Transforming technology - empowering people...

Chris
It's brought me up to speed with life. It's actually opened a different world, when you're using the computers and the internet. That's the main bearing on my life. It's opened up so many avenues.

Adam
Sometimes you feel like it's you against everyone else, but here everyone's happy to share the knowledge that they're learning as they're learning it.

Steve
When I first came in it was like completely foreign to me. I remember that I couldn't hold the mouse straight, my hands were shaking, and sitting at a screen was quite daunting.

Tom
The hardest thing I think was to sit down with John and say, 'I haven't done it before. I haven't got a clue'. And the easiest thing was doing it when he'd told me how to.

Veronica
Isn't technology fantastic!

Helen Milner – Managing Director, UK online centres
There is a tendency to think that everybody's on the internet. As we know there are still lots of people, actually more than 14 million people in England, who don't access the internet on a regular basis. So this isn't just an age problem. This isn't something that's going to go away. It's actually to do with social exclusion. The people who are most socially excluded are also most digitally excluded, and that's why it's so important that we target and we tackle those very, very hard to reach people and their barriers to using the internet.

UK online centres are based in the communities where the people who need to get onto the internet to change their lives and their life chances. So they are actually based where the people who need them are. They also are staffed by people who are trusted by the people who use them, and have the skills to help those people to take their journeys to develop the skills that they need to access the right kind of information and the right kind of sources. And maybe even progress on to qualifications and jobs, if that's what they're looking for.

Paul Davies – Managing Director, Destinations@Saltburn
The centre's used by an awful lot of groups and a lot of different groups. The range of people is everything from families coming to the centre, right through to older people and all points in between. People who are working, who come in before or after work. We've got people who are retired, people who are unemployed and looking for work. We've worked with a number of community groups of varying types, so we work with all the UK online centres. We also have a number of libraries involved. We have community and faith groups that we are working with. We'll go to very small venues and we'll take the equipment to them.

There's quite an old population in and around some of the villages that we service, and increasingly we all heard how the post offices, for example, some of these are closing. The pensioners, the older people still need access to the services that those post offices had. Well a lot of them are now online. But the internet is still a fearful beast for some of these people. So what we're doing is taking away that fear. We're giving them the skills to use it. It's relevant to them. They don't need to know everything about the internet, just those aspects that make their life more comfortable.

Kathy
Because I've been going through being made redundant and going into retirement, I've had to contact lots of government offices. Of course government are into computers in a huge way so you need to go to the internet to get government information.

Robert Harrison – Assistant Central Library Manager, Bristol Central Library
I think there are great benefits in people connecting to local government and national government sites on line. And I think once people have proved to themselves once that they can do this, and it is efficient and it does work, and it is OK, then they'll hopefully come back and use more of these services.

The other thing we're trying to do is provide feedback to direct government on some of the national sites about some of the problems people encounter, so perhaps they can streamline their sites and make them a little more efficient, a bit quicker and a bit easier to understand.

Helen Milner – Managing Director, UK online centres
As we move forward with the UK online centres we are now much clearer about this concept of a digital citizen. Millions of people who are digitally aware, who are digitally competent, that they'll leave the UK online centre with the skills to be able to use the internet next time they want to find some information, next time they want to interact with government, next time they want to contact their MP… they're going to do it online.

It's really important to remember that all UK online centres are really different. You've got the little centres, particularly in the rural areas, or the small voluntary centres. Then you've also got big centres and big libraries with fantastic resources.

Catherine Marshall – Chief Executive, The Lighthouse Project
Well we believe IT is important to people. It helps people become more employable. It allows them access to all sorts of services, and it just broadens people's perspective in so many different ways.

Tom
A few years ago IT skills were for, what do you call them? 'Nerds'. But it appears nowadays it's just like the telephone. People have got to know it, otherwise you are left behind.

Catherine Marshall – Chief Executive, The Lighthouse Project
We deal with people that experience multiple depravation. The Lighthouse philosophy is dealing with their issues on numerous levels simultaneously. We're not just giving them one form of education, or just helping them to find a job; we're dealing with all their personal issues. So if they've got debt problems, or drug problems, or relationship problems, we can be helping them with that, and helping them deal with their confidence and self-esteem.

Peter Holthuis – Community IT Officer, Windmill Hill City Farm
I've worked with people who literally have spent the first session in the car park and the second session has been sort of wavering around the front door. The third session has been sitting down. The fourth session might be actually looking at the screen and moving the mouse, and for some of our longer-term mental health survivors, we're seeing things in terms of years, and with others we see things in terms of weeks. The actual process of sitting in front of a computer and controlling it, controlling a mouse, controlling a keyboard, making things happen on a screen is very therapeutic. And there's more and more evidence to suggest that that can be an integral part of someone's 'treatment' if, you like. It is very important that people have a sense of ownership when it comes to their learning. As a tutor in the computer centre that is something that we keep very integral to the way that we plan our courses.

Teresa
It actually offers a lot to people, and if you want to take qualifications you can take qualifications. If you don't want to take qualifications you don't have to. There's no pressure.

Helen Milner – Managing Director, UK online centres
UK online centres can connect people together, but can also reconnect them with their communities and then with government as a whole. Therefore, UK online centres play a central role in affecting individual lives, but also affecting the state of the nation at the same time.

Connie
It's my life though now. It's my lifeline, and it's like my family. They are my family.

Jan
I thought I was a nothing, and now I am something.

Chris
I never dreamed that one day I would be able to: a) use one and b) help other people to use the facilities.

Steve
I just think this place is absolutely great and we're very lucky to have it.

Tom
At least it won't be a nervous thing, just switching the switch to… what do they call it? 'Boot up'.