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Where we are now

May
19

Hello everyone.  It’s been a while since we updated our blog.  What can we say, we are busy little bees here at Wai Yin.  We are too busy working for the good of the community that we don’t get chance to take a break to update this.

Well, we thought we would share some things with you.  As you know, this year is Wai Yin’s 20th Anniversary .  In 1988, Wai Yin was formed by a number of volunteers, and it has been running ever since with the same goal of serving the Chinese community.  We are grateful for the help of all the volunteers, staff and service users from the past and the present.  We recently put some photos online from the celebration.  Go to http://picasaweb.google.com/WaiYinCWS/ to see the photos we have.

We also held our BME Volunteer Award Ceremony at Yang Sing Restaurant in March, and we had a huge response.  We want to thank all of the volunteers who were nominated and all the winners, especially Karim West who won the overall award on the day.  These volunteers are an inspiration to us all, and we want to thank them for their work in the community.

Some of our staff and volunteers have been working on some changes to the website.  And these are not small changes, we are talking about a complete upheaval.  Changing everything about the site.  We’ve been working very hard on this, and we want to get as much feedback as we can.  We want to launch the website on 22nd June, so we are asking for visitors to this site to help us by testing our new site.  Log on to http://waiyin.comuv.com/ and find out more.  There are two links that you will find – one for the site and one for the feedback form.  We are constantly making changes to the pages on there, and hope that we will have ironed out all the bugs in time for the launch.

That’s all I can think of now, but I am sure that we will update you with many more things very soon.

Nathan

North West Celebrates ESF Successes

Jul
7

Do you remember the free ESOL classes we offered last year? What about our free DIY and Construction Skills workshops? Well, they were all financed by the Learning & Skills Council and JobCentre Plus, from the European Social Fund. Unfortunately, the funding was only until 31st December 2007, otherwise we would have continued the project.

Well, on Friday 27th June, Wai Yin was recognised for its achievements in its Women Construction Solutions Project at a lavish award ceremony at the Hilton Hotel. We were so proud to pick up the award for Embracing Diversity and also the Provider Excellence award. We are so grateful to the Learning & Skills Council and JobCentre Plus for giving us the money to run these projects as, without them, we would not have had the success of the projects, never mind achieving this award.

Have a look at http://www.esf.gov.uk/news/articles/nw_celebrates_success.asp for the article on the European Social Fund website, and we’ll have some photos available for you soon.

Thanks a lot to Sheila for developing the Women Construction Solutions project, and Lisa for managing all FIVE contracts by Learning & Skills Council and JobCentre Plus. I personally have never seen anyone so stressed until I started work here, but Lisa has still managed to be a very happy person.

But most importantly, we want to thank YOU, our service users. We reached thousands of people through the projects and over 120 for the Women Construction Solutions Project alone, and we couldn’t have done it without all of you.

Upgrade TODAY!!!

Jun
18

Hey everyone,

Quick … and very short notice … update.  Our website will be offline for about half an hour today at 5pm, as we are making updates to our site.  Hopefully this will make the clutter easier for you.

Let us know what you think.

Nathan

Update 18:00

Ok, it looks like the update is off, since our beloved web server is having problems with the pages.  We’re doing a full test and update and will hopefully get it back online.  In the meantime, our old website is back.

Sorry if it caused any problems.

Upgrade immanent

Jun
16

I came into the office this morning and checked my email, only to find that someone has left a comment on our blog.  It was asking about website upgrades, since there is a lot of information that can not be found quickly.

Well, let it be said that we do listen.  And we’ve been acting on it for a while now.  We are making a number of changes to the website, in terms of updating and information distribution and searching.  We’re also making changes to the way our pages work.  How long before these changes are rolled out, I don’t know.  But they will be done.  And we are still working on a fully translated website as well, so stay with us on this.  Please.

For this current menu system, we tried to organise it in some sort of logical order.  For example, if you want to find information about our Adult Education Project, you would select “Projects” from the menu and then select “Adult Education”.  Information about our Benefits Advice service?  ”Services”, then “Benefit Advice”.  But there are some links that you would no doubt like at the forefront of your time … but let us work on this.  We’ll try out the new features before rolling them out.  The only issue is that re-organising all the information may take a while.  But we are working on it.  Slowly, but surely.

