About

The Whalley Range Community Forum is  facilitating the Generating Opportunities Work Club programme, in partnership with Whalley Range Youth Opportunities Association – providing weekly access to learning and employment opportunities for local residents.
 
The project is funded by a Work club grant from Manchester City Council, a start-up grant for equipment from Jobcentre Plus – and additional funding from Community First for a Work club for 16-25 year olds via WRYOA Whiz project
 
The project provides practical sessions to improve prospects for residents – with access to computers and the internet for job searching/course identification and support.
The GO project also serves to promote JNR8 as an information sharing hub, providing an accessible base to advertise current opportunities identified by the Manchester learning hubs/Jobcentre Plus – and to utilise the information share and bulletins circulated by the WRCF.
 
Thanks to a computer refurbishment recycling project initiated by Manchester Metropolitan University, we received 6 computers, allowing us to provide 4 week basic computing courses for residents.
 
In light of the welfare reforms affecting benefits and job seeking, it is important for residents to develop basic IT skills to access services online: it will be a requirement for jobseekers to register with Universal Job Match and Universal Credit claims – in which an online system will be used to make an initial claim, and to check payments and to organise budgets.
The Generating Opportunities project is supporting people to learn the basics of using a computer to setting up an email account and filling in forms/searching online.