Week Commencing 1st April
Vital Statistics for AprilApril saw an increase on the previous month with 24 preliminary assessments completed and 201 tutorials, giving a total of 225.
Six students graduated in April and we would like to congratulate:
Paul H, Jason B, Mariam D, Marcus E, Lucille D, Ben S
Activity Report
April was another extremely busy month with the continuing high number of tutorials and assessments and the subsequent head office administration, although on the promotional front it was fairly quiet owing to staff on leave.
Despite this, the big story this month was big indeed; the change of name from WAACIS to U Can Do I.T. The reasons for this are explained elsewhere on the website, and you can find out more by clicking here to find out about our name change, but suffice to say it required a lot of work in the background to make appropriate registrations, port the website to a new domain, notify our supporters and partners, and amend all our documentation and promotional material. At the same time we also upgraded the office network, which now boasts state of the art ADSL for high-speed internet access, which is being provided for a fraction of the cost of our old dial-up service.
During April the U Can Do I.T Volunteer Group had their second meeting, which was held at RADAR"s head office near Old Street tube station. David Hart has stepped down as chairman, therefore a vote was taken to appoint a new chair and vice-chair. The group"s acting chair, Doreen Nicholas, was confirmed in post with Keith Clancy as vice-chair. A number of issues were discussed during the meeting, including assisting blind applicants with application forms, and ways in which head office outreach could be supported and expanded upon.
We were also in touch with a number of organisations with regard to publicity, and were particularly pleased to get coverage in the Motability Lifestyle magazine, which reaches 400,000 subscribers and subsequently generated a lot of enquiries. We were also offered coverage of in a number of other publications, including Network, a newsletter aimed at people who have suddenly lost their hearing and which goes out to all the members of the National Association of Deafened People.
On the subject of deaf and hard of hearing people, were were pleased to welcome Shahab Reza to the tutor team. Shahab is profoundly deaf and is a British Sign Language user, bringing a vital skill to the charity as we seek to reach more deaf, blind and physically disabled people.
