Ballarat.vic.au
Ballarat ICT Ltd, as the representative community organisation for Ballarat, was awarded a two year licence for the domain ballarat.vic.au in March 2006. With the assistance of City of Ballarat, an industrial grade server was commissioned and built. Hosting space and connectivity is provided by Neighbourhood Cable as part of a sponsorship package for the project. The server has been open for business for the Ballarat community since May 2006.
Non-profit and community groups now have a permanent place they can call home on the ‘Net’ with a suite of online facilities, ranging from online content management systems, spam protected email, chat rooms, calendars, e-newsletters and membership sections. Costs have been kept down by extensive deployment of open source based systems and plug-ins. Community and non-profit groups, sports clubs and special interest societies are coming on board but require further support and training if they are to be empowered to effectively self-manage and grow their online services.
The application for funding from the auda Foundation is directed towards achieving this important. The Ballarat Communities and Technology project will enhance the utility of the Internet initially for more than thirty Ballarat not-for-profit organisations and their members. It will deliver practical tools and support as participants develop the skills and knowledge required to actively manage their websites. A mentoring program will support participation by young people. It will also support participants as they pass on the skills they learn to at least two additional groups.
In parallel with these activities, research will be carried out to understand the changes which occur when not-for-profit organisations and their members achieve enhanced utility of the Internet.
The methods and strategies that will be used to achieved the project aims include:
- Appointing a part-time Facilitator to coordinate the CAT Project activities.
- Enrolling community groups wishing to take part in the CAT Project capturing important benchmark information as a part of this process.
- Begining the process of transferring existing websites into the Ballarat.vic.au content management system.
- Providing group members with website access and preliminary documentation.
- Runing group training sessions which will incorporate setting priorities for additional workshops and support collection of feedback on the processes to date.
- Conducting up to four bi-monthly workshops designed around participant learning priorities.
Organisations who provided letters of support for this project included:
- Ballarat Bicycle Users Group
- Ballarat Regional Multicultural Council
- City of Ballarat
- University of Ballarat
For further information on this project contact Helen Thompson at h.thompson@ballarat.edu.au.
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