September Newsletter
From a meetings point of view, September was rather a quiet month. We have been very busy in the office preparing our bids for funding from the European Social Fund.In all we will have made six full applications, each one running to some 30 pages and requiring a great deal of detailed work. Included in this of course is the selection and organisation of potential partners which are essential in bids of this kind. In fact we have been very lucky with this and have excellent partnerships with EdExcel, Cable & Wireless, The Shaw Trust, Leonard Cheshire, RNIB, Employment Opportunities, Abilitynet and The Peabody Trust.
It must be realised that it is extremely difficult for a charity to make these bids and we have got our fingers crossed and pretty much everything else that we are going to get some successful results.
On 30th of September we had a very good meeting with Carol Biggs who is the manager of The Hadley Trust who have been great supporters of U Can Do I.T. for several years. It was very good to meet her and show her all our techniques and we are extremely appreciative of the help we have received and look forward to a continuing relationship in the future.
From a statistical point of view we have had a reasonably good month. We carried out 267 tutorials which was ahead of last year, but a little bit short of the target we have set ourselves for the current year. This has been partly due to the fact that of course Avril Hanning, our administrative manager, has left to take up a career as a solicitor. Her place has been taken by Lisa Oram who has wide experience of the job and is very much enjoying the work. We are hoping to get an extra pair of hands in the admin department later in the year, depending of course on the funding situation in relation to the bids described above.
