Activities
The Company has a significant charitable and educational programme which uses the expertise, resources and networks of its members, and it is also involved in a range of activities to promote the information technology profession.
The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists focuses on three key areas of activity:
- Working with charities: Getting the maximum benefit from IT is now a pre-requisite, not just for commercial organisations but also for the charity sector. The Company works with a wide range of non-profit organisations with the aim of helping them to gain the maximum benefit from their IT. Members give their time and expertise to provide pro-bono IT advice (usually at a strategic level). In addition, iT4Communities is the national IT volunteering programme, introducing volunteer IT professionals to charities needing IT help and support. iT4C was set up by the Worshipful Company in 2002 and since then has registered over 5,000 volunteers and more than 2,500 charities. iT4C has delivered over £3 million worth of support to the charity sector thanks to the work of the dedicated volunteer IT professionals.
- Education: For hundreds of years Livery Companies have supported schools in London and across the United Kingdom. Currently, the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists has a partnership with Lilian Baylis Technology School in Lambeth. Previous projects include HOLNET (the History Of London on the interNET), which is now incorporated into the London Grid for Learning. In 2011, together with the Worshipful Company of Mercers (the premier Livery Company), they opened Hammersmith Academy, a new academy school specialising in IT.
- IT profession: With members coming from all sectors of the IT field, the Company can provide a neutral meeting ground for discussion of issues that are central to both the profession and the City of London. It also runs a Journeyman Scheme which supports young IT professionals in the early stages of their career.
The company has a number of panels through which activities are organised. It is probably unique amongst Livery Companies in having an Ethical and Spiritual Development Panel, which considers such topics as the ethical and spiritual implications of the Internet — running colloquia on that topic in the House of Lords as far back as 1997.
Read more about this topic: Worshipful Company Of Information Technologists
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still the most important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)