4th March 2002
ENGLAND STAR OPENS THE ORDER AT MEGA FREE IT FACILITY

Residents of Monk Bretton in Barnsley are in for a treat on Tuesday 5 March when former Yorkshire and England batsman Martyn Moxon will officially open Barnsley's latest Electronic Village Hall, Megabytes, at Preston Way, Monk Bretton.

The project is coming to fruition thanks to a partnership led by Barnsley Development Agency's (BDA) Community Economic Regeneration Team (CERT). The project is entirely owned and managed by an active group of local residents and has also received support from the local authority.

The centre which is located in a refurbished hairdressers salon will be home to nine state-of-the-art PCs and multi media equipment. This includes Internet access and the latest scanners, cameras, and graphics facilities, and forms part of CERT's overall IT strategy - a network of local free-access facilities in communities where it can really make a difference, supported towards sustainability by income-generating activities and business. It is well researched that a lack of IT skills and knowledge is a serious barrier to employment opportunities, and CERT led partnerships aim to address this not only in Monk Bretton but also across the whole of the Barnsley borough.

Peter Price, project manager for Megabytes, commented: "Without the help of CERT this project simply wouldn't have got off the ground at all. Now, before we're even officially open, we have a great deal of interest from the local community who are telling us this is just the sort of resource they've been waiting for. Monk Bretton is the type of community that needs this type of free facility more than most, with high unemployment and many people feeling remote from the world of the Internet and computers because of a lack of confidence and experience in using the equipment." Megabytes is open Monday-Friday from 9.00am-5.00pm, with free broadband Internet access and computer facilities available to all residents of Monk Bretton on a first-come-first-served basis.

Janet Bibby, Team Leader for CERT, said: "This is exactly the quality of facility that will encourage people to come and try out the Internet, e-mail, word processing etc, which in turn will stimulate opportunities for local people to apply for jobs that require PC skills, with more confidence than they may currently have. The level of equipment at Megabytes is incredibly high, and there is always a project manager on hand to guide people through the daunting first few steps of computing if visitors for those who haven't used PCs before."

The Megabytes Management Group encourage more local residents to become involved as volunteers in the day-to-day staffing and management of the centre; anyone interested in getting involved should contact Peter Price at Mega Bytes. The Electronic Village Halls series of projects across the borough ties into Barnsley's overall IT strategy aimed at re-skilling members of Barnsley's long-term unemployed workforce for the demands of modern Information Technology posts. Re-skilling and training could lead to real employment opportunities in the future, addressing a key skills gap in the Barnsley economy.

For further information on BDA, contact Barnsley Development Agency on (01226) 784444.


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