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Action South Kildare (ASK), a company limited by guarantee, was formed in 1993, to acquire and administer the dissemination of the E.U. Global Grant on behalf of Area Development Management Ltd (A.D.M.).
ASK constitutes a dynamic partnership of voluntary, statutory, business and community group interests, operating at local level and serving local needs. ASK comprises a board of sixteen members, reflecting expertise in a diverse number of disciplines, thus creating a synergy to drive a multi-faceted programme of socio-economic development. The ASK board represents training, education, caring organisations, trade-unions, centres for the unemployed, farming organisation and business.
Community involvement has been a distinctive feature of ASK and the community representatives on the board of ASK have generated a sense of local ownership in the programme. The objective of ASK according to A.D.M. Ltd., is to be able to demonstrate a capacity to implement local development while contributing to a reduction in long-term unemployment and social exclusion within the local area of South Kildare.
ASK seeks to facilitate and promote local community development and challenge social exclusion in the South Kildare area, through the provision of information, service and financial support for projects and groups in the areas of education, training and capacity building in partnership with local communities. Priority is therefore given to projects which directly challenge marginalisation and social exclusion.
The objectives of ASK are:
- to promote personal, social, cultural, educational and recreational life in the community, particularly for those who are marginalised,
- to create opportunities, where non may have existed or been perceived to exist before, so as to achieve a noteworthy improvement in the quality of life through social integration of all members of our community,
- to empower local individuals and groups to combat exclusion and disadvantage through participation and partnership across sectors based on identified needs,
- to engage a small core of professional workers to facilitate initiatives in the social and economic areas,
- to provide support funds in the areas of enterprise, tourism/heritage and community to meet needs and opportunities by local people.
The main activities of ASK are:
- ASK contributes on an ongoing basis to the work of the County Strategy Team developing a co-ordinated strategic approach to local development;
- ASK and FÁS having identified a particular need in South Kildare for capacity building in enterprise development, devised an innovative training programme targeted specifically at those individuals who had the potential to develop an enterprise;
- ASK has implemented a two year training programme focusing on the capacity of inter-active technologies to enhance and strengthen local development in general and combating exclusion in particular. This project, called Information Capital 2000 (I.C. 2000), involves creating awareness and delivering skills training and capacity building on inter-active technologies to staffs of KARE, Public Libraries, FÁS and V.E.C. ultimately to the mainstreaming of these skills and capacities into those agencies training programmes while the libraries in Kildare act as the access point for members of the public.
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