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History
(Project Finished) Cromer Learning for Everyone (Information Only) Learning for Everyone began in 2002 with the Cromer Learning for Life Project. Within a year a second initiative, Cromer Virtual Learning Community was started. Since then a series of projects and contracts have seen the team expand their scope and activities from Cromer to the whole of North Norfolk, most recently by becoming the de facto delivery arm of the North Norfolk Skills Partnership Projects to date include:
Learning for Everyone Projects Next
Step – since August 2004, L4E has been a delivery partner of the Next Step
network in Norfolk. The contract was confirmed immediately after the
achievement of the matrix quality standard in the delivery of advice and
guidance. Next Stepp offer IAG to all adults but it is heavily weighted in
favour of those without a level 2 qualification (that is 5 GCSEs grades A
to C or equivalent).
Cromer Learning for Life was originally a two-year project. In 2003 it was successful in extending funding for an additional 18 months. The Learning for Everyone Programme has achieved great success across a number of initiatives:
This is an initiative supported by the LSC as part of their ESF co-financing programme under Measure 3.2e To improve employment skills . To deliver ICT and ICT related skills at Level 3 in bite-sized units. As of October 2007, recruitment to the project has been completed, in part owing to a new partnership with Deltic Training to deliver Institute of Management (IAM) Level 2 qualifications. Working with a variety of partners including the North Norfolk Business Forum, Chambers of Trade and FE providers in North Norfolk, this project will build on the work of the North Norfolk District Council’s Virtual Business Initiative which aims at providing ICT support for fledgling businesses or businesses who do not maximise their utilisation of ICT. By providing Level 3 training for businesses, the beneficiaries will receive units that will go towards recognised qualifications as well as enhancing the ICT skills and resources of the business. A range of Level 3 modules will be available for example Customer Service, Medical Secretary, Legal Text Processing, Administration, as well as ICT user subjects. Beneficiaries will be guided and signposted so that they can progress to complete a full level 3 qualification. The project will be promoted using the North Norfolk Business Forum sponsored by the local strategic partnership, the North Norfolk Community Partnership. The Business Forum has access to the 3500 businesses in North Norfolk which will be key in supporting the project by helping identify skills shortages and facilitating remedial action to counter these deficiencies. The project will widen access to and participation in learning and skills in the North Norfolk area. This will be achieved by providing a range of level 3 unit courses, aimed at small group sizes, averaging 5 over 70 hours to be agreed with the employer. Provision will be at or near the business. Study skills and mentor support will be provided to help build confidence levels, self esteem, allowing the beneficiary to participate and progress, optimising retention rates.
Delivery will be focussed on working in partnership with the providers and
local strategic bodies who will facilitate access to the beneficiaries and
assist with identification of suitable local delivery techniques and
venues. Where practical as much delivery as possible will be brought to
the beneficiary. Total Cost: £49850 Learning for Everyone Press Release October 2006
Gain a Business Qualification at Merchants’ Place
On
Tuesdays and Wednesdays the workshops will enable people to learn skills
at their own pace at levels from Beginners to Level 3.
Level3.biz is part-funded by the European
Union through the European Social Fund through Learning & Skills Council
Norfolk. Its aim is to help 50 people, 35 of whom will achieve a level 3
qualification. I will run until early 2008.
This is an initiative supported by the LSC as part of their ESF co-financing programme under Measure 2.1 To widen access to Skills for Life through the provision of Skills for Life learning, directed at those groups disadvantaged, excluded from or under-represented in the workplace. The project will widen access to and participation in Skills for Life learning in the North Norfolk area, in particular the wards identified by the Basic Skills Agency as those with the highest numbers of people with Skills for Life needs. This will be achieved through the employment of a dedicated Skills for Life facilitator who will work closely with all members of the partnership (see linkages) to identify and reach the target group. They will be able to offer the Skills for Life needs assessments, offer one to one Skills for Life tuition, supervise the National Test and/or be signposted/referred to groups to be run by experienced Skills for Life tutors once confidence levels and self esteem has been increased to allow the beneficiary to participate and progress thereby improving retention. The project will also provide ongoing support through advice and guidance, assistance with travel and care, have access to ICT equipment and have the opportunity to receive study skills and life skills (including IT) support by and through the partnership team. This support will include jobsearch support, CV workshops and interview techniques. The beneficiary will be empowered and receive support to look for and find the right job for them.
