingdon library & learning centre

Built on the site of the old library, the spacious new library building in Huntingdon, North-West of Cambridge,only opened in June 2009. For the first time, both archive and library services operate together under one roof, but the building also hosts a cafe where people can take books to read as well as a Learning Centre. osts a cafe where people can

As in other libraries in the UK Internet access is free to the public, but users need to do 2 things:

• be a registered user and have a library card
• only use the Internet 1 hour (I was told this can be extended if few people are around).re a

The Learning Centre is based on the first floor of the library and runs learndirect courses. The centre manager explained to us that learners were only allowed to take once course once and  otherwise had to register with a different course. Learndirect sets strict targets in terms of learners registered and passing courses, but for Huntingdon these had been pooled between different organisations which allowed at least for some level of flexibility.

Many user of the centre learn IT based on the CLAiT (Computer Literacy and Information Technology) curriculum, a nationally recognised course with compulsory and optional modules that lead to different levels of formal qualification.

There were very few people around on the Thursday afternoon I visited, but this might have been caused by the very hot and sunny weather…

Ramsey Community Information Centre

We then went on to Ramsey even further North to see one of the CAPs. Ramsey Community Information Centre is  based on a central shopping street door to door with a fish-and-chips shop and a pub. It is run by Huntingdonshire District Council and brings a range of information and advice agencies to a central site where residents can readily access them.

The centre hosts 3 computers which are used by a wide range of people interested in learning, sharing historical pictures or surfe the Internet. Learndirect computer courses are only offered on Friday afternoons. A room in the back can be rented by local groups for different courses and activities. All three computers were in used when we visited and according to Amanda Elphick there are quite a broad range of people who get involved in learning through the centre. Every year the council then nominates an Adult Learner of the Year. Different from more exotic locations like pubs this CAP is not run by volunteers, but employees of the District Council – if I have understood this correctly.

(left: Kevin; middle: Amanda; right: Steve)

Final thoughts

It was very interesting for me to see these different UK Online Centres and to get a feel for the different learning environments. While Huntingdon library was by far the largest and newest, the community based access point and the e-learning centre of Cambridge OnLine were buzzing much more. As somebody had explained to me before the different UK Online Centres often fulfil different roles in a learning journey: while community based initiatives can provide more support and help – especially at the beginning – libraries are then often used merely as an access point where little support can be offered by staff. My observations in Cambridgeshire support this. The interesting question is then whether there are enough community-based UK Online Centres to help people to start their learning journey. Are there any statistics on this? Anyone?

Another interesting issue is the role of informal vs. formal education. The learning centres in libraries are actualy only a small step away from officially becoming a formal learning institution. As a result more and more people are yet again thinking about how to attract people who are afraid or uninterested in formal education and learning (often they are male and young).

The initial community-based UK Online Centres were often these types of places where people could slowly but surely re-engage with learning in a soft way. Maybe they will be back in fashion soon? Maybe other places will take over their role? The need for them is obvious to everyone I talked to…

We Share Stuff

While visiting the Black Country I also used the opportunity to talk to a few people involved in Social Media in Birmingham.

Most people involved the the space of digital inclusion in the UK know this, but just for the record: Birmingham is home to the Birmingham Bloggers a loose group of people like Jon Hickman, Michael Grimes and Pete Ashton. Marlon Parker’s post about his recent visit to Birmingham is worth reading here.

I met Stuart Parker from We Share Stuff, a social enterprise which he runs together with Jon Bounds. We Share Stuff  uses social media to engage with young people not in employment, education or training and is currently running a job shop with the Sandwell Youth Offending Team, where young offenders are getting involved in putting together their own websites/ blogs etc. based on their interests.

We Share Stuff is offering a new type of accredited training program via the Open College Network and works with youth case workers and Connexions to offer alternative ways of engaging with certain groups of young people.

The training We Share Stuff provides is still in the pilot phase, but Stuart told me that they are currently looking at different future projects working with youth services to explore the capabilities of social media engagement.

