Happy Easter Colleagues & Friends, Welcome to our 25th newsletter.
RENEWAL OF MICROSOFT LICENCE
North Coast Computer Project has just successfully renewed it’s Microsoft Authorised Refurbishers (MAR) licence to include the Windows XP Professional operating system and Microsoft Office XP Standard. At present NCCP is using Windows 2000 Professional and we desperately need the XP operating system to install on the Pentium 4 machines. There has been a change in the MAR as of January and Australia is now included in the South Pacific region with headquarters in Singapore . Big thanks to Steve Macready at Workventures for assisting us with our licence renewal.
Microsoft have always been very supportive of NCCP as a small rural refurbisher and we look forward to that support continuing. In November Microsoft test centre in North Ryde donated a number of laptops to NCCP for refurbishment and distribution. They paid for the transport as well. How about that? We really appreciate this and would respectfully like to know what can we do to get some more!!! It’s nice to know that we can score occasionally up in our neck of the woods.
NCCP have also just received eligibility from Donortec, a partnership between Cisco and Microsoft that allows us to order other more exclusive software such as Office 2007 and Vista for a very low admin cost only and which we would like to put in the Ehubs and in NCCP workshops. This is really great news for us in addition to our MAR licence renewal.
OUR VOLUNTEERS
NCCP owes much to, and is proud of, our dedicated team of workers and volunteers. Let’s name them!
At Maclean we have veteran worker Garry Johns, new trainee Caroline Rudegger, and IT student volunteers – Eugene Christensen, John Schofield, Roy Trickey and Jeremy Billett.
At Macksville in December we put on our first paid worker, Mike Williamson, supported by volunteers ex-TAFE IT teacher Charlie Templeton and IT student volunteers Mark Oldham, Kath Gunn, Heather McPhee, Garry Ashmole and Kevin McDonald.
FIRST GOVERNMENT MONEY
Federal MP Luke Hartsuyker advises us that our application for the Small Volunteers Equipment Scheme was successful and that $1,950 will be donated to the Macksville branch of NCCP for a portable air-conditioner. This is a significant event for us as it is the first grant that NCCP has received from the Government for one of our funding applications since our inception.
NORTH COAST INSTITUTE
Continue to be a major supporter of providing educational opportunities in our local Indigenous communities and NCCP are currently helping to resource the following courses.
- Work Skills at Pippi Beach Ehub Yamba – Aboriginal community learning webcams and building their own website.
- Goorie IT at NCCP workshop in Macksville – building their own computers.
- Ulgundahi Island Elders at Hillcrest Ehub Maclean – putting together material for www.yaegl.org website and working with Clarence Valley Council to change street signs to show Aboriginal translations. See below article from the local rag last December.
- Maclean Campus Diploma IT final year students Wendy Cromack, Caroline Rudegger, Jeff Cook and Bernie Francis are overhauling the Pippi Beach (Yamba) and Hillcrest (Maclean) Ehubs by installing servers and researching low bandwidth webcam video-conferencing so that the Ehubs can “talk” to and “see”” each other. We also wish to use VOIP technology to upgrade the Ehubs so that the community members can place telephone calls. NCCP are donating the servers for this project and will be applying for software needed through Donortec.
- Many thanks to everyone again for your ongoing support and assistance.
On a final note we want to congratulate our ever-popular Board Chairperson, Chris Gulaptis successfully winning the preselection for Page electorate to replace Ian Causley.
Council Supports Aboriginal Signs
Aboriginal elders and their community representatives have approached Clarence Valley Council to help in their bid to introduce new indigenous local signage around the Valley.
The group has tabled an innovative solution to the expression of aboriginal meanings for local areas as part of town and village signage.
A language group dictionary has been prepared to support the project. Council mayor Ian Tiley said in-principle support had been given to the idea, which he described as a very exciting concept.
“The first step is the preparation of a signage policy to guide this and future projects, the conduct of community consultation and engagement of a range of stakeholders to assist in moving the initiative forward,” Cr Tiley said.
“The proposal would provide an opp or tunity f or sense-of-place expression by the Ab or iginal community and also deliver viable options f or the presentation of social and cultural heritage meanings (by w or ds, symbols, illustrations or combinations thereof). There are also tourism possibilities in the medium term.”
Yaegl Elder Muriel Burns says “Its important we teach our kids their culture, just the same as they feel a connection to the Aboriginal flag they need to feel a connection to their own surroundings. The signs and encouraging them to be part of the project are a good way of doing this.”
Keep Smiling