Delivery will be focussed on working in partnership with the providers and
local strategic bodies who will facilitate access to the beneficiaries and
assist with the identification of suitable local delivery techniques and
venues. Where practical as many opportunities and as much delivery as
possible will be brought to the beneficiary.
Total Cost: £45260.00
The
Sheringham Learning for Everyone Project is a three year initiative to
improve confidence and skills in the Sheringham community as well as
identifying the skills requirements of local employers and seeking to
provide training to help individuals meet those skills. It has a target of
engaging with 254 members of the community. The project is run by
SheringhamPlus and is being delivered by a partnership which includes
Adult Education, Paston College, Wellbeing In North Norfolk, Meridian
East, College of West Anglia and North Norfolk District Council. The
project cost is £227,000 and is funded through the European Social Fund
East of England Objective 2 Programme, the East of England Development
Agency via Shaping the Future, the North Norfolk Community Partnership,
the Learning and Skills Council and North Norfolk District Council.
What - To create a Learning and Resource Centre in Cromer as part of
the Community Economic Regeneration initiative as developed by the Cromer
Regeneration Partnership. This will act as a multi-agency one stop shop
for the not for profit (socio-economic) sector offering advice and
guidance on learning and training opportunities as well as jobsearch
support, business start up advice and local training provision. It is also
proposed to the health shop, which supports many self help groups as well
as operating a support service for health issues.
There
has been a lack of suitable training facilities in Cromer as had been
highlighted by Paston and Adult Education in the past. Also providers who
have attempted to establish a presence in Cromer were forced to compromise
by using first floor premises with poor accessibility, Yarmouth College
and Bennington Resource Centre. The Yarmouth College centre closed down in
2003 when they were unable to locate alternative viable premises.
Numerous learning events have been organised aimed at promoting learning and raising aspirations:
On
10th July 2007, Merchants Place won an award from Action for Market Towns
as the regional project supporting Strategic Partnership work.
Notes for editors Merchants Place was opened in May 2006. It is run by Cromer Past Present Future Limited, a not for profit company limited by guarantee that was formed out of the Cromer Regeneration Partnership. Cromer PPF is a founder member of the Poppyland Partnership which is the local area partnership for Cromer and the surrounding eleven parishes. The Centre was funded as part of the £1.2m Cromer Community Economic Regeneration Package through the East of England Objective 2 European Union Structural Funds programme, the East of England Development Agency with contributions from Norfolk County Council, North Norfolk District Council and Cromer Town Council.
For more information on current
activities at Merchants’ Place or to find out how to book the facility
please call
Thanks
to funding from Leaderplus, North Norfolk District Council set up a new
project called Virtual Learning for Everyone. The aim was to organise IT
bitesize tasters and courses locally in the Leaderplus parishes of North
Norfolk, this is an area which covers the 2001 wards of are Bacton,
Happisburgh, Hickling, Horsefen, Catfield, Horning, Hoveton, Neatishead,
Worstead and Stalham. The project aimed to organise at least one bitesize
taster session in 20 of the 26 parishes covered over the lifetime of the
project which was originally funded until Summer 2006. LEADER+ is an
initiative to assist rural communities in improving the quality of life
and economic prosperity of their local areas.