Podnosh

Former BBC journalist, Nick Booth runs Podnosh offering a range of social media services, but also runs the Grassroots Channel where he has been documenting people running local campaigns about issues in their local communities, like the Jihad on Litter campaign supported by the Birmingham Community Empowerment Network (unfortunately it appears to no longer exist due to a lack of funding). Or this one on the Kingstanding Neighbourhood Forum:

For Blog Action Day 2008 Nick and a few other bloggers offered a one-on-one social media surgery for voluntary groups which wanted to learn more about how to use social media and online tools more effectively for their campaigns. The event was so successful that social media surgeries have now become a regular feature of the social media landscape in Birmingham. There are many more initiatives bubbling up in Birmingham like the Big City Plan Talk plain English website set up by the bloggers in order to make it easier for people to contribute to the public consultation run by the city council about Birmingham’s future that closed in April 2009.

Talk About Local

The latest addition to Birmingham’s social media community is Talk About Local. While I actually did not meet Will Perrin during my visit to Birmingham that week but had talked to him before, I think my account of social media in Birmingham would be incomplete without a short description of this new venture going forward.

Following the steps of local news websites like Ellie Stoneley’s former brainchild UK Villages (advertising messages seem to have taken over since she left), Talk About Local is a 4IP-funded project to give local activists in their communities a powerful online voice:

Over the next two years Talk About Local will instigate the creation of volunteer run community websites across England. Kicking off in the West Midlands and working in partnership with the UK Online Centres the ambition is to empower 3,000 people directly in 150 places across nine English regions with a focus on the most disadvantaged areas. Alongside that Talk About Local will create enduring community of local publishers and free online training materials to catalyse a growing network of local web publishers.

Final thoughts

Based on the examples of We Share Stuff, Podnosh and Talk About Local it becomes clear that there are 2 different approaches to social media, community activism and engagement:

1. Podnosh and Talk About Local give voices to people who are already community activists and involved in their local communities, but only need access to better online tools and a voice online to be better heard.
2. We Share Stuff’s work with young offenders on the other hand focuses on a group that is not involved or active in a socially desirable way and therefore tries to build-up capacity by using social media as a way of engagement. People’s Voice Media is probably based in this area as well.

Both can be effective, but the target groups and the effects of both approaches differ significantly.

Background: Black Country & Sandwell

My next stop visiting IT initiatives was the Black Country where Marilyn Burrill, the ICT Gateway Coordinator of the Black Country Consortium, was very kind and spent the better part of that day showing me around and telling me more about the very interesting work they have been doing in the Black Country.

Black Country ICT Gateway is a strategic partnership between the Black Country Consortium and Microsoft  using ICT to deliver community and economic development in deprived communities in the region. Most recently they have been working on a detailed study to review the success and impact of this program. The briefing for the study can be found here and Marilyn told me that the full report will be available soon as well. (I will update the post then)

The Black Country is a loosely defined area north and west of Birmingham. By the late 19th century, this area had become one of the most intensely industrialised in the nation. The South Staffordshire coal mines, the coal coking operations, and the iron foundries and steel mills that used the local coal to fire their furnaces, produced a level of air pollution that had few equals anywhere in the world. It is popularly believed that The Black Country got its name because of pollution from these heavy industries that covered the area in black soot. There is an anecdote about Queen Victoria ordering the blinds lowered on her carriage as the royal train passed through.

The heavy industry which once dominated the Black Country has now largely gone. Mining ceased in the area in the late 1960s, and clean air legislation has meant that the Black Country is no longer black. Much but not all of the area now suffers from high unemployment and is amongst the most economically deprived communities in the UK. This is particularly true in parts of Sandwell and Dudley, and to a lesser extent Wolverhampton. There is a significant ethnic minority population in the region.

Sandwell suffers from significantly higher unemployment than the rest of the West Midlands and Great Britain as the graph from Research Sandwell illustrates (click to enlarge). According to the 2001 census data for Sandwell it ranks worst in all of England & Wales for people without qualifications at 45.6%  (E&W average of 29.1%).

