Fighting the spread of HIV.

Who are they?
SHIKA TAMAA SUPPORT SERVICES.

Where are they?
Milton Keynes.

What do they do?
An HIV support and educational charity.

How big are they?
7 part-time staff.

What did they receive?
Microsoft Office Professional Plus.

The outcome?
The charity’s first ‘proper’ IT system is now up and running.

 

 STASS: Shika Tamaa (literally ‘living in hope’ in Swahili) is an HIV support and educational charity that is based in Milton Keynes and serves the surrounding region. It’s there for anybody who is infected with, or affected by, HIV. One of its biggest tasks is outreach work – visiting schools and community organisations and offering educational and practical initiatives that aim to address the reasons behind the infection’s spread and to reduce the stigma associated with the condition.

 

 

Tina Latifah Jones co-founded the charity. “We are a small organisation that is growing quite rapidly,” she explains, observing that the underlying reason for this expansion is no cause for celebration. With infection rates generally on the up, Tina now has a team of part-time staff whereas once “it was just me and my laptop!” This upsizing has seen the charity mature from a personal initiative into an office-based organisation – requiring an infrastructure to match.

“With seven employees, it was time to have a proper IT system,” Tina says. “Some research led us to CTX and we discovered that we could receive the latest Microsoft software. It was going to be expensive to find software for seven computers.”

Whereas some small charities who use MS Office might stay within the familiar environs of Word and perhaps Excel, STASS has already made extensive use of all the software within the suite.

“We use it for everything!” laughs Tina. “Word, for our everyday letters, of course, and we can’t do without Outlook for email. All my expenses are on Excel, and we use Publisher to produce our newsletters.”

“We have been able to build an Access database from scratch, thanks to one of our Trustees,” she continues. “And then we take PowerPoint presentations when we go out to speak to schools.”

 

 

The charity has started to outgrow its current office premises, and hopes to relocate shortly, subject to a favourable grant. This may then prompt another visit to CTX for further donations of software that would simply be beyond the means of such a small charity otherwise.

“It is all about money at the end of the day,” says Tina. “If it wasn’t for the CTX donations then we definitely wouldn’t be running on seven computers.”