Foresight

 Background

The Foresight Project is a registered charity based in Grimsby.  It was formed in 1999 as an umbrella organization to represent all the blind and visually impaired groups and societies in North East Lincolnshire.  They work together to improve individual quality of life, combat social exclusion and encourage personal development through volunteering and training opportunities.  

Foresight has a board of fifteen trustees - ten of whom are either blind or visually impaired - and all service users.  It has five paid staff and over 40 active volunteers.  Foresight, like many charities, is heavily reliant on its volunteers, who are offered training in specific areas eg first aid, visual impairment and health and safety.  Eight of their volunteers have gone on to employment with other organizations.
It offers a range of events and services that sighted people take for granted.  Foresight organizes a wide range of sporting activities, regular social events and learning opportunities working with local societies and organisations.  It also operates an IT training project and a telephone support and help line service.     

Support and Advice

When Paul Silvester, Chief Officer for Foresight, was first visited by Donna Murphy, Social Enterprise Co-ordinator, and Eric Hope, Social Enterprise Broker the Foresight Project was not trading. As they developed their trading initiatives - a befriending service to the Local Authority, social work placements at the University of Hull and equipment sales – they then became eligible for support from Social Enterprise Humber.

Sue Bell, Foresight’s Centre Manager, approached Donna Murphy and explained that they needed training in how to manage their website.  
The website had originally been built by Derek Cook from noclix! who specialises in building disability friendly websites.  It contains specific features for the blind and visually impaired members, to enable them to change the look of the site to suit their own needs.  A 'style switcher' feature for example makes it easy to select print colour, font size and background.  There are also useful tips about the site in the ‘helpful hints' section, including how to use keyboard shortcuts.  However, the volunteers trained to use the website had moved on and remaining members of the team had real difficulty updating it!

Donna organized a learning grant for the Foresight Project and Sue was able to arrange for Derek to come to their offices and train four members of staff and volunteers for seven weeks, four hours a week.  
“We need our website to raise awareness of the Foresight Project and our services and to keep our members up to date with all the activities, training and support we offer.” said Sue Bell.  “We now have enough trained volunteers to keep our website up to date and who will be able to train new members of our team.”

The Future

The Foresight Project now has offices at 44-48 Hainton Avenue in Grimsby and you can view the before and after pictures on their website!  It has a fully operational audio sound studio.  Foresight hopes to have its own multi-media video unit which will be available for the making of promotional videos for organisations involved in any aspects of disability.  

“We were delighted to be able to support the Foresight Project,” said Donna.  “They recognized that an effective website would raise their profile and help them to market the range of services and support they offer to their members and the wider community.  The website training has also developed the skills base of the organization and the volunteers who support Foresight.”

Social Enterprise Humber is a Business Link Humber project sponsored by Yorkshire Forward and the European Regional Development Fund which aims to develop a strong and financially sustainable Social Enterprise sector through the following objectives:

• Growing bigger, better, more sustainable and more effective individual social enterprises.
• Creating new social enterprises with a focus on sustainability and quality.
• Developing a bigger market environment for social enterprises, and raising the profile and capability of the sector to deliver high quality services for the private and public sectors.
• Stimulating partnership developments with all sectors, public, private and voluntary/community.
• Facilitating segmented network activity to encourage peer support, information exchange and informal learning.
• Raising the profile and quality of sustainable social enterprise support within the sub-region, and building capacity, skills and understanding within the support infrastructure.

For further information contact     
Emma Buttrick
        Social Enterprise Administrator
        Business Link Humber
        Tel 01724 291526
        Fax 01724 291511
        Mob 07795605228
        www.sehumber.co.uk