‘We just didn’t use it’

A study by the Royal Geographic Society identifies five key reasons people aren’t online; lack of skills, suspicions around the morality and safety of being online, a lack of motivation, access barriers including poor connection or disabilities and it just being too expensive.

For housing associations pushing to get tenants online some are easier to address than others. Free IT classes are widely available to address skills barriers, low cost broadband packages and WiFi can be fairly easily provided and putting PCs in public area improves access for those who can’t afford their own kit or connection.

However with a lack of motivation none of this will be effective. In response to a discussion on mobile internet my Great Aunt suggested ‘It’s always been there, in the air, but we just didn’t use it’ and this echoes the situation for most of our digitally excluded customers.

Better than nothing

At the end of September the Refugee Welcome Trust finished the end of it's fifth 'official' year. With a fancy new name; 'Together Now', we're come a long way since we started in July 2010.

Since then we've brought over 53 people travelling on family reunion visas to be with their loved ones who are refugees living in the UK.

That includes 40 children who now have safer more secure futures with their parents. 

We now know that you can bring salted fish with you to the UK in certain conditions and limited amounts, that if you really need one you can find a Tamil speaking taxi driver at Heathrow and that when a family is on their last chance of being together they become capable of pretty much anything asked of them.

Illustrative wellbeing and other outcomes

On average a person sees 5000 marketing messages a day.

That’s an incredibly competitive environment for us to be putting out our housing related messages that might be considered ‘boring but important’. Linda Nasr, Lecturer in Marketing led with this fact in her ‘Getting the message across’ at MBS’s Prometheus programme and it makes you think.

As a housing organization we’re never going to be able to compete with the glossy commercials, celebrity endorsements or sensational tabloid stories so how do we communicate our key messages?

"What about us? We're still here"

For many people working with refugees the current press coverage of the 'crisis' has provoked mixed feelings. Working in one tiny area I can't profess to be offering the most balanced or informed view but I'd like to share a point made by one of my friends, himself an asylum seeker in Manchester.

My friend; let's call him Isaac, is articulate, well informed and doing his best not to be worn down by the emotionally exhausting process of seeking asylum here. Having arrived in the UK as a minor, and with perfect English, when we meet the points he raises are to the point and come with a political awareness that comes from having a life where survival hinges on the whim of the government and statutory agencies.

'If you don't say it no one can listen.'

Manchester Housing Festival got off to an inauspicious start as a man in a full lion suit watched volunteers huddled around in the cold and drizzle as a man put up the much needed gazebo. Keen to get going but unable to hand out flyers due to his paws, John the lion waited for another Wythenshawe volunteer to help him and they headed out to find the best pitch near the tram stop.

David

An urgent plea for people to take part in some filming led to me and Heather being outside a Subway in Trafford in the rain as the Homes for Britain film makers got the ‘final’ shots they needed for the campaign film.

Whilst we faced the curious stares of passers by and those on the bus David got stuck in carrying the flag, a responsibility he embraced with all the seriousness required of some people dressed in fuscia tabards pretending to be on a housing march on a wet Wednesday afternoon.

A gift that keeps on giving

When for my birthday I asked for donations to my charity instead of presents none of my friends or family thought that was such a good idea. To be fair many of them give already but generally people like to give gifts, to pick something out and see it be appreciated. To me the idea of getting donations without painful form filling, standing in the cold or embarrassing ‘asks’ seems like a great gift but for people who can’t see it being spent, see the money making a difference or people enjoying what it provides for them it’s perhaps less rewarding.

With donations as with gifts it’s great to be able to see it make someone happy.