Success stories

A voice for the community — The Bloomsbury Association, London WC1

The Bloomsbury Association is dedicated to the conservation of Bloomsbury’s architectural heritage and the improvement of quality of life in this historic part of central London, for the benefit of everyone who lives, works, studies, or visits Bloomsbury.

The association uses the CASweb service, provided by five London boroughs to enable advice organisations in the area to set up and maintain a free web presence. CASweb provides organisations and community groups with the tools to create a web presence including quite sophisticated assets like converting all the text to speech for visuallly-impaired visitors. It allows organisations to not only set up their own online presence but also to interact with local authorities and other advice.

The Bloomsbury Association provides access to all their files and minutes of meetings and even archives files for reference after the event. Besides keeping a watchful eye on Bloomsbury, the assoication is developing closer links with the other major community organisations in the West End of London particularly to address quality of life issues resulting from drug related activity which is the foremost concern of the community in Bloomsbury and the West End.

The Bloomsbury Association monitors all planning applications made within its area. It also takes an interest in some proposals of wider impact located outside the vicinity. The Association comments on proposals with a view to promoting high standards of planning and architecture in the area and to securing the preservation, and enhancement of Bloomsbury. It also monitors late licensing applications and in general opposes applications that request 3am licenses. The group uses a whole array of tools to publish its online content including regular news bulletins, an events calendar, in depth articles, downloadable files and documents, photographs and an online diary, “weblog” or “blog”. It also provides a page of useful links to help visitors find access to other resources on the Web.

The website serves as a useful conduit for people wishing to apply for membership. There is an email address, which can be used to apply.

The association updates its news section on a regular basis, and all important public statements and documents are published on this site. Visitors to the site, who have an interest in the topics discussed, are encouraged to comment, criticise and generally give feedback.

A voice to be reckoned with

Jim Murray, Chair of the Bloomsbury Association:

“Use of the internet has empowered our community association to such an extent that would be impossible without it and has helped us facilitate community led projects that we could never have dreamed of organising or being involved in previously.

It has allowed us to build a massive local and wider network so that we are now able to communicate with all the stakeholders in our neighbourhood and surrounding areas. It has strengthened our voice on local matters including Transport, Planning, Licensing, Crime, and Environmental issues, and allows the wider world to see what we are doing and to communicate with us.

Through efficient use of the internet via our web sites and email we have been able to increase our communications output to such an extent that we sometimes amaze ourselves! A few years ago we were a sleepy local community association struggling to make our voice heard, now we are voice to be reckoned with and can play our part in improving the quality of life in out city.”

You can see Bloomsbury Association website for yourself at http://www.bloomsburyassociation.org.uk

Crossing community boundaries — A Rocha UK

A Rocha UK is an independent, registered charity working across the UK on a range of nature conservation issues. The UK community is part of a wider Christian conservationist organisation. There is a well established volunteer base and a growing network of supporters nationally.

A Rocha Living Waterways is the groups’s first local conservation project in the UK. It works in multicultural, urban west London, to bring about “A Greener, Cleaner Southall and Hayes”.

The group uses the Internet to communicate its message across the world, collect information from visitors and people interested in its activities. It is also able to promote membership to the organisation and provide people with a means of joining. Visitors can download an application form, print it out, fill in and send.

The design is clean and clear, easy to navigate and makes good use of colour and photography to define its style and attitude. The information is provided in clear simple language and uses variable text font sizes so that visually impaired visitors can set the text size in their browser to suit their own needs.

Visitors can make a credit card donation online and receive regular newsletters. The group is able to link people across borders to its many projects in different countries and cultures. There are links to useful information from other organisations and content is provided in different languages at the click of a button.

A Rocha projects have a community emphasis, bringing together people from widely differing backgrounds to work towards common goals and the Internet is a great medium for allowing them to join people and projects together across communities and boundaries.

The group is able to use the power and reach of its website to:

• Advertise forthcoming events
• Attract members
• Publicise its campaigns and messages
• Send out regular e-newsletters
• Publish photo galleries of projects and events
• Provide contact details at any time of the day
• You can see A Rocha UK website for yourself at http://en.arocha.org/ukmembers

High quality services at all times — Stonewall Housing Association

Stonewall Housing was set up in 1983 as the first Housing Association aimed exclusively at meeting the needs of lesbians and gay men. The Advice Service was set up in 1992 due to growing demand for housing advice and information for the wider lesbian and gay community. The current website, using the free CASweb service (www.casweb.org) for community advice organisations based in, or working with residents in, any of the five London boroughs of Camden, Islington, Kensington & Chelsea, Westminster and Corporation of London, was set up in 2003.

Having a website allows the association to make available useful and relevant information to its audience at any time of the night or day which can often be important.

Stonewall Housing remains the only specialist housing association in England wholly dedicated to serving lesbians and gay men. Its objectives include providing temporary supported housing for young lesbians and gay men, housing advice, referrals and advocacy service and to act as a central resource for housing options for the community it serves.

The CASweb template allows the group to set up a range of services using different tools. There is a section called Resources which contains answers to frequently asked questions, useful information on paying rent, requesting repairs and making complaints.

The group has also set up online discussion groups, which allow visitors to the site to respond to issues raised or set up their own topic for discussion.

The association has also researched information available elsewhere on the Web and has published links to dozens of useful sites providing access to information on a whole range of issues relevant to their community.

They also have the ability to restrict access to certain types of information, allowing people to register as a member of the site. They can set up and run all kinds of surveys using the tools provided by CASweb.

You can see the Stonewall Housing Association website for yourself at http://www.casweb.org/stonewallhousing