HMCA
High Moorland Community Action (HMCA)
Introduction HMCA
HMCA is an organisation that wants to make Dartmoor Parish and Princetown a great place to live.
As well as many other projects HMCA provides a range of Information Technology and other training courses to individuals and businesses in the area and promotes life long learning.
HMCA works to pull together the strands of Parish life, to reduce social isolation and to build bridges with and between existing authorities, generating partnerships between groups and individuals, spearheading new ways of working together and ensuring the long term future of the Parish and all its inhabitants
Mission
HMCA acts as a catalyst to start and support projects, generate local action, encourage and provide a forum for all local people to have a say in shaping their future
Based – Princetown (Devon)
Number of Staff - 5 (4 part-time) and a number of volunteers
Website - www.hmca.org.uk
Key Projects and Outcomes (determined through initial meeting)
1. Networking - For HMCA to network and share information with their new youth service building as well as from home
2. Backups - To understand how to recover data using a RAID system
3. Strategy - To have a ICT strategy for the organisation to help them plan more effectively for the future
4. Accessibility – For HMCA to have a better understanding of the key issues regarding accessibility including website accessibility
Evolve Actions and Developments
1. Networking - The Evolve Co-ordintor demonstrated and provided information on Virtual Private Network (VPN) software as well as the use of SharePoint (intranet)
Rob French (Technology Manager at COSMIC) visited the organisation and set up a VPN link to enable the sharing of information between the different premises as well as remotely from home. Rob also ensured the appropriate security settings were in place.
2. Backups – Rob French provided a ‘hands on’ demonstration of backing up information to a server as well as ensuring the organisation understood how to recover the data effectively if required.
3. Strategy – Information was passed on regarding the development of an ICT strategy and it’s potential benefits to the organisation. HMCA have subsequently signed up to the Net:gain programme which is a highly subsidised development programme to help leaders of Voluntary and Community Organisations (VCOs) to tackle ICT planning, whatever their existing expertise, organisation size, or area of work
4. Accessibility – As well as providing HMCA with various accessibility resources they were visited by Julia Taylor who was previously the Accessibility Champion for the South West. Julia was able to demonstrate various accessibility equipment as well as pass on some of her expert knowledge in this area.
HMCA were given articles that tackled website accessibility. The organisation used this information to get a free accessibility check on their website, which proved very enlightening.
“We have found the help and support provided from the Evolve project run by COSMIC to be invaluable. The preparation done by the Evolve staff before visiting us was commendable. They only needed a few hours of our time to achieve what we had failed to do after many months of trying on our own.”
“The organisation had built up hardware and software to achieve a lot of its aims but lacked the skills to make it work effectively. What the Evolve project did was to identify the resources that we already have and without further expenditure train our staff how to accomplish the tasks”
Pat Marshall - HMCA Training Manager