About the SWITCH Project

Background
The idea for Switch came about through a chance conversation between members of the Sikh community and staff of the Scarman Trust early in 2000. Community members were finding all sorts of barriers stopping them being able to access learning opportunities available mainly through computer links. It was problem some other minority communities were also.facing. Uniquely a number of communities agreed to work together to find ways around the problem - problems also faced by the homeless, some disabled people and travellers.

The Scarman Trust offered to take a lead role in developing solutions with its partners, which by the summer of 2000 had reached over a dozen community groups. We discovered that monies might be available through the New Opportunities Fund and from the National Assembly of Wales via its Capital Modernisation Fund and a bid was drawn up.

It proved very useful to work alongside Cardiff County Council's Lifelong Learning section who were helping community groups in Ely and St Mellons facing similar problems. This was particularly in jointly developing contacts and permissions to access materials from Learning Providers and in developing IT systems.

In May of 2001 we learnt that the bids had been successful with NOF giving nearly £150k over 3 years and the NAFW nearly £140k. Along the way we've had many offers of both practical assistance and small financial inputs to run additional courses.

In September 2001 we appointed a project co-ordinator - Kerry Evans.
Switch is now a constituted group with a Chair -Jas Singh.

Who are we?

By the time of completing the number of community groups, from South Cardiff, had expanded to 15 plus the Scarman Trust - 16 current members. We are :

-BVSN Wales Black Voluntary Sector Network Wales
-MENFA Mentoring for All
-CASH Cardiff Action for the Single Homeless
-CGSG Cardiff Gypsy Sites Group
-Circles Network
-MEWN Cymru Minority Ethnic Women Network Cymru
-Butetown Youth Pavillion
-BAWSO Black Association of Women Stepping Out
-Cardiff Yemeni Community Association
-SPA 'Somali Progressive Association
-Bhatra Sikh Community
-Shree Kutchi Leva Patel Samaj (Cardiff)
-Loudoun Square Community Centre
-Butetown Community Arts and Education Centre, Slipper Baths
-Bangladeshi Womens Group Cardiff
-The Scarman Trust (Wales)

It has always been our intention to continue to grow and take on new members opening up the opportunities to a larger audience. We have decided not to consider any further expansion until the systems are tried and tested - hopefully by the middle of 2002. There is an expectation that all members will get involved in aspects of the project management and new members would be expected to make a similar commitment.

Links to similar projects
We have already formed close working links with similar projects in Cardiff and Pyle and intend to develop a network for mutual support, problem solving and joint development of ideas.

What can Switch do for you ?
For now Switch is concentrating on tackling barriers to learning in our communities. Each community member has its own centre at which learning activities can take place. We intend these to act as an alternative place of learning for community members who are not able, for whatever reason, to do so at colleges, community education centres, schools etc.

We are especially keen to improve people's access to and familiarity with computers at the same time. Each community centre will have a small suite of computers networked to a Switch website. Through this learners will be able to gain access to (and register if they want) many thousands of courses on line from learning to read and write to degrees across a vast range of subjects. Learners will be assisted in doing so by trained volunteers at each site who will also provide long term support - if you are interested in volunteering please contact us.

To see what choice is available go to the learning page and click on one of the linked sites.

Not every thing will be done via computers. We are also looking to run short courses at different sites, particularly for those needing help with reading, writing, basic numbers and English. Initially a number of trainers have offered to help in this but in time we hope to train our own trainers - this may also be something you are interested in.

Hopefully most courses will be free but we may be able to find ways of helping with the cost. If you wish to move on from a Switch site to more traditional learning establishment we can help you make the choices and provide contacts.

To help learners make appropriate choices of courses we will offer to do a "learning needs analysis" with you.

Volunteers
To do all these things we also need to recruit and train over 50 volunteers. We will offer an initial 2 day training package learning the skills to mentor and coach learners and do learning needs analyses. We will follow this up with a day's further training every 3 months and a regular monthly support group. Following help from the European Social Fund Objective 3 Programme we will have a volunteer co-ordinator to organise all this and be able to pay a fee for coming to training and support groups and for doing a learning needs analysis. The skills you learn as a volunteer can be of benefit in everyday life, to the community and in helping you develop a career.

Our aims
The projects aims as set out in our constitution are simply :

-To develop a steering group to manage the projects that is representative of the target communities.
-To supply ICT equipment and training packages to local community access points.
-To encourage local community participation in accessing training opportunities by providing training that is sensitive to individual capacity and access levels.
-To involve members of the community in the development and delivery of the project.
-To build the capacity of target communities by the development of local mentors to help facilitate in the delivery of training and to provide support for trainees.

The future
We have already identified a number of common issues adversely affecting our communities that we feel Switch can do something about. Employment and training, advice and guidance, health and especially creating more active and vibrant communities.
In the learning field we want to increase both membership and range of courses and materials. One of our major tasks will be to expand the amounts available in other languages and identify gaps in provision. Anyone interested in similar objects please contact us.