Zico is a firefighter with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, he is also the winner of the Northwest Regional Development Agency Young Achiever of the Year Award.
The award ceremony was back in November 2006, but Zico’s story is now on the Princes Trust website.
We are looking to explore potential partnerships within the UK and in Europe to work with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service and Kisky Netmedia Ltd to establish funding for our emerging technology projects. We are exploring two avenues, one UK Universities and the other with The Merseyside Brussels Office.
Dr David Allen, Leeds University Business School and Dr Anoush Simon from Aberystwyth University visited MF&RS 17th May 2007 and presented their own research groups and discussed the types of projects which they had undertaken. The general conclusion was that we could work together on collaborative projects; however, it was important to note that the scale of the current activity (in terms of thought and scope) was wide and would have to be broken into a number of work packages or linked activities.
After meeting with Laura Bonacorsi European Policy Officer The Merseyside Brussels Office, Ed, Katie and I have decided to approach potential partners in Europe and we have just completed the partner search document and sent it to Laura.
The Community Fire Safety Strategy will be available for download via this blog.
“The Community Fire Safety Strategy is integral to our corporate planning
process. It provides a high level view of our approach and ambitions in
the area of community safety and is underpinned with a series of
individual strategies – arson, youth, violence at work, etc – that deal with
specific themes. This strategy is reflected in the Authority’s Integrated
Risk Management Plan, annual Service Plan and Financial Plan that
incorporate the individual targets and milestones for specific
actions and projects.”
I recently started working with The Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service to develop ideas for using Emerging Technologies in Youth Engagement projects. One outcome of that is this blog; a new initiative designed to build a community of practice for people working with youth engagement and new technologies. Another outcome of my work with the Fire Service is that I have been privileged to experience excellent Youth Engagement programmes in action. The Fire service has a best in class training centre based in Bootle, Liverpool, which sees many young people embark upon, and successfully complete a range of training courses. Recently I met with a group of 13-14 year olds on their one day a week course. The highlight of my day was a trip to the ‘Ratrun’ a series of cages used to train Fire Fighters in working in confined spaces. The ratrun goes down a treat with all course participants, and I must say trying on Fire Fighter uniforms went down quite well too!
We have been working to develop ideas for using mobile communications, particularly SMS in youth engagement. One key issue faced by the Fire Service was keeping up continued communication with the young people who participate in a variety of courses, after the courses have ended and they have moved onto other things. The Fire Service is in a position to offer followup courses, or potentially work experience and offers more general support to the young people they have got to know well. Can SMS be used to maintain contact? Will it work better than writing letters or sending emails?
We have implemented and embarked upon a new project recently to answer these questions. We’re using a simple online SMS sending tool to send SMS to groups. Following an initial training period with staff, we’ll be trialling this system and sending regular SMS communications to people on the courses as they start their journey with the Fire Service. We will be publishing our findings and learnings here.
The Connect Youth website is a great place to start researching European projects; Connect Youth is the UK national agency for the Youth in Action Programme.
“Along with the European Commission, our aim is to help young people discover Europe. On our site you will find information about Youth Exchanges and Youth Initiatives; European Voluntary Service, Youth in the World and Youth Support Systems.”
As well as information on all the various Connect Youth programmes, there is a useful database you can use to search for potential project partners.
(Image: http://www.connectyouthinternational.com/)
I first heard about Katie Lips and Kisky Netmedia at a Merseyside Managers ICT User Group which took place in the Holly Oaks student bar at the Lime Pictures studios in
I invited Katie to a meeting at Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service HQ and we were joined by MF&RS Youth Engagement Manger Emma Dodd. The subject was to discuss the possibility of working together on a Youth Engagement project using dynamic technical innovation as the channel of engagement and in that meeting the ‘OurOpenSpace’ project was conceived.
The OurOpenSpace project is very new; we’re just at the beginning of our journey. And as we embark on research, creation, innovation and dissemination in the world of Emerging Technologies and Youth Engagement, we’d like to introduce ourselves; the project team.
I’m Katie Lips, a Social Media Evangelist and Creative Technologist and I’ve been working with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service to explore emerging technologies and how they can be used to enhance, and to innovate in youth engagement and non-formal education. So far, we have embarked on a series of micro projects which we will discuss here on this blog.
My interest is as a technology user, blogger and as someone who uses Social Media tools and communities on a daily basis. I work on a range of projects exploring leading edge technologies for my company Kisky Netmedia. In previous roles, I have also devised and lead national technology projects in the education sector, having worked with online diaries and with video projects by young people, way before blogs and YouTube were household names.
I have been researching a range of related projects which I will blog about here, and my aim for this blog is to create a collaborative ideas space where anyone working in the field of Youth Engagement can learn about related projects, and share their ideas and experiences. I am particularly excited about this project and working with the forward-thinking team at MF&RS.
