BT Get IT Together Award

This award is open to any public, private or not-for-profit, UK-based organisation that is helping people to get online.

We are looking for inspiring organisations who are supporting digital inclusion by enabling and encouraging people to get online.

This could be through projects such as organising a company-wide volunteering scheme for employees to help others get online, the sponsorship of computing and other technology, or the production of training materials that helps people learn about the internet and get them started.

The winning applicant will clearly demonstrate how they are encouraging and enabling people to get online.

WINNER

Preston City Council’s Community Engagement Department

Citizenzone is a seven and a half tonne interactive vehicle packed with technology that allows Preston Council and its partners to take free internet training direct to the heart of the community.

With six desktop PCs and six laptops and a chair lift, it is a mobile information centre that enables the Council and reach people who often do not access other training or support. Courses have taken place in rural villages village hall car parks, and even the car park of a local Indian restaurant.

FINALISTS

Joining Communities Limited

Joining Communities is a Social Enterprise based in Lancashire that works with jobseekers, unemployed and the workless. Services are available at their centre in Leigh or in one of the 400 community centres in the area.

This includes work with the over 50s in sheltered accommodation, lone parents and young people who are not in employment, education or training.

They are also delivering courses to raise IT skills in response to the changes in the way benefits system work.

Castle Community Network

Over the past 3 years Castle Community Office has provided a range of free informal learning activities for over 300 adults in Scarborough.

Most of them are between 50 and 80 and are nervous of computers when they start.

They are taught in small groups with volunteer helpers and are now using the computers to communicate with friends and family, help with their voluntary work and even, creating websites and laptop advice sessions to help them buy their own computer.