Aurora Energy's digital capacity building grants to expand reach of Tasmanian community groups

Aurora Energy's digital capacity building grants are designed to help Tasmanian community groups thrive in an increasingly digital world and recipients will be supported with projects such as digital fundraising, marketing setup and training, digital storytelling and videography, accounting system implementation and website upgrades.

The successful applicants for the grants were announced on Friday.

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Laurel House chief executive officer Justine Brooks said the organisation would be using its grant to design and build a secure online messaging platform for counselling sessions.

Ms Brooks said the service, which provides assistance to sexual assault survivors across the North and North-West of Tasmania, already offered phone counseling but many younger clients asked if they could do it via messaging while face-to-face services were unavailable due to COVID-19.

"We weren't set up for that. We could have done it by mobile but that's not very secure," Ms Brooks said.

She said the service would be able to use the new platform after the coronavirus crisis had passed.

"It will be a new option to deliver counselling to a new demographic of people who prefer messaging as their communication method," Ms Brooks said.

Ms Brooks said Aurora had also provided support to Laurel House by offering a remission on their power bill and through another grant which provided credit to some of their clients.

"Aurora has been incredible and a really good example of corporate citizenship," she said.

George Town Neighbourhood House community support worker Jessica Berger said the grant would be used for website upgrades.

"Our website hasn't been upgraded since 2012 because we haven't had the funds to get it done professionally and we didn't have the skills in-house to do it," Ms Berger said.

She said the website was out of date meaning people could not access accurate information when the service was closed.

"We are still running our emergency programs as they are but it would be nice to interact with people [online] which we've had to stop because of coronavirus," Ms Berger said.

Burnie Community House manager Tracy Edington-Mackey said the organisation would be using the funding to help deliver its programs, such as its My Family Food Pantry program, digitally.

She said the face-to-face delivery of this program, which involves working with families to resource them to understand nutrition and work together with fresh produce to create their own meals, was interrupted by COVID-19 restrictions.

"We started to do that delivery in a contactless way, using our phones to film staff doing the cooking and uploaded in on YouTube. It was pretty rudimentary and basic but it worked," Ms Edington-Mackey said.

"This will enable us to deliver a much more professional product.

"We are going to take advice and buy [video production equipment] appropriately."

Aurora chief executive Rebecca Kardos said the grants could not have come at a more relevant time given the global environment.

"What COVID-19 has also highlighted is how critically important it is for community groups to expand their scope and reach by becoming more savvy in an increasingly digital world so they can continue to deliver their services online," Ms Kardos said.

Other recipients of the grants were Hamlet Hobart Cafe, West Moonah Community House, St Vincent de Paul and Hobart City Mission.

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