Project of The Month December 2003

The ”Digital Villages of North Denmark” Project: Lots of Activity in 11 IT Villages

The eight municipalities joining the ”Digital Villages of North Denmark” project have taken widely different approaches. But they are all up and running – and will continue beyond the project period.

By Naia Bang / Texthuset Aalborg
It is Thursday night in the village of Klim located to the West of Fjerritslev. The sports hall of Thorup-Klim is dark, but light is pouring out from a new building to the right hand side of the hall. Here about ten or twelve citizens of the Thorup-Klim area are learning how to manipulate pictures in the Paintshop Pro application. Lisbeth Ljungkvist, the instructor, is walking to and fro between the desks offering her advice to the learners who are exploring the ways of editing the colours of an image.
We are in ”The Digital Village of Thorup-Klim”, as the IT Village association is called in these parts. For the municipality of Fjerritslev has joined the ”Digital Villages of North Denmark” project under the Digital North Denmark, and to this end the municipality picked the two neighbouring villages of Thorup and Klim, which are so closely located that they were able to share one IT-community centre. Other municipalities took other routes. In the town of Aars they count three IT villages with each their IT community hall while Farsø has got two digital villages. The five remaining municipalities in the project have got each their village with its own IT community hall.

”The Digital Village of Thorup-Klim” is housing lots of activity. Two learners are helping each other out in solving tasks in the Paintshop Pro image editing application – in the background Lisbeth Ljungkvist, the instructor is offering her assistance.
Photos: Ajs Nielsen.

670 users of the IT Community Hall
- We took the opportunity to get our IT-community hall when the Thorup-Klim sports hall was in for an extension, and among other things they wanted to build a covered passage connecting the school to the other side of us. So they killed two birds with one stone by building the digital community hall in the same go, explains Herbert Matthäi, who is the coordinator of ”The Digital Village of Thorup-Klim”.
Today the villages of Thorup-Klim have had their digital community hall for about two years that have been busy with activity.
- We keep opening hours between 9.00 AM to 11 PM almost every day. People come and go using a keycard, and right now we have handed out around 670 cards, reports Herbert Matthäi.
15 workstations and one instructor's computer are available. The Microsoft Office Suite is installed on all computers, and Counter-Strike, the popular game, is installed, too. Occasionally GameNight is arranged with young people contesting throughout the night. This is an extremely popular event.
However, the community hall is basically the only offer of entertainment to older kids in the community so to make sure that not only young people are using the machines the association introduced various ”time windows”. Between 9.00 AM and 11.30 AM is ”Adults time”, and between 15.30 to 18.00 is ”Quiet time”. This is to leave room for homework to be done here in piece and quiet. Furthermore some of these morning and night times are cancelled to give room for educational sessions.

Having a Local Offer is Vital
- We have had lots of courses for beginners and slightly experienced users. But when we got too ambitious, people were scared away so we have resorted to courses on a user level. For example we are offering lessons in Learning the use of the Internet, the Office Suite, - Word, Acces, Excel et cetera, states Herbert Matthäi:
- So far we have had over 200 in training, and a great number of those were aged 50 plus. They would never get on a computer course without a local offer like this. And we would never get a digital community hall in Thorup-Klim, had it not been for the Digital North Denmark.
Like the rest of the projects of the Digital North Denmark ”The Digital Villages of North Denmark” will be finalised on December 31. However this will not mean closing the digital community hall of Thorup-Klim. The community hall has converted into an association, founded on its first general assembly. Next step for the newly elected board is setting out to recruit members.
This scenario is identical to those experienced in other municipalities involved in the project.
- In August we held a seminar at the Løgstør Park Hotel, and it was obvious that everybody was interested in carrying on one way or the other. Quite a few communities decided to locate the IT community hall at the local school – which also makes use of the IT facilities to a varying extent. Also an association was formed to further the concept of the IT community, explains Torben Duelund, project manager of the ”Digital Villages of North Denmark”.

- We would never get a digital community hall in Thorup-Klim, had it not been for the Digital North Denmark, states Herbert Matthäi, the coordinator.
Photos: Ajs Nielsen.

VUC Provides the Courses
Apart from Fjerritslev the eight municipalities involved in the project are: The municipalities of Brovst, Løgstør, Nibe, Aars, Farsø, Nørager and Arden. In the initial phase the pace and the ambitions have varied a lot from village to village. For apart from one person representing the municipalities the local work has been highly dependant on voluntary work. Some villages have appointed an organizer. But the common thing has been the local steering committee, that was given the tasks of finding appropriate housing, acquiring an assembly of machines, securing it against burglars and hackers – and finding ways to provide education.
Here the cooperation with local VUC departments proves itself as the best solution. The VUC, the acronym of the Adults' Educational Centre, has been in charge of a major part of the courses arranged in the IT community halls, while the local fiery souls have prepared special courses – for example aimed at those with an interest in working with web sites etc.

Cheap Broadband for the Civic Public
- In its origin the idea was to counteract the depopulation of rural areas by for example enabling the creation of facilities for distance working – and providing creative IT environments in the same go. This required ADSL broadband technology, so the project needed to work towards providing the villages involved with ADSL connectivity faster than the rest of the country, thereby gaining a competitive edge. Right after the project start, however, TDC, the major Danish telecom carrier declared its aim to cover the entire country with broadband cabling. So the focus was increased on the part of project offering education on a local level – and it's safe to declare this goal achieved to the full, states Torben Duelund.
Kids, teenagers, adults and senior citizens have used – and keep using - the local IT community halls. All the while the project has made cheap ADSL connectivity available to citizens in their own homes, and a large number of citizens have gone for that option. An average of 60 and 90 households in each IT village have got ADSL. Some villages have negotiated favourable special agreements with computer suppliers for joint bargains in order to reap a "large scale" benefit.
Altogether this means that 11 IT villages are well prepared when they are to make it on their own as of January.

Facts - The 11 Digital Villages
The 11 villages involved in the ”Digital Villages of North Denmark” are:
The municipality of Fjerritslev: Thorup-Klim
The municipality of Brovst: Tranum
The municipality of Løgstør: Ranum
The municipality of Farsø: Ullits
The municipality of Nibe: Farstrup
The municipality of Aars: Blære, Vegger and Skivum
The municipality of Arden: Astrup and Rostrup
The municipality of Nørager: Haverslev

Read more about the ”Digital Villages of North Denmark”  project at www.thedigitalnorthdenmark.dk or on the project home page directly: www.digitale-landsbyer.dk

To the top