Helping Communities Bridge the Digital Divide.

If you wanted to communicate with me on-line we would both need to meet a base requirement of enabling interaction and communication across the Internet, an e-mail address.

To the experienced user of the Internet it is sometime difficult to remember that Internet users are the minority group within the community. The goal of i-communities.co.uk is to strengthen relationships within community groups and to allow those groups to interact with other communities, organisations, businesses and local government using the same medium, the Internet. By bridging the technology gap between business, local government and local community groups the backbone of the community is strengthened through active communication and involvement.

With approximately 50% of households in the UK without Internet access at home, a vast proportion of the population will not meet this very basic requirement to utilise the Internet. Thus those not being able to use the Internet directly dilute the efforts of businesses, government (both local and national) and other enterprises in placing their services on-line for the public to use.

Included in this proportion of the population not using the Internet are many community groups as a whole and also individual members of community groups. If we can enable these communities to represent themselves on-line and be included in the Internet revolution as a group of individuals, then the Digital Divide will decrease. This will enable those who have already placed services and information on-line that benefit community groups to develop on-line relationships when face-to-face relationships may not always be possible.

Over many years' businesses, enterprises and government - both local and national, have to a large extent, ignored relationships with the community when placing services on-line. In the race to be the first or to meet deadlines in providing this or that service, the implementers haven't always allowed for how the public will actually interact with their on-line efforts.

Local leader must recognise that some modest investment into community groups is essential to ensure that they do not get left behind in the digital race to put everything online. They need to look to the future and to how groups will communicate, services like e-mail, online mailing lists, discussion forums, and websites will become standard and will empower members from rural areas to attend virtual community meeting and stay involved with the community as a whole.

To enable groups to Interact on the web, i-communities.co.uk provides fully featured hosting packages directly to community groups. They also offer multiple packages at huge discount to County Councils who may wish to purchase several Community Group domains. This cost-effective discount of up to 50% allows County Councils to provide for their local group's needs as part of meeting the requirements for e-Government.

The hosting package allows a community group to easily provide to their members the basic building blocks for interacting with others on the Internet, an e-mail address. As the package also includes an available relevant .co.uk domain name, it gives members a sense of belonging when communicating across the Internet. This belonging can also inspire some members of the community group who have concerns about the Internet to take the step over the digital divide and join the rest of the group online.