A Commitment to Training and Employment for Women (ACTEW)
Technology benefiting community partnerships

Context
The Internet facilitates knowledge-sharing and networking opportunities within a community, and it has enabled A Commitment to Training and Employment for Women (ACTEW) to create a unique online partnership. Today, ACTEW is making a name for itself as an important player in the women’s training sector.

Program Description
ACTEW is an umbrella group of over 70 community agencies offering training and employment services for women in Ontario. With the support of the federal government’s Community Access Program and Ontario’s Volunteer @ction.online Program of the Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, ACTEW uses technology to create unique partnerships for exchanging information on training and employment issues for women. Updating and enhancing the content of a web site can be hard work, but ACTEW had the innovative idea of pooling their web site content with that of other agencies working on similar issues through the creation of a shared, database-driven online tool.

Things move one step at a time, as the saying goes; this is what happened with ACTEW’s project. Word of the content-management tools spread to other community organizations, and several of them began working with ACTEW to share their online content through the tools. As of today, six organizations have joined the “Content-Sharing Constellation,” enhancing ACTEW’s site with their content, and in turn enhancing their own sites with online content from ACTEW and their member agencies.

Successes/Challenges
In 1998, in the early stages of the digital revolution, many ACTEW members were trying to increase their Internet access and use. ACTEW’s challenge was to make a name for themselves as leaders in the community-based training sector, and at the same time embrace new and emerging technologies. To achieve this, ACTEW offered a series of capacity-building workshop for member agencies on using online technologies. Once the member organizations had grasped and mastered the mysteries of being online, the online partnership program grew and led to today’s noteworthy results.

www.actew.org

These best practices are an excellent way of sharing your experiences with other organizations in the voluntary sector. If you also have positive experiences on the use of technology in the voluntary sector, the IM-IT Secretariat will be pleased to post your stories. Please contact the IM/IT Secretariat by e-mail at imit@ic.gc.ca.