Fund will help make Limerick people IT smart

FUNDING has been made available to provide free IT training for 800 Limerick people. The €40,000 slice of a national €1.88 million fund has been awarded to help people from all walks of life to get up to speed with emailing, surfing the net, skyping and other tecno skills. Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources – Pat. Rabbitte T.D, announced offers of training grants for 20 training projects run by community and voluntary groups and not for profit organisations under the BenefIT 3 scheme.

Limerick Community Connect were one of the groups who received funding.
This means that 800 will gain from free IT training between now and June 2012. In particular older people will benefit, as will the unemployed, as well as other disadvantaged groups.
“We ran a project to train people in IT in Limerick last year and 900 were trained. “Everyone filled out a questionnaire at the the end of it and the feedback was just phenomenal – we could have trained another thousand people if the funding was there,” Elaine Doyle of Community Connect, told the Limerick Post.
This project will run in centres, libraries and public spaces in Limerick city. It will use a Train the Trainer approach where students from Limerick Institute of Technology and University of Limerick and interested residents, will receive training to deliver these courses.
Each participant will receive six hours of training, four hours will focus on the Internet, Email and Online Transactions. Two further hours will be available on Digital Photography/Video or Skype and or e-Government services online or a topic the trainees may choose.
A training schedule will be available from November and the group will be taking names of interested participants.