Digital Activist's Blog

European Year of Volunteering – The UK leg of the EYV11 tour event has continued with a range of organisations staffing stands in the market place and the delivery of a diverse selection of talks and conferences on the topic of volunteering.

The Big Society Network took the lead on monday. Some volunteers from Nexsters,which is a programme for building social entreneurship, were there offering their case studies. Spring, which has two objectives, one being a research project that looks at network technologies and the other, a program for employers, which measures the social impact in businesses is another part of the Big Society Network. This program also employs consumers to look at the businesses,too.

After the general discussion of digital inclusion and volunteering with my counterpart we headed in and were immediately presented with a colourful display of inspiration. Short intro and it was over to us to discuss our common areas of concern.  Intergenerational and publicising issues were amongst other concerns.

Accessing the digital world is a major transition and an expensive one too. It Can Help and Ability Net Tools,purely run by volunteers, have now joined forces and were holding our first workshop.  It was clear that input was needed for publicising to your local communities for recruiting volunteers and receiving clients. John from Microsoft, new to the idea of digital inclusion/exclusion and volunteering, was keen to inspire everybody with how effective networking can be. Start Here is a company he mentioned and is a good source of information for networking and references to other partners and projects.

Have you heard of talking tags for the blind? Or open source google maps, which can be used to denote where your events are currently being held.    I remember using face book for doing a similar thing, it proved to be ineffective. Try googling “gpii” the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure. This will give insight into the new concept of setting up a profile/database over the internet, which is stored and then can be used with public means of technology, interesting…

Our second workshop included discussion about the changing demographics and how buddying can be used for future learning.The idea of Benefits messaging is something that was highlighted and is something I believe that we all should be introducing to our projects. The DAIN project has held genealogy  events across the east midlands and it is something that provides for social interaction and aids computer skills.

Guess what, Learn Direct are empowering DA’s too. Soon there will be a course, which recognises the skills digital activists are using. How much will that cost and what opportunities will arise from this…ermm..please comment