Well, what a year! 2014 has been another fantastic year here at Cosmic with so many successes, achievements and brilliant new opportunities to celebrate as we end the year.
But before I go into that, let me take time first to say a very big ‘thank you’ to all our clients, partners, suppliers, and supporters. And another big ‘thank you’ to our followers, likers, sharers and retweeters! We’ve made such great progress and positive impact this year, none of which would be possible without the excellent work we do with you all. A Cosmic ‘THANKS’ to you all!
Back at the start of 2014, the team was developing its plans for some major new projects and piloting some new approaches to our core social impact – digital inclusion. We had already made a great start with the project focussed on Devon’s most digitally excluded and were able to develop and evolve this work even further in the year. Working with people with disabilities, low-income families, people seeking to improve their career prospects, organisations with limited finances and technical expertise, and those living in remote rural areas meant that the Cosmic team were in a position to truly make lasting impact on people lives. And its important for us all to remember that this work sits at the very heart of Cosmic’s business model. Making real and sustainable social impact for people using digital technologies is what we are all about. And you all helped us to achieve that again this year. www.cosmic.org.uk/training/devon-digital-inclusion
And in our purely commercial work things have gone brilliantly too. We’ve launched dozens of new and beautiful websites for our clients, and have such positive feedback about this work, as well as having been able support businesses large-and-small to make sense of the online world and the potential to grow their own businesses. We have been able to work with long-standing clients in many cases to re-design and make their websites even more effective including work to make lots of website more responsive to mobile platforms. Go to our own website where we are always proud to show off the latest portfolio of our website work - www.cosmic.org.uk/websites/our-work
Probably one of the biggest developments of the year has been our involvement in the training programmes which support the Connecting Devon and Somerset project. This is the roll-out of superfast broadband across the area which aims to achieve superfast connections for at least 90% of all premises in the next two years. Cosmic has teamed up with Peninsula Enterprise to develop and deliver a programme of training, information and support for people, organisations and businesses to help them get the most out of this new high-speed internet for their personal and business use. We are very proud to be a leading part of this programme and the opportunities which it offers us and our local communities to increase digital inclusion. www.connectingdevonandsomerset.co.uk/
And last, but in no way least, this year saw the Digital Apprenticeships pilot project complete with huge success. During 2013 we took on six apprentices in the team and supported them through a year-long training programme alongside developing their business skills as part of the Cosmic team. www.cosmic.org.uk/about-us/apprenticeships
In September we celebrated their graduation as Cosmic apprentices, and we have now taken three apprentices into the team on a full-time permanent basis. The others have all been supported to go on to other work opportunities using the new skills and qualifications gained as a result of our programme. We are now modelling up a new apprenticeship programme to start early in 2015 – watch this space!
And so once again thanks to everyone involved in the success and progress which Cosmic continues to achieve. We are very grateful to you all. Have a wonderful festive season, enjoy lots of fun at Christmas and we look forward to 2015 with fresh enthusiasm and ideas (plenty of them!) for working with you all again next year.