All the projects seek to co-ordinate the delivery of a programme of personal development and training to build community capacity. All the projects worked in partnership with FE providers under the Cromer Regeneration umbrella. The programme was run for the benefit of members of the community of the Cromer Town and Suffield Park wards with the aim of improving levels of confidence and skills among people of working age in the town, who are not in regular employment or who wish to improve their employment prospects. The project, which was partly funded by the European Social Fund, the East of England Development Agency and North Norfolk District Council, initially had set a target to help 334 local people during its lifetime. This target was passed after nine months of operation and at the end of the first project there were some 430 beneficiaries. In September 2003 an extension to the funding was approved to take the project through to 2005. In March of 2003 a sister project was approved which provides ICT equipment to further help beneficiaries with their personal development training. It was known as the Cromer Virtual Learning Community. In the past, learning providers have attempted to run courses and training schemes in Cromer. However, many of these initiatives failed to reach critical mass - that is, they did not attract enough participants. Cromer Learning for Life did bring together these initiatives and co-ordinate their delivery in Cromer. By establishing a town centre presence and working in partnership, the Cromer Learning programme was very successful, meeting funders targets and boosting confidence and qualifications levels in the town. Among the courses provided were:
In June 2002, an office on Bond Street opened. This was being shared between the Cromer Regeneration Partnership and the Cromer Learning programme. It acted as a drop-in point to find out about learning opportunities in general as well as the Learning for Life project in particular. People were able to enlist on courses and there was an area for displays about both the Project and the Regeneration Partnership. From July 2002 until November 2003 there had been some 6000 contacts to the shop.
What was it? A scheme to loan laptops to residents of Cromer to help with their personal development training, funded by the European Social Fund, East of England Development Agency and North Norfolk District Council. The project is due to run from March 2003 to May 2005 and will cost just under £200,000. The laptops We had 40 Dell Latitude laptop computers. Half of them will be available for loans of up to three months and the rest will be used to run IT courses or for short loans. The laptop computers are Dell Latitude C540 Celeron 1.70GHz. They have a 20GB harddrive, 256MB of Ram, 542MHz, an internal 56K Modem and a 14.1inch XGA LCD. In addition there are 10 portable printers which can be loaned for short periods and a number of add on hard ware items such as IntelliKeys large keyboard, joystick and tracker ball to help with special needs. All the laptop s will have Microsoft Office Professional, which includes Word for word processing, Excel for spreadsheets, Access for databases and Powerpoint for presentations. Each laptop will be able to access the internet (the project will pay the cost of telephone on-line time as well). In addition each lalptop will be equipped with Norton Security to protect them against computer virus’. The project has also got a number of licences for the following packages: Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, Page Maker, Photoshop, winzip, frontpage, publisher, Corel Draw 11, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Symbols 2000, Penfriend XP, and will be buying more as the need is identified. Each laptop is protected against theft with a StopTrack anti-theft coded label. In addition each have been marked CVLC Project (Cromer Virtual Learning Community) NNDC – NR27 9EJ (North Norfolk District Council and postcode). What are they for? To help with any learning/training you are doing. This can be to help practice beginners computing skills or to enable you to undertake a distance learning course at home, for example LearnDirect. You do not have to be undertaking a formal course to be eligible for a loan. Cromer Virtual Learning Community – third ESF Interim Claim Report December 2003 The project has continued to facilitate courses with the equipment. A CLAIT Plus, New CLAIT, Beginners IT and Photo-Editting course have all been fully facilitated with the project equipment. A Mixed IT, SAGE Computerised Accounts and Beginners IT course have all been partly supported by the project during this quarter. The first customised course is still running and has been well supported. The flexible IT learning facility in the project shop currently operating on a Thursday afternoon continues to enjoy strong demand. Beneficiaries are able to book a slot to practice their IT skills with the support of an IT tutor. Some have used it as a chance to get to know about internet banking, others are using it for 'homework' for CLAIT classes. At present we are limited to five clients per session. Since the second session they have been fully booked and so we are investigating the logistics of expanding these both in the sense of number and time. A customised course for workers in the socio-economic sector is being developed and customised for the requirements of volunteers in health support. We intend to run it in February when Broadband becomes available in Cromer. During this quarter between 20 and 25 laptops have been on loan to beneficiaries at any one time. The project is continuing to operate a waiting list. Interest in the project has come from a wide geographical area. The IT training and support officer has held circa 110 one to ones with beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries