Dear Colleagues & Friends,
Welcome to our 28th newsletter. Hope you’re all enjoying the semester break! 2008 is definitely our year. It’s turning out even better than we thought. Highlights for the year so far have been:
- Opening of Bowraville Ehub inside the Aboriginal Mission on 21st May (known locally as the Mish).
- Bowraville chosen as a Case Study involving community partnerships for TAFE NSW!
- NCCP through Community Microsoft Refurbishers Program now have a licence for Office 2003 which is installed on all outgoing computers.
- Macksville Goorie IT student Jennie Rosser won the Bernadette Ballangarry Student of the Year Award (Jennie in the middle surrounded by proud family)
- Ongoing rollouts of decommissioned PC’s from North Coast TAFE (thanks guys! – we need all we can get )
- Partnership with Bowraville Local Aboriginal Land Council, Nguralla, and New Careers for Aboriginal People to assist CDEP workers (Irene Ballangarry, Eileen Buchanan and Marie-Skye Buchanan) supervise new Ehub as part of Goorie IT Cert III course.
- New NCCP branch at Grafton Campus (Thanks Campus Manager Wendy Bruszewski).
Jennie Rosser (center) won the Bernadette Ballangarry Student of the Year Award
TWO NEW WORKERS AT MACKSVILLE
Kath Gunn with two local Bowraville girls
Welcome to our two new workers Mark Oldham and Kath Gunn (that’s Kath on the right hand side with some Bowraville girls). This has been made possible through Nambucca Shire Council committing to assist NCCP again for the next 24 months. We’re very happy about this!
Through the efforts of Macksville Hardware student Dallas Dent, NCCP now have a live weekly show on Nambucca Community Radio 2NVR 105.9 where the community can call in seeking solutions for their computer issues. The feedback has been really good so far. We’re having lots of fun with this and we can also encourage more people into our TAFE courses (= less strain on our help desk!)
DONATION FROM MICROSOFT
Microsoft have kindly donated T-shirts and software to NCCP to be distributed to our various Ehubs. This donation has just been so useful. Many thanks to Microsoft Community Affairs Manager Paul Clark for organising this.
NEW EHUB AT NIMBIN OPENING ON 4TH AUGUST
Nimbin eHub
A new Ehub has now been installed at Nimbin providing computer technology and broadband internet access. This Certificate 3 IT course is run by North Coast TAFE’s Aboriginal Learning Partnerships together in partnership with NCCP and Nimbin Community Radio. The Ehub will be providing a much needed resource for the local Aboriginal community. A big thank you to Head IT teacher Ian Newton for helping the decommissioning of Pentium IV machines from North Coast TAFE which the Goorie IT class refurbished and installed in their Ehub. A BIG thank you to teacher Klara Marosszeky. Incredible what Klara is able to achieve in this community through her dedication. If we had our way we’d be putting Ehubs in every Aboriginal community on the North Coast – and we will, at the rate we’re going.
We are in constant need of computers to refurbish so please keep us in mind. Anything Pentium 3 and above is acceptable. This Newsletter does go out to a lot of people working in various government agencies so please do us a favour and check with your ICT department to see if their machines can be decommissioned to us here at NCCP. DO IT NOW! Most of our machines do go to students and Indigenous communities.
Keep Smiling