FRAE Fife Ltd
Charity registered in Scotland SC041678
FRAE Fife was established in 1999, and is an independent voluntary organisation, with charitable status, focusing on race and equality issues. It works with public sector agencies, service providers, policy makers, and over 35 local ethnic minority community organisations to tackle the social exclusion, racism, disrimination, and lack of access to jobs and training experienced by many ethnic minority individuals and families across the whole of Fife. Current key activities include: - An Advocacy and Legal Advice Service for refugees and aslyum seekers - An Employability and Training project - Advocacy and Translation services - A climate Challenge Fund project tackling Fuel Poverty Recent activities have included a Health Advocacy Programme, a Youth Sports Project, the delivery of Equality and Diversity training to public and voluntary sector staff, and the completion of a comprehensive Mapping Exercise of Fife’s BME communities, to identify their needs and priorities.
- From 1 March 2017 to 30 March 2017
- Award: £9,859.99 via Call 4
- Data published on 360Giving
- http://www.fraefife.com
Project plan
Project description
This project seeks to put digital skills training at the heart of their services. Volunteer Community Champions will work with the target community groups supported by a sessional worker, and the FRAE Fife Coordinator. The target is to provide 5 digital skills training 10 week programmes for 30 individuals per programme, comprising six participants from each of the 5 target community groups. Each participant will be assessed at the start on their level of knowledge or competence, if any, in using IT, and progress will be monitored. Each participant will receive one to one tuition based on their level of need. Each participant will be registered with Digital Fife, and have supported access to a wide range of tuition module.
Project milestones
Phase 1
Project participants have the necessary confidence and motivation to use IT effectively
Phase 2
Demonstrate knowledge of and ability to use, email, messaging, social media. Understand internet security
Phase 3
Able to create manage and store basic files and documents
Phase 4
Confident in using internet to gather and store information, make online applications, buy items online
Evaluation
Updates
The project has been delivered exclusively in the Fife area. The main delivery centres were Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy, and Thornton. The travelling community will benefit from an outreach service based in Heathery Wood Travellers site in Thornton. In Dunfermline Muslim Women have used the facilities of Dunfermline Mosque, and some women groups used St Clair Hall in Kirkcaldy where the Digital Champions and Sessional Worker can be assured that there will be a safe and supportive environment where participants can learn together, share skills and knowledge, and if required have access to crèche/child-minding facilities. Romanian community face many barriers to social inclusion, often based on prejudiced and unfounded assumptions. They regularly use a church hall in Kirkcaldy for meetings and social occasions, and the learning sessions were held there using laptops. We worked on technical skills, commencing with basic knowledge such as how to use the computer, Windows, Internet browsers and various online activities including: • creating email address and managing the email account • creating simple documents in Word, editing saving and sending by email • managing online accounts, downloading and uploading online contents (developed with participants who are registered with Jobcentre Plus and need to manage their own Universal JobMatch accounts) • responsible online shopping, secure online payments (Amazon, ebay) • managing internet banking • creating Government Gateway IDs for benefits/taxes/contributions purposes • managing HMRC tax credits online
During this period of the project, participants from the Romanian community, Local Mosque and Muslim women were involved in (21) IT training session. Although 3 sessions were held at the local mosque, the rest taken place at the IT suite in our office. The training attracted good attendance (27), with much enthusiasm. Another 4 people were moved into a more advanced module in the aim of applying for online certificates. The contents for the beginner's course was the same as in the previous training. The advanced training included: • managing online accounts, downloading and uploading online contents (developed with participants who are registered with Jobcentre Plus and need to manage their own Universal Job Match accounts) • social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and benefits other than socialising (job search, free access to information, examples of useful different pages and groups available worldwide and for residents of Fife – 'facebay fife', 'jobs in fife', etc. • comparing prices and responsible choice of services (Car Insurances/Energy providers) • MS Excel, Access, power point and publisher
The project has been delivered exclusively in the Fife area. The main delivery centres were Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy, and Thornton. The travelling community will benefit from an outreach service based in Heathery Wood Travellers site in Thornton. We have delivered Health Advocacy programmes in this location, and accept that the Gypsy/ Traveller community are often the butt of local hostility and resentment, and are normally reluctant to participate in activities in community managed premises. In Dunfermline Muslim Women have used the facilities of Dunfermline Mosque, and some women groups used St Clair Hall in Kirkcaldy where the Digital Champions and Sessional Worker can be assured that there will be a safe and supportive environment where participants can learn together, share skills and knowledge, and if required have access to crèche/childminding facilities. Romanian community face many barriers to social inclusion, often based on prejudiced and unfounded assumptions. They regularly use a church hall in Kirkcaldy for meetings and social occasions, and the learning sessions were held there using laptops. Older Asian People's Association are affiliated to FRAE Fife, and hold their meetings in our offices. Along with other members of Fife wider BME communities who are identified as having no basic digital skills, they had access to our IT suite in Victoria Road where there are desktops and laptops as well as a printer, scanner and free WIFI access, and the support of our administration officer. We also provided support to Polish and other East-European individuals; registered with Jobcentre Plus in managing their Universal Jobmatch accounts and developing some basic digital skills in order to allow them updating and maintaining those independently.
Within the last 3 months of the Project (July-October) we delivered Digital Skills group training to 35 individuals mainly from Roma minority from Kirkcaldy and 12 individuals from Bulgarian and Polish community groups. 10 sessions were concentrated around building confidence in using IT equipment (laptops & PCs), understanding basic terminology related to digital skills including Internet, online Safety and general concept of virtual world and encouraging the participants to discover the benefits of IT knowledge. We worked on technical skills, commencing with basic knowledge such as how to use the computer, Windows, Internet browsers and various online activities including: • creating email address and managing the email account • creating simple documents in Word, editing saving and sending by email • managing online accounts, downloading and uploading online contents (developed with participants who are registered with Jobcentre Plus and need to manage their own Universal JobMatch accounts) • responsible online shopping, secure online payments (Amazon, ebay) • managing internet banking • creating Government Gateway IDs for benefits/taxes/contributions purposes • managing HMRC tax credits online • social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and benefits other than socialising( job search, free access to information, examples of useful different pages and groups available worldwide and for residents of Fife – 'facebay fife', 'jobs in fife'etc • access to free online resources for learning English for participants with poor English • comparing prices and responsible choice of services (Car Insurances/Energy providers)
