Housing Association Brings Technology to Village Life
March 05 2007
A Birmingham housing association has invested in excess of £10,000 in refurbishing a disused shop premises which will provide a much needed computer learning centre for the local inner city community.
Bournville Village Trust this week officially handed over the keys to the Phoenix Learning Centre to BCJ-Bordesley. The drop in centre in Bordesley Village, Birmingham will offer various computer courses including Pre-Clait (Computer Literacy and Information) & Clait as well as offering help to residents on literacy and numeracy, writing CVs, completing application forms for jobs and helping to fill in passport forms.
Bournville Village Trust which has a thriving estate in Bordesley has provided twelve computers for the centre which all have internet and wireless broadband access. The IT department at the housing association is providing technical support for the life of the computers.
The money invested was used to refit the shop unit into a computer suite, decorate and carpet and add the necessary furniture, projector screen and kitchen equipment.
The Phoenix Learning Centre will be run by BCJ-Bordesley, headed by the project co-ordinator Ceciel Harris. The very successful Bloomsbury Cyber Junction which offers a similar service to the Nechells community has been in operation for seven years.
Already fifty people are signed up for classes at the Phoenix Learning Centre and all the courses are OCR (Oxford-Cambridge RSA) certificated.
Karen Turvey at Bournville Village Trust said: "I believe the success that BCJ-Bordesley has is due to the fact that they don´t have a rigid timetable. Students don´t have to attend every class, but they pop in for an hour if they want to. They all work at their own pace and there are always at least two members of staff to help out with any queries."