The Organisation: SWEDA

SWEDA or Sandwell Women’s Enterprise Development Agency was founded in 1989 and became a charity in 1998. SWEDA  has moved away from a sole focus on women and today its services serve men and women with a strong focus on young people.  SWEDA offers a range of enterprise, employment, education and IT learning support and closely works with the local public youth service, Connexions.  t

Davinder Kaur is the driving force behind SWEDA today after initially getting involved as a trustee. With a background in business she  runs SWEDA with a mixture of  toughness,  passion, empathy and humour. (Picture: Davinder left; Marilyn right) on the left and Marilyn on the right)

Activities

SWEDA offers a long list of different services around business advice, employment and training which can all be looked up on their website so I’m only focusing on the IT side here:

IT Hub

Funded by the New Deal for Communitities program, SWEDA installed an IT suite in 2003. After some initial teething problems it quickly became one of the most popular and best performing IT suites in the area. Today the IT suite is at the core of what Sweda does with most clients using IT for CV writing, business plan writing, market research, IT training courses and a range of other activities.

Even during the hot afternoon I was visiting and although it was boiling in the IT suite, the small room was in heavy use.

Microsoft Digital Literacy Curriculum

One of the specific courses that SWEDA runs is Microsoft’s Dugital Literacy Curriculum as part of the Black Country ICT Gateway program. SWEDA has an astonishingly high success rate – when I asked for the secret of SWEDA’s success I was presented with Emma and Neil – two of SWEDA’s IT tutors.

Both of them had initially got in touch with SWEDA as clients:

Emma: As a young mother of two children Emma had not worked for many years and wanted to get employment advice. Davinder encouraged her to get involved with SWEDA as a volunteer and within 6 months Emma has moved from having basic computer skills to being a self-declared Excel lover (I never imagined people could be that passionate about Excel!) and a paid IT tutor.

Neil: A local bloke from the area with a typical Black County dialect, Neil had been advised at school that he would be a good administrator and therefore got qualifications in office administration, after a short stint as a temporary employee he was unemployed and approached SWEDA for advice and CV writing support for admin jobs. He also started volunteering with SWEDA and has recently become a paid IT tutor. While his mates work in the construction sector or other manufacturing industries Neil is teaching IT skills, something he would not have imagined a few months ago.

When asked why the Microsoft Digital Curriculum worked so well at SWEDA, both made it quite clear that it had little to do with the reliability and technical aspects of the program, but that they had taken four steps to make it work:

1. Plain language. Neil re-wrote significant parts of the curriculum into Black Country dialect and or plain English so that terms like “authentication” do not create unnecessary confusion for learners.
2. Ability-based selective learning. Emma and Neil are using the exam which was designed by Microsoft to be completed at the end of the course right at the beginning. This allows them to identify the areas for improvement for each individual learner. At the same time this also recognises the areas of the course where learners already have a decent amount of knowledge. As a result, the time spent on the course is only focused on gaps in knowledge giving each learner more time to excel in those areas.
3. Real-life examples. Since the curriculum makes nearly no use of real-life examples, this key element of making learning relevant to their lives was added through a range of examples and case studies.
4. Creating a challenge. And finally, Emma and Neil use their secret weapon in order to motivate learners-  psychological warfare: both of them smiled when they explained that while the curriculum was normally sold to learners as an easy course, they are doing the reverse. They tell everybody that the course is very difficult and hard to pass, but that they will support them as much as they possibly can. As a result learners do not feel stupid when they are struggling with certain elements of the course, but also feel a real sense of achievement when they pass it.

So basically Microsoft’s Digital Literacy Curriculum was adapted in various ways – and now it works! To say that I was impressed by this degree of ingenuity and passion by Emma and Neil is an understatement.

UK Online Centre

Very recently SWEDA received funding and support from UK Online Centres and has now started to offer learning support based on MyGuide.

Users/ customers

In 2008 SWEDA had 1,089 clients using the different services with most of them being young and unemployed.

