Under the Community Voices project communities across the UK are making a positive difference to their lives using creative digital media. With start up funding, volunteer mentors, training, and outreach support, we are supporting communities to find their voice and make it heard.

This year Community Voices is being funded by Nominet Trust and is supporting communities who feel voiceless due to disability, older age, or long term illness.

One of these communities is New Horizons Borders. They are a user lead charity for people with mental health problems in the Scottish Borders. The committee which is made up of members of the different groups in towns across the area decided that members needed a way of communicating with eachother outside of their drop in times.

The rural nature of the Scottish Borders makes life there isolating for some people, and the harsh weather can mean that during the winter months the drop in sessions can’t always happen. So they wanted to be able to support eachother at any time.

They applied to Community Voices for support to create a Ning site, which is an online social media site on which people can create their own profiles, add status updates, and message eachother. What they liked about Ning the most is that it can be a private network, and so can be restricted to only members of the group, which would make them feel safer when talking about their mental health and other personal issues.

So we gave them a small amount of funding to pay for the Ning subscription and arranged training for them on how to create and maintain the network themselves. One member of the group, Terry, says it’s going to be a real lifeline:

You can keep updated with New Horizons Borders and all the other communities by following the Community Voices blog and the 2011 projects page.