Here’s an idea, how about the most important links get made as “Quick Links”?  We have a menu across the side of the page that contains important links, like finding a job, or contacting us, or even our office opening times.  I’m working on slight template changes, so I can put that in very soon.  In the meantime, you can use our search function.  This is updated every week, so it is really useful to find information.

If you want to make suggestions, leave a comment here.  It really couldn’t be simpler.  We can’t promise that every comment will get a reply, but we sure will try.

Nathan

Finally … it’s WORKING!!!

Jun
3

Hey,

Well, after a few weeks of wrestling with our web host, we are proud to say that our website is now back online.  We’ve even sorted out a couple of bugs that went around, which is always a good thing.

But we have more to go.  We’re looking at putting new content managed features in to make it easier to give you the latest information.  So stay tuned here, you’ll get the latest updates first direct.

Hey, I almost forgot … have you subscribed to our feed?  If you have an RSS Reader, or use something like Google Reader, you can get the latest news items sent straight to your desktop.  It’s easy to do. Just scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Subscribe to : Posts (Atom)” link.  If you’ve set your browser up right, then it will automatically subscribe to the latest feeds.  Alternatively, just copy the feed address and subscribe manually.

Or you can just come back here regularly and get your updates that way.  It’s up to you.

Nathan

No advice sessions from 11th April until 25th April

Apr
7

CHINESE LINKWORKER ADVICE SERVICE – Notice

There will be no Chinese Linkworker Advice Service from 11th April 2008 (Fri) to 25th April 2008 (Fri).

The service will be resumed normal from 28th April 2008 (Mon).

華人聯絡員諮詢服務 – 通告

聯絡員將在2008年4月11日(星期五)至2008年4月25日(星期五)

暫停提供諮詢服務°

華人聯絡員諮詢服務由年4月28日(星期一)起將會恢復正常°

New Jobs!!!

Mar
6

As part of our new SEVA Project, we have some new vacancies opening up.  Have a look at www.waiyin.org.uk/jobs for more details on what is on offer.


We have a total of 8 vacancies, but not all of them will be based at Wai Yin.  Please call us and speak to Mark Greenwood for more information.

Website downtime

Mar
4

Hey guys,

Sorry, but our website has gone down over the weekend.  We’re working on it right now, and we hopefully will have it back up and running again in no time.  However, please do let us know if it happens again, or if there are still some bugs.
Nathan

What's happening?

Feb
24

Hey everyone.


Just thought I’d let you know a few things that are happening or have happened at Wai Yin this month.

As you can tell, Wai Yin is always busy.  There is nearly always something new that we have every month.  Even the staff structure changes every month, so it’s quite difficult to keep up with everything.

Well, we have a few audits and inspections coming up soon.  First of all, on 20th February, we’ve had the Young Carer’s audit.  Sam and Lisa have had a lot of work to do for this audit, so we wish them all the very best of luck with the inspection.

Secondly, tomorrow is our OFSTED audit.  It’s really big, so we’re going to be especially busy preparing for it.  Hopefully, we can get a good grade, so all the best to the team involved in this.  OFSTED will be at Wai Yin for two days, so it will be really busy then.  Also, on Tuesday, HMRC are coming to audit our General Advice project.  They came once before, and were very happy with the project, so let’s hope that we can do just as well this time round.

We’ll let you know what our results are when we find out.  Also, remember to keep coming back to check the new updates.

Oh, speaking of new updates, our newsletter will be published soon.  If you are not a member, you can download the latest version from our Newsletters page.  You can also find our archive of previous newsletters from there.

Nathan

Chinese New Year Tickets – SOLD OUT!!!

Feb
6

We’ve been working very hard on our Chinese New Year Celebration on 18th February, which is at Yang Sing Restaurant.  But, unfortunately, we have sold all of our tickets.

For everyone lucky enough to get tickets, we hope that you enjoy the evening.  I’m sure you’ll all have a great time.