Enterprise

Since SWEDA started out with enterprise support services for women in order to regenerate the area, entrepreneurship continues to play a significant role in a range of different activities of the organisation.

Volunteers

As illustrated by the examples of Emma and Neil, clients often become volunteers and sometimes then even become employed staff. SWEDA as an organisation and Davider in particular spends time identifying the potential of individuals.

Challenges

Funding and space are currently the biggest challenges for SWEDA. Despite the popularity of its services apparently funding had been cut and SWEDA had to readjust to this while the computer room could easily expand if the space was available for it. Getting young people – male or female – through the door is clearly not an issue.

Final thoughts

Spending time at SWEDA was inspiring for me. Davinder, Emma, Neil as well as Shirley Wright from Connexions and all the other people I met were very passionate and proud about their work, but also authentic in giving enterprise advice with being entrepreneurial themselves.

[One interesting afterthought: Shirley mentioned in our conversation that she had to contribute £400 to a wireless PDA her son is using at this primary school. Apparently, mobile wireless devices are being tested in education contexts... I need to find out more about this.]

Background

My next stop during my exploratory journey was Manchester, where People’s Voice Media (PVM) is based.

Initially set up in 1993 PVM was only recently re-named that way from MCIN or Manchester Community Information Network. It’s probably the oldest surviving community-based digital inclusion initiative in England (and the UK?) and has gone through different cycles of transformation of which PVM is the latest re-incarnation. Thus as a small and flexible organisation is has adapted successfully to changing market conditions to achieve its aim of “Increasing social inclusion through ICT”.

• From limited company -> registered charity -> not-for profit social enterprise: move away from third-sector thinking into a much more entrepreneurial thinking and focus on financial sustainability

• From basic ICT skills training & information sources for community organisations -> ICT procurement & technical support -> social media & community reporters:  clear shift as the nature of the digital divide has changed from basic skills & access more towards content and confidence (while ICT support has become increasingly commoditised)

It terms of activities it is interesting to note, however, that even basic skills training is still offered by PVM depending on the local circumstances and needs by local people – so there is nothing ideological about the service offering, but just a very pragmatic focus on what customers want and are interested in engaging with.

Organisation & services

Currently PVM has 12 staff, 8 freelance tutors and 10 staff community reporters. The last annual accounts are only available for March 2008 on the Charity Commission website which show that annual turnover was about £500,000.

Services

After the renaming exercise PVM offers the following range of services:

• Consultations for local authorities and Primary Care Trusts (health authorities) using social media
• Adverting and affiliation to community websites as targeted media channels
• 2 Social Media Centres inside 2 UK Online Centres thus significantly extending the scope of ICT training
• ICT and digital media training services
• Technical support

Community Reporters

The core of PVM’s activities today is the Community Reporter Program:

• 150 community reporters from deprived communities trained to date, objective of 300 by the end of 2009 and 1,000 by the end of 2011
• community reporters shadow a BBC journalist and receive a community report accreditation badge
• beyond reporting about their local communities community reporters attend conferences and events thus changing the profile (and coverage) of events.

In March 2009 David Wilcox interviewed Gary Coptich PVM’s CEO about the community reporter program which gives a more lively account of what it is all about:

Civic engagement

The objective of the program is to give people a voice about any issue they are interested in from growing their own food to covering local music and sport events. Every now and then civic issues are addressed in the work of community reporters, for example a deaf reporter who highlighted the fact that changes of platforms at Manchester train station are only announced via the speakers thus leaving him unaware of the changes.

Entrepreneurship & employment

While I have not come across an example of community reporters setting up their own companies (Gary, I forgot to ask you about this), quite a few community reporters have moved into further education in order to become media professionals. PVM has built up links to further and higher education institutions like Salford College, The Manchester College, University Of Salford and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Future focus

Going forward PVM is currently working on its plan to become a content provider for local community content or as Gary puts it: “Reuters for the Community”. This would mean than PVM could provide this content to existing or new media partners and might charge a fee for that content.

