The ShoutOut website is where you have your say on the Children’s Commissioner’s plans for next year. Al Aynsley-Green, is the first ever Children’s Commissioner for England.

“It’s my job to lead 11 MILLION and to be an independent voice for children and young people. Every child or young person has the right to be listened to.” If you register with the site you can build links with other people, talk to experts and put your points across.

“What’s the harm in putting up a smoke alarm, like a lucky charm watching over pops and moms” raps ‘Controversy’ - aka Stephen-remell Coleman who’s a firefighter on the red watch at London’s Wimbledon Fire Station.

“Got Mine Got Yours” is a rap about how smoke alarms save lives and it’s getting quite an audience thanks to a write up on the BBC website, and perhaps more importantly as the rap video is reaching people on YouTube, the video sharing website.

According to the BBC site: “He says he wants to target low income and ethnic communities, and that hip hop allows “free expression of ideas, views and opinions”".

This is a fabulous example of using social media (youtube.com) to reach audiences that might not otherwise come into contact with a Fire Service; it’s also an incredible well produced ‘music video’. In the five days since it appeared on YouTube, over 2000 people have seen it. Of course, it’s also a great rap!

To view it on YouTube, click here.

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has recently embarked on a project to explore the potential use of Camera phones in various projects. The aim is to introduce camera phones in projects with young people. Ahead of that, a pilot project is testing the feasibility of introducing new gadgets to Fire Support Network Volunteers. A group of volunteers has been out and about in the community taking pictures and saving them online. So far so good, we’re exploring how they can be used to record the work of volunteers, to record fire hazards (and potential hazards), and to record Fire Safety events and promotional projects.

Pilot project…
Following initial feedback from the group of volunteers we are focusing the pilot on recording the work of the Fire Support Network. The next photos we will gather will be a series of community based events and, once captured, these pictures may be used in promotional activity. We will be using the camera phones as a simple mechanism to capture the work of the volunteers and their activities within local communities.

Technology…
Many phones now come with cameras, so it was easy to decide to use Nokia 6233 handsets which are pretty easy to use as phones and as cameras. We also needed to create some sort of image capture system; preferably online. Our solution came in the form of Flickr.com the popular photo sharing website. We are sending images from the phones to Flickr via email (MMS message), and then we’re using Flickr to manage them. Flickr lets us do all sorts of things such as add notes, create albums, and then obviously to publish them. Of course, using Flickr and MMS / email and 6233 handsets means we’re able to run a pilot project at relatively low cost. The project is testing how this technology can be used, rather than testing the technology itself.

Sharing…
More information on the pilot will be made available here, and eventually we will make some of these images public using Flickr; and here on the blog. Our Camera Action images are currently private whilst we all get to grips with the project, but we are sharing other images from the wider programme on Flickr on the “OurOpenSpace” Flickr page here.

More on this soon!

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. 

I was lucky enough to attend a recent ‘Pass Out’ ceremony from one of the Beacon Courses at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service. A group of young people who had successfully completed a training course about Fire Safety and Prevention ‘graduated’ one afternoon in July! The display included demonstrations of skills learnt on the course including how to put out fires. To the amateur eye they looked pretty serious - as you can see from some of the images on Flickr. For anyone attending the event was very impressive, but when you learn that was course number 68, and that at any one time several courses are in operation, well that really is impressive.

Another BBC article recently highlights ‘user promiscuity’ in social sites.

“MySpace is running out of breath, while Bebo and Facebook are fast catching up. That’s the message from the latest figures on social networking in Britain. MySpace has long been the leading site for young networkers who want to run their social lives online. But research firm Nielsen/NetRatings says May saw a drop in UK traffic to MySpace, while Bebo and Facebook continued to attract new users. “

Facebook it seems is more compelling for its community who spend longer, and ‘do more’ on the site. As more and more projects, organisations and brands aim to connect with the social software generation, it will be important to keep up with the social software fashion trends; who’s doing what online and where?

The BBC recently published an article on Social sites (MySpace and Facebook) and class divide. The article is based on recent research by US PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley. The research highlights that Facebook users are more likely to come from wealthier homes then MySpace users. The research is based on interviews with American teenagers, but are things so clear cut here? As part of the OurOpenSpace project we will be ensuring our work is accessible to as many young people as possible; regardless if family income or education; but the research raises important points when deciding which social network to work with if you intend to reach a specific group of people. Social networking sites all have a clear focus, in my opinion MySpace is more music oriented so anyone more focussed on entertainment will flock there rather than the slightly more serious looking Facebook. Similarly, people go where their friends are; which might not be a natural choice if their friends weren’t already in one or the other social site. We’ll be keeping close tabs on this topic in relation to social media and social inclusion projects.

Image: BBC

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.

Kensington Vision gives the people of Kensington, Liverpool, a unique opportunity to access the latest local information – from news, sport, & video diaries to business information, jobs, training & education. It is a project focussed on delivering local content, created by local people, and making full use of cutting edge technologies.

Whether you are 8 or 80, Kensington Vision has something for you!

Kensington Vision

Youth Tech is a great blog I’ve been reading. It’s “a discussion about using technology in creative ways to enrich the lives of youth.” It’s an American site but has a lot of excellent resources in this area.

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.”

Coming Soon.

Respect
http://www.respect.gov.uk/
The Government’s new Respect Initiative including “Youth Specific” information for communities and community workers. “Respect is about central government, local agencies, local communities and ultimately every citizen working together to build a society in which we can respect one another - where anti-social behaviour is rare and tackled effectively, and communities can live in peace together.”

Neighbourhood Policing
http://www.neighbourhoodpolicing.co.uk/
“Neighbourhood Policing is based on local priorities identified by local people as the issues that need to be dealt with in their area and Police and partners will work together to tackle them.”

Neighbourhood Renewal Unit
http://www.neighbourhood.gov.uk
“The Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU) is responsible for overseeing the Government’s comprehensive neighbourhood renewal strategy. A strategy that responds to local circumstances rather than directs everything from Whitehall.”

Youth Justice Board
http://www.youth-justice-board.gov.uk/
“The Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (YJB) is an executive non-departmental public body. Our 12 board members are appointed by the Secretary of State for Justice. The YJB oversees the youth justice system in England and Wales. We work to prevent offending and reoffending by children and young people under the age of 18, and to ensure that custody for them is safe, secure, and addresses the causes of their offending behaviour.”

Safer School Partnership
http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/ete/ssp/
“Safer School Partnerships, where police are based in schools, take a joined-up approach to crime prevention, school safety, behaviour improvement and educational achievement.”

If you have more links you’d like us to include please let us know.