ClickBuryPark

The project will be based in Bury Park, Luton. This community is predominantly Bangladeshi, Pakistani/Kashmiri, with a percentage of Irish, Afro Caribbean and other minority groups.

Context

Margaret Moran MP helped promote a successful local initiative, at Dallow Junior School, involving Bangladeshi mums going online and undertaking distance learning, using the school’s free online time. This scheme clearly proved the usefulness of community IT facilities and was one of the major inspirations behind the ClickBuryPark idea.

Our Vision

We envisage that ClickBuryPark will be a true community project in every imaginable sense of the word. Following initial infrastructure development, it will be built, maintained and sustained by local individuals, community groups and companies.

Besides creating a community portal to offer a vital link to information and advice on local organisations, services and cultural issues, it will also play a key role in up-skilling local people and helping to alleviate many social problems, including isolation among women, drugs abuse and youth unemployment.

More than anything, our vision is about using ICT as part of the general drive to alleviate poverty and bridge the digital divide in one of Britain’s most underprivileged communities.

Why are we doing this?

  • create potential for skills and training in ICT, by initially creating a local cyber community.
  • establish a community based and built website developing transferable skills, leading to possible up-skilling to systems and software training.
  • engage the community, create ownership and promote greater awareness of services such as preventative healthcare, counselling, drugs advice etc.
  • link usually isolated parts of Bury Park and widen opportunities for community involvement.
  • share information, provide support and help inform policy makers on difficult issues such as drugs and forced marriages.
  • establish online centres, set up and run by the local community, including tailored online distance learning and links to home communities in Bangladesh, Pakistan and elsewhere
  • provide online facilities for job searching
  • In short, to address the digital divide.

Services we will provide