Final thoughts

From my point of view PVM is one of the most interesting organisations around digital inclusion and social media in the UK precisely because it has been around for such a long time and is more thriving than ever. Different from many other organisations PVM has managed to balance the agenda of public funders with its own vision for social inclusion through ICT – by serving different agendas at the same time. It is now in the process of de facto turning itself into a media organisation in the broadest sense.

While Gary acknowledges that informal and unaccredited learning is the most difficult part of PVM’s service portfolio fund it is a crucial and important part of its work to engage with deprived communities.

Background: Shipley – Windhill and Bolton Woods

With 2 weeks delay, I finally got around to write up my next batch of visits…

Based on a recommendation by Kevin Harris my next stop visiting different organisations across the UK took me to Shipley, north of Bradford and north-west of Leeds.

Margery Ellis who is IT tutor at Shipley College was very generous with her time and spent the whole morning showing me around the area, talking about her experience and the work she has been doing in two different community centres since 2000. around the area, talking about her experience and the work she has been doing in two different community centres since 2000.

As part of Bradford, Shipley is subdivided into different wards. While Shipley College is based in the Shipley ward the two community centres we visited are part of the Windhill and Wrose ward: Windhill and Bolton Woods. According to Bradford’s 2001 census data 14,972 people live in the ward including the communities of West Royd, Windhill, Wrose, Owlet and Bolton Woods.

A few statistics based on the 2001 census for the ward include:

• 32.6% of the population under 24 years of age
• 8.2% of all households lone parent families
• 25% of households without central heating or without sole use of bath/inside toilet
• >30% of households do not have access to a car/van
• 38.1% of households have at least one person with a long term limiting illness
• 5.9% of economically active people are unemployed
• 21.2% of people are economically inactive due to permanent sickness or disability
• 34.8% of unemployed have not worked for two or more years
• 13.1% of unemployed have never worked
• 34.8% of unemployed are under 24 years of age

More background information on the ward can also be found here. In terms of building infrastructure not that much has changed when comparing this photo from Bolton Woods in the 1940s and the one I took during my visit:

Windhill & Bolton Woods Community Centres

Marge is working as an IT tutor for Shipley College, a further education provider based in the Unesco world heritage site of Saltaire. For the last 10 years Shipley College’s IT tutors  have  been running ICT courses and maintaining IT equipment in the Windhill and Bolton Woods Community centres. Both centres were among the first 5 community based Learning Centres studied in depth by Kevin Harris that eventually led to the creation of UK Online Centres based on the recommendations of the PAT15 working group of the Social Exclusion Unit in 2000.

Activities

During the past few years the focus of ICT learning has shifted quite significantly from informal, community-based learning to accredited learning. Today people who come into one of the  community centres will be treated differently based on their age profile:

• Retired & the elderly: Once they come into the centres they can spend 9 hours on informal non-accredited taster sessions, but then they will be required to sign-up for fee charging accredited course afterwards if they want to continue learning (free for those on benefits)
• Working age: Only 6 hours of taster sessions can be granted by the college to them and then they will be required to move onto a level 2 accredited learning course

In the Bolton Woods Community Centre, IT one-on-one tutorials run three times a week for two hours each. Outside these hours learners can theoretically come to the centre, but since there is a creche in the building direct access to the room is restricted. A member of staff has to unlock the IT room for individual learners who have to have a password for Shipley College’s network. As a result very few people use the IT room outside the course hours. A member of staff has to unlock the IT room for individual learners who have to have a password for Shipley College’s network. As a result very few people use the IT

In the Windhill Community Centre, there is a mixture between IT workshops and volunteer supported drop-in sessions where learners can practice their IT skills 5 days a week. The centre also has 2 computers which are free access without any password required to use them. As a result about 200 people use the tutorials and drop-in sessions per week as estimated by Alison Swiszczowski, a Community Development Worker at the centre. Due to a cut in UK Online Centre funding the centre has had to limit the time tutors are available for learners.

Users/ customers

According to Marge most learners at both centres are female. During the daytime young females are especially attracted by the creche facilities. There is also a fair amount of people who want to improve their literacy skills for English as a second language.

