The Youth and Internet Café in Velký Meder
The town of Velký Meder has relatively few leisure time
activities to offer the youth at present. Opportunities for young
people to take part in social activities and meet other youngsters
within a safe and supervised environment are therefore rather
limited on the public level. Furthermore the ability to access the
Internet and gaining computer skills at the same is purely a
private option. The Internet and computers has many advantages to
offer young people – global information access, ability to improve
language skills as well as acquiring computer skills necessary for
future job and educational situations.1.0 Concept
Opening up a youth and Internet café in the town centre of Velký
Meder.
1.1 Objectives
Opening up a youth and Internet café should give the local youth
to meet within a nice and cosy environment with excellent settings
both socially and physically.
Getting access to the Internet and learning youth how to use
computers has many benefits. As global influence on their own
lives will be increasing rapidly in the future, being confident
and able to access information and communicate internationally via
the Internet will be increasingly important. Secondly an
increasingly amount of jobs in the future will require computer
skills as a basic demand. Thirdly, access to the Internet will be
likely to strengthen important English skills at an early age as
well.
As to the social settings of the café it is important that the
staff and volunteers takes an active role in creating a warm and
welcoming environment for youth of all the different age groups
and makes it a safe place to come.
The youth and Internet café will be run with a symbolic
entrance fee for using the computers. This should purely be
symbolic, but is important for the young people to respect and
appreciate the opportunity. Furthermore it would prevent
overcrowding and give access to as many young people as possible.
1.2 Target group
The primary target group of the café will be young people in the
age of 10 to 25 years old. The early age of 10 is set to give
young people a chance to learn, as it is they that will have the
most benefit of these skills in their future life. In Velky Meder
there are 12.000 inhabitants in addition to a large population in
the nearby country side. Approximately 2.000+ young people are
within the target group.
1.3 Physical settings
The physical settings of the café should live up to the highest
standards of Internet cafés in Europe. Warm colours and youth
minded furniture will be the main theme of the facilities creating
a cosy and relaxed atmosphere.
20 computers will be available to access the Internet as well
as standard office programmes. They will be connected to the
Internet by a mobile solution. The computers will be set up as
individual workstations. The bar will have multimedia functions
such as printing and scanning facilities for a small fee.
A “chilling zone” will be created, where you can relax and have a
good time in sofas, big pillows, while listening to music, talking
and playing games with your friends etc.
Some security measures will be taken with an obligatory
membership with picture ID, which must be shown at request. New
members can sign up on the spot by providing identification and 2
pictures. A membership database will be set up on the main
computer to keep track of information of the members.
Other initiatives such as video surveillance, various software
installations and facade protection will be installed to the
degree it’s found necessary.
The café will be open from the afternoon, when youth will
finish school and continue till 10 or 12 o’clock at night. In
planning the hours it is a priority to keep the café open at the
time, where young people are going out, and thereby provide a
healthy alternative to discotheques and alcohol.
A small website for the café should be created to as the
starting page on the Internet. It should be possible to find
different kind of links here as well as a basic description and
pictures from the café. Furthermore flyers and posters should be
made to advertise the existence of the place (especially in the
start up face) and distributed at places, where youth are coming.
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