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Groundwork West Durham

All members of the Groundwork West Durham Youth Team use the Laptop Computers to assist them in their work with groups of young people.

One of the main uses is for young people to produce various items for local community projects. Examples include the Stanhope Blue Young Voices Riverbank Conservation project and the Cockfield Recreation Ground Project. These projects are being organised and led by the young people themselves. The groups use the Laptops for producing letters to various agencies such as Parish Councils, Local Authorities, Police, Community Groups and Funding Agencies. They are also used to enable the young people to produce relevant documents such as flyers, posters, surveys and newsletters using publisher software.

The Laptops are an important resource for the outreach project based style of work. They mean projects can be progressed efficiently and effectively as computers can be transported more easily to meetings than large groups of young people can be to computers.

Another main part of our work is delivering life skills courses for unemployed young people. The laptops have been used to produce CV’s, action plans and profiles of achievement for City and Guilds accreditation. These profiles also include photographic evidence produced using the scanner and colour printer.

The computers have also been used in computer introduction sessions where young people have been able to spend uninterrupted time trying out various programs /software to encourage basic confidence and skills in computing.

The Internet access and e-mail system is a bonus which allows both young people and workers to access information that is beneficial to the projects and also to communicate with agencies supplying this information e.g. British Youth Council.

One of the groups that use the computers on a regular basis is Stanhope Blue Young Voices. Two members of the group said "The laptops are used in our group for setting out and designing our poster for the Otter Project that we are doing at the moment and they are going to be used to write letters to people for sponsors for our residential that we are planning to do in the summer months. We think the laptops are useful because they are portable, easily used by all of the group, can be used in the most remote places, light weight, Internet accessible and also have scanner and printers".

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