Young men are the group that is least attracted by the learning offering available at the centre. According to Marge more men came when they had a male tutor a few years ago, but there are likely to be other reasons for young men getting less involved in accredited learning. As Carol in Bolton Woods put it: If young people are 3rd generation unemployed in their families, there is little incentive to start learning now during the recession from a pure employment perspective.

UK Online Centres published a case study about one of Windhill learners in a recent research publication (click to enlarge):

Enterprise

None of the two centre capitalises on its existing IT infrastructure to offer services to the local community beyond the learning offering. The Windhill Community Centre runs a furniture store in town and the cafe in the centre is managed as a separate social enterprise.

Volunteers

Both community centres are run by a combination of paid staff and local volunteers. Especially in the Windhill Centres volunteers play a role during the drop-in IT sessions to help other learners. Since the IT tutors are employed by Shipley college there is little room for volunteers to become IT training staff themselves.

Challenges

The most important challenge for both community centres and Shipley College is funding and the conditions attached to this funding. When talking to different people involved in the centres it became especially obvious to me that there is a clear tension between community-driven informal learning and IT skills, e.g. to create and document local events and memories, and employment and skills focused accredited learning targets – at least as practiced today. Often accredited learning needs to be completed in a certain periods of time, thus not allowing for different learning speeds.

Since funding for informal learning programs like UK Online Centres have been cut significantly – despite their success in re-integrating people back into learning and providing significant boosts in confidence – the moving away from community based learning is seen as a significant loss.

Final thoughts

While both community centres and the IT tutors from Shipley College were amongst the leaders for community-based IT learning and they continue to do great work, their efforts appear to have run slightly out of steam. This is especially the case because funding has increasingly focused on quite narrowly defined skills (e.g. though the Learning and Skills Council) while more flexible funding streams like UK Online Centres have nearly dried up. Windhill Community Centre is addressing this by using more volunteer mentors, while in Bolton Woods IT course provision appears to have gone down.

There is an open question whether clearly defined accredited learning takes into account the fact that many people in Shipley lead lives where education and learning do not play a significant role and therefore will require more time and effort in order to engage in a learning context. Also it appears that community-led learning which for example uses audio, video and pictures to capture local history cannot be accommodated in this learning framework, although this can serve as a first step into more formal learning environments. The issue runs significantly deeper than what learning and skills targets might suggest.

Shipley might in particular benefit from a renaissance of informal learning initiatives and support for locally driven learning – but in the current economic environment this still remains a challenge.

Background: The Meadows

Yesterday I finally started to visit community organisations working on digital inclusion outside London. Thanks to UK Online East Midland’s regional manager Jo Fisher, I had the opportunity to see two in Nottingham together with Helen Milner, Managing Director of UK Online Centres.

The first one was Go Digit All based in The Meadows area of Nottingham.

Simply known as the Meadows, this part of Nottingham is just south of the train station and the city centre.  Most of the houses are council owned and the newer part of the area consists of houses built in the 1970s around a series of alleyways and footpaths which has led to a maze-like feel in some parts, and means access from one area to another by car can be tricky. The neighbourhood is quite mixed with both British white and black people primarily of lower income.

The Meadows came to public attention a few years ago in particular for several incidents of gun violence between rival gangs from The Meadows and St. Anns. The last shooting was the murder of 17-year old Nathan Williams in the Bridgeway Centre in 2006. Things appear to have improved since then, but there are still reports about violence and crime in the area. While the Meadows was not included in Nottingham’s regeneration efforts in the past, a few weeks ago the local council launched a public consultation a few weeks ago to completely regenerate the area in the next few years.

Until today unemployment is twice the average of Nottingham as a whole, and 38% of Meadows residents aged 16 to 74 have no qualifications according to the neighbourhood plan report.

