Citizens Online helping residents in Gwynedd with ICT skills

Cartrefi Cymunedol Gwynedd(CCG), a local Housing Association approached Citizens Online for assistance in improving ICT use amongst residents at their sheltered housing estates. Four of these sheltered housing estates were identified as being prototypes for the way forward in improving ICT use as they had central meeting/ communal rooms and on-site wardens who were keen on assisting.

Citizens Online were able to supply a refurbished PC for each site, as well as arrange a taster day for each site in order to garner interest from the residents. We used a local close partner, Deudraeth Cyf, to run the taster sessions.

CCG were to find funding for broadband for the locations, which they did, and then decided that they would push forward with the project and set the wheels in motion to get the broadband set up and taster sessions running as soon as possible.

On August 14th, a taster session was run at two of the estates. The picture is from the afternoon session, at Hafan Elan, Llanrug. Six residents attended (11 were due to attend but a viral illness had laid five residents low the day before). The session was run by Deudraeth Cyf, focusing on the advantages of ICT to rural communities, and ease of use of Skype and email. Due to technical problems getting broadband in on time, Daniel (Gwynedd Project Coordinator) tethered training laptops to and iPhone in order for session to continue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feedback given by attendees was very positive and they will be encouraging other residents and local people in the village to attend subsequent sessions.

A further taster session has been arranged for Hafan Elan in September, and invites will be sent to residents of other estates that CCG have in the village (non sheltered), with a view of establishing  a course of IT lessons for beginners on-site, run by Deudraeth.

Related Project

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  Gwynedd