Among the services that Media Café offers are:

• Drop in facilities
  
  
• Skills assessment
  
  
• Careers Advice and Guidance
  
  
• Portfolio development
  
  
• Youth Services

Portfolio:

For people seeking employment or even advanced level learning in the creative, new media and related sectors, a portfolio that demonstrates the ability to produce high quality skills using relevant skills is essential.

For this reason, Media Café works with both those registered on specific courses and those seeking work in these sectors to develop their portfolios. In some cases this may involve portfolios in CD form though, given Media Café's emphasis on the online area of New Media, this will often focus on working with individuals to showcase their work through a website.

In the case of people seeking work as web designers/developers, this will involve working with them to develop their own site and links to the sites they have built. In the case of individuals seeking to showcase other design skills -for example fashion or photography- it may involve supporting a process whereby the individual is matched up with an appropriate web designer to act as a "client". An example that might illustrate the former scenario is here Whereas this site is the result of supported collaboration between a local artist and a designer progressing through Media Café's Industrial Web Programme.

Similarly, Media Café maintains a number of "in-house" portfolios that showcase work produced by learners at Media Café.

Industrial Web Design Portfolio

Work produced as project work by those on the Industrial Web Design programme

Youth:

As a project that has developed from youth-specific provision, the needs of young people are very important to Media Café. Young people between 16 and 24 years old find themselves in a wide range of situations: some are at school or college, other are working or training in trades, some are unemployed. Some young people live with their families, some live alone and some have problems finding somewhere to live. Young people, like most other people, may have a clear idea of what they want to do with their lives or they may be undecided. They may be fairly happy with their lives or they might be experiencing problems. They may have few responsibilities or they may already be parents. Regardless of their circumstances, lifestyle or responsibilities, Media Café aims to offer something to all local young people who want to benefit from computer skills.

Young people between 16 and 24 years old still form a substantial group that Media Café supports through training advice, information and enjoyable activities. One of the project’s main aims remains to provide services and computer training for 16 to 24 year olds who live in the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham whether these be young people who have existing ICT skills and are now seeking progression to further learning or employment or young people who have "missed out" in gaining some of the key ICT skills now required within all fields of employment. To this end, Media Café is particularly keen to support local young people who describe themselves as fitting into one ore more of these categories

• left school without qualifications
  
  
• are unemployed
  
  
• are parents
  
  
• may have problems reading, speaking or writing English
  
  
• have experienced problems or barriers in moving into the world of work
  
  
• want to progress to advanced training or employment in new media

Some of the ways in which Media Café can support young people are:

• by accessing them to the range of services at Media Café as appropriate
  
  
• by helping them find and access other services as appropriate
  
  
• through working with other agencies to develop an individualised plan of action

When Media Café first opened, there were very few well-resourced ICT services in the area catering specifically for young people. This meant that it was very important that Media Café provided a range of services specifically for young people. But, as the saying goes, things change. And, in this case, for the better.

Through a range of large-scale central and local initiatives such as SRB, Conexxions and UKonline, the availability of relevant resources at a community level continues to increase within the borough. Through joint working with a range of relevant agencies, Media Café has played a role in reviewing and planning for how these changes could be best used to meet the needs of young people. Many of these plans are now being implemented. In effect, these plans involve a number of themes, most notably mainstreaming and decentralisation.

Mainstreaming:

Media Café has worked hard to remain attractive and accessible to young people. Simultaneously, the project has learnt that the needs of young people within the area now are more complex than they were envisaged when the project first opened; perhaps more complex because of the range of support that has been available to local young people through a range of agencies in the past few years. In simplistic terms, Media Café is seeing more young local people with ICT skills beyond very basic or no ICT skills. The needs of such local young people - who often still face substantial barriers to social inclusion- are often very different form those young people with few or no ICT core skills. Similarly, Media Café's development of a specific New Media sectoral strand has meant that it has attracted young people specifically attracted to work in this sector in addition to those with generic ICT skills needs. In effect, there is a need to "mainstream" the inclusion of young peoples' needs into all aspects of provision.

Thus the current priorities have shifted form youth-specific provision to:

• ensuring that the physical environment and ethos remain attractive to young people
  
  
• ensuring that young people have access to all provision, at all levels
  
  
• capacity building with youth specialist agencies to manage on-site ICT access and/or learning for young people
  
  
• training and consultancy for specialist youth and generic ICT providers
  
  
• improved referral to specialist support agencies
  
  
• inclusion of youth accessibility in developments

Decentralisation:

Central government and local initiatives have prioritised the provision of resources that seek to bridge the digital divide. In real terms, this means that money has been made available to vastly increase the availability of on-the-ground internet accessible computers. In effect both provision, directly through Connexions, and, potentially through UKOnline, could be used to increase the number and location of internet accessible computers to young people within the borough.

Media Café has played an extremely active role in ensuring that youth issues have been included in local initiatives to bid for such funds. In practical terms this means that under the Community Grid for Learning/UKOnline Access Point bid developed within the borough, on which Media Café (Education) and Communications - New Media (Policy & Administration) led, three of the eight access points are located within youth specific locations, two within youth club environments, the third within a homeless hostel supporting young people. Similarly, in delivering the InSynch Project funded through London Initiatives Funds, the lead partners ensured that delivery targeting young people was not only a primary output, but that provision was negotiated to be delivered in a range of youth-friendly settings including a foyer project.

As the range of broader initiatives such as Community Grid for Learning and UKOnline are delivered, Media Café will have a role in providing liaison to youth specialist agencies and to managing resources located within off-site youth settings.