Richard Wynne

The Castlebar Information Age Project

Now

Our projects so far

1. PCs to clubs
2. PC subsidy scheme to home users
3. PCs to schools initiative
4. Our website
5. E.C.D.L.

Projects that are on going

1. Our town server
2. Our ISDN for business scheme
3. Digital park
4. Schools projects
5. GMIT project
6. Ecdl for schools
7. Community access center
8. PCs to associations scheme

Last year 1998 we gave a PC to 50 clubs and associations around Castlebar. This was designed so that the club members could post details of their activities to the town website. We had over 80 applications this was so successful we will run the scheme again , and those that did not receive one will have a second opportunity to reapply.

1. We ran a subsidy scheme which allowed a subsidy to the value of £200 per household limited to the parish area. This was designed to encourage people to buy a PC and get involved with our towns website. All successful applicants had to sign up for a year with an internet service provider of their choice. The subsidy came in the form of a cheque for £150 and a training voucher to the value of £50, which could be used on a variety of courses available through the local commercial training providers.
2. Each school in our parish was also given one PC each as an initial project , it is planned to participate on individual projects in each school in the coming year.

castlebar.ie the website was launched over 3 years ago and has allready won awards for its content and validity, it is maintained on our behalf by "Mayo Editorial services". This project will grow and grow, the plan is to have a real sense of community reflected on our website and not just a pretty looking picture of the town as most other websites are.

3. With the launch of The E.C.D.L project we have introduced a cheap and accepted tool to help everyone interested in learning computing skills to our town. E.C.D.L stands for European, Computer, Driving, Licence, this now is fast becoming the accepted standard of entry level training. We have made available to our community 500 copies of an interactive cdrom which covers the entire course, and can be rented from the Chamber of Commerce for £5.