This last week, we’ve been out and about in the community sharing digital skills, running drop-in sessions, and helping out partner organisations.
Here’s what we got up to…
Digital Drop In Sessions
We ran six drop-in sessions this week – these were at:
- Newhaven Day Club, with Fiona, on Tuesday morning
- Kempton House, Peacehaven, with Jim and Lia, on Wednesday afternoon
- Age Concern, Eastbourne, with Jim and Lia, on Thursday afternoon
- Lewes House of Friendship, with Jim and Sam, on Friday afternoon
- TRHQ, with Fiona, Sean, Sam, and Luke, on Thursday and Friday afternoon
Pop-up energy and digital support
On Wednesday, Sean and Sam headed to St Wilfrid’s Hospice to run a pop-up stand, focussing on digital and energy support.
We’re able to get out and about to run these events thanks to funding from SGN and Centre for Sustainable Energy.
There were many leaflet packs taken, containing plenty of energy saving tips to keep the bills down, and some digital support too!
It was also great to chat to so many of the great St Wilfrid’s team – thank you Kathryn for organising!
Wish Tower Friends
We’re currently working with the Wish Tower Friends to host and build a new website for them.
The Martello Tower located on the western end of Eastbourne’s seafront is an iconic historic building, with a great group of volunteers who look after it, and, when possible, open it up to the public for tours and open days.
On Tuesday, Sean led our young team down to the Wish Tower so they could have a look around and get a feel for the site, and take some photos to use for the website. Thank you to Roman for touring everyone around and for great feedback on the website so far.
Hastings HEART Info Hub
We’ve worked with Hastings HEART for a little while now, including helping them with their website hosting and emails.
They’re soon launching their expanded Info Hub in the Town Hall. It’s currently open Weds-Sat, 10-4.
So that they can provide better digital support, we’ve donated them two desktop PCs, monitors, accessories, and a Chromebook. Their visitors will now be able to get help completing digital tasks online!
Chris and Sean took everything over on Friday and set up appropriate visitor accounts, with software pre-loaded and all browsers set to wipe history and cached data after each user.
Hastings Foodbank
As part of our ongoing work with Citizens Advice 1066, we’ve been preparing and donating devices to take over to Foodbank users.
On Friday, Chris and Sean took over a phone and a laptop, and showed two people how to get started using them.
One said “you have no idea how much difference this will make” – and that’s why we do it!
Teens
And to round the week off, we finished with where TechResort started – our Saturday coding and making club, Teens.
We saw Scratch, Python, and LEGO Robots being worked on this time – led by Sean, Tyler, Monty, and TechResort alumni, James.
And we’ll keep at it!
We’re continuing to work tackling digital exclusion, sharing digital skills, and helping young people.
We worked on over 20 devices this week, donated in to us from kind members of the local community – the ones that are suitable will all shortly be donated out to those in need of a device for essential online access. Your old device could be a lifeline to others – read more about the scheme.
You can learn more about all of our ongoing work on our projects page!
With the help of grants and partnerhships with: UK Shared Prosperity via Eastbourne Borough Council, Citizens Advice 1066, Lewes District Council, SGN/Centre for Sustainable Energy, Wish Tower Friends/National Lottery Heritage, Local Giving, and The Blagrave Trust, we have helped 24 people this week, and given local young people vital work experience.