The Organisation: Go Digit All

Go Digit All is located in the Bridgeway Centre in one of the shops. Set-up in 2001 Go Digit All is run as a social enterprise incorporated as a company limited by guarantee, although it does not have charitable status (because of the administrative effort involved). Its board of trustees is composed of different members of the local community. Its board of trustees is composed of different members of the local community.

Natasha Johnson-Richards is the core driver behing this venture. She initially ran the project in the women centre, but then got funding from the Active Communities Fund to buy equipment and rent an empty shop in the shopping centre area.

A mother of four, Natasha is a local Meadows resident together with several members of her family. A mother of four, Natasha is a local Meadows Meadows resident together with other of four, Natasha is a local Meamother of four, Natasha is a local Meadows Meadows resident together

Activities

UK Online Centre & LSC provider

Go Digit All became a UK Online Centre in 2003 and since then has been providing free access to people without internet skills and receives funding from UK Online Centres “Learning Journeys” fund. Go Digit All is also member of the Enable consortium of third sector organisations in Nottingham which successfully bid to become a Learning and Skills Council (LSC) provider and therefore Go Digit All offers additional online learning courses which lead to accreditations and qualifications.

Internet cafe

Go Digit All runs as an internet cafe for people who are using the computers not for learning or courses and charges £1.50 per hour for usage.

Printing services

It offers a range of printing and scanning services which need to be paid for as well as a T-shirt printing service. (Free T-shirt printing is also used by Go Digit All to increase the impact of their outreach activities to attract new learners at events.)

IT support

Because Go Digit All has Wifi it offers local people the possibility to install and support their laptops if they have technical problems.

Youth radio program

A second room in the back was renovated and furbished with 3 Macs to create a community radio program which is run for 16+ year olds in cooperation with local youth services. A sec

Access for other community groups

Access to computers is also rented out to other community groups against a small fee. Access to computers is also rented out to other community groups against a small fee.

Mobile ICT Outreach unit

Go Digit All acquired a mobile ICT Outreach unit from a failed private company and is in the process of setting-up a broad range of outreach activities by attending local music festivals and events to reach groups who would not engage with ICT and learning otherwise. atten

Future projects

Natasha is currently in discussions to take over another community building in order to have it run by Go Digit All as well.

Users/ customers

Natasha estimates that Go Digit All engages about 45 new people every month or which about 30 would sign-up for courses or online learning programs. In total she thinks that 60-75 people come to the shop on a monthly basis of which several people come several times a week or even daily.

Most people who come to Go Digit All are women of different age groups since they are apparently keener to get involved in learning than men.

Enterprise

Natasha mentioned that local people have approached her to get advice on setting-up companies. There is some support from a Prince’s Trust mentor. Currently, 2 people are coming to use Go Digital computers to set-up their own companies and Natasha advices them on finding information about business plans online.

Another anecdote she mentioned was that somebody who had an health issue approached her and they found information about this online before they would turn to the Health Centre… (I hope I remember this story correctly)

Volunteers

Go Digit All co-operates with Action for Employment to place volunteers in the shop and give them work experience, but Natasha noted that most of these volunteers do not come from the local area, but from other parts of Nottingham.

Challenges

Natasha thought that her biggest challenge going forward was funding. Most of Go Digit All income is derived from delivering LSC and UK Online Centre funded work while other services only make up a small part of Go Digit All’s income.

When asked which groups she would like to engage more, Natasha mentioned that young black men were the least interested in the learning opportunities that were on offer from Go Digit All.

In her eyes there was a general gap in provision for young people who are not in education, eployment or training (NEET) since funding priorities are focused on young people with extremely low qualifications (under level 2), the long-term unemployed and young families/ mothers. Young people who are not meeting these criteria are not really being targeted by funders at the moment.

Final thoughts

I was deeply impressed by the pragmatism and passion with which Natasha is running Go Digit All inside the community in the Meadows. Based on our conversation she is clearly the core driver behind the social enterprise, but has been very successful in getting local support and buy-in to expand into a range of areas that serve the needs of local people.

[Matt, a volunteer at the shop filmed quite a large part of our conversation and I will posts some of this here as well as an update once I get hold of the material]