ranging in length from 15 minutes to half a day. Much valuable experience has been gained in how to maximise the use of the laptops. On October 10 the project held a focus group with six of the first beneficiaries of the project to discuss their experiences and to help identify areas for improvement. Overall they were very happy and the project was helping to raise aspirations, confidence levels and personal development. They were also gaining an appreciation of how much more there is out there: 'I dipped my toe in the water and found it was rather deep'. A number of technical issues arose for example about storage space for graphic files and turning off the touch pad. In addition a need was identified for greater flexibility with the length of the loan. In the project concept an average loan length of 3 months was set. It would appear that in some cases this is too long but in most it is far too short, with people panicking that they will not be able to achieve all that they could or need to in the loan period. Also initial feedback suggests that we should provide more tuition as part of the handover process, and we are at present looking at a requirement for the beneficiary to demonstrate a level of IT proficiency before the loan begins and this can be achieved for example via the Thursday afternoon facility. A final major suggestion was to set up an IT support group. We are at present conducting some more research on this but assuming that the need is confirmed then we will look to get a group meeting regularly set up as well as a Virtual support group established via the project web site or sharing email contacts. One consequence of these developments is that the profiled number of beneficiaries may come under risk. We are at present ahead of schedule and this is through the additional support offered outside of an actual loan. However, as we adopt a more flexible approach to the length of loans then the average length will in all likelihood increase and so the profiled number of beneficiaries will come under greater pressure. In October the Project Manager was invited by the Norfolk Learning Partnership to present a workshop on marketing e-learning in the local community.
Total project costs over the first two years from January 2002 to December 2003 were estimated to be £240,000, of which £107,000 has been secured from the European Social Fund under Measure 3.3 of the European Objective 2 Programme. The East of England Development Agency is providing an additional £47,500 and the District Council, which is acting as the lead partner, is supplying £30,000. The remaining funding is to be provided by Prince's Trust Volunteers (£15,000), Norfolk Learning and Skills Council (£20,000), Jobcentreplus (£10,000), and the Great Yarmouth Business Advisory Service (£10,000). The project closure report showed that the project achieved 85% of spend and that this was despite the project finishing four months early to allow a successor project to have two academic years to run. The Cromer Learning for Life project was an integrated package of information, advice and guidance, identifying training needs and organising local provision to meet those needs where possible. This process promotes community capacity building and concentrates efforts on developing employment skills, self confidence and a sense of ownership amongst local people to regenerate their community. The project delivered a wide range of personal development training opportunities, many of which led to qualifications such as Interior Design, Bookkeeping, Computerised Accounts, Basic Food Hygiene, First Aid and Computing. A co-ordinated approach was taken that involved all the delivery partners as well as community members of the Cromer Regeneration Partnership. A town centre shop presence was established and this was key in making the project accessible to the members of the communities of Cromer Town and Suffield Park. This allowed the project to achieve its great success and while it shows 430 beneficiary enrolments, some 28% over the original profile, the level of traffic through the project shop during the first year of operation averaged at a recorded 1000 contacts per quarter. From July 2002 to August 2003 there were 4600 recorded contacts made to the project shop. This in turn led the project to recruit an extra administrative and reception support officer so that it could cope with the demand being generated. The key thrust of the project was offering information, advice and guidance on learning and work opportunities for individuals. During the lifetime of the project some 120 beneficiaries received one or more in depth interviews with the WEETU community project worker, 53 received the provision of jobsearch support via JobcentrePlus, 21 received business start up counselling via Norfolk and Waveney Enterprise Services and some 30 beneficiaries received life skills assessment and tuition sessions through Paston College. Identifying needs and reaching critical mass meant that the project was able to organise more than 30 courses in Cromer through Norfolk Adult Education Services, Paston College and the Redundancy Advice Network, most of which lead to a formal qualification. In addition a number of study support initiatives were started including an ongoing Open University support group. These courses were organised through identifying needs via a continuous quantitative survey of beneficiary requirements, networking with community partners and identifying specific demands through one to one interviews with the project team. The project also participated in the national BiteSize campaigns, organising 8 taster sessions in 2002, most of which lead to courses in Cromer and facilitating in setting up 30 learning tasters in 2003.
23/05/11
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