Published on: October 26, 2023
The staff at Safe East, our Tower Hamlets service for young people, took time out from their work to learn new digital skills to further strengthen their reach in the community.
Mariam Sheriff and Lily Hatcher, Natalie Mason and Harvi Singh took part in the session held at the Spotlight centre in the East End of London.
The training covered writing in plain English, uploading text and pictures into web pages and publishing web pages. It also covered photographic compositions and how to ask questions for interviews and shoot them simply on phones, for YouTube.
Rose Kearns, Assistant Director for Business Development, said: “At Compass, we know how important it is to engage children, young people and families within our communities, where ever we can.
“As so many of us now spend so much time online, we believe it’s essential for key workers to learn new methods to reach them there, as well as in person.”
Vicky Jones, the Service Manager of Safe East, which is a health and wellbeing service for children and young people who need support around drug and alcohol use and/or sexual health, said: “It was helpful to get the digital skills training so we can reach more young people and professionals via our website.
“We needed to refresh our website and showcase our newly established team and we got that done. The updates to our website page were refreshing and the team got on board and created an extra page, too, written so it’s easy to read. We illustrated it with pictures we took on the day and with slides from one of Mariam’s presentations.
The training was carried out by Compass’ Digital Marketing and Communications Manager, Cliff Edwards.
Cliff said: “It was brilliant to meet the team and be able, in my own way, to support them to do what they already do so well.
“They took to it all really quickly and easily. They were so keen to learn new ways to get their messages out to the young people they work for.”
Vicky said: “Cliff supported the team to think creatively and through another lens. He encouraged us on ways to appeal to other professionals and young people via our webpage.
‘It was great for Cliff to come visit Tower Hamlets. I was able to give him a tour of the building and he was able to meet the team. It was really helpful to have face to face conversations about the website page and be able to vamp it up.”
And she added: “The team was grateful that Cliff came to visit and enjoyed the afternoon.”