20 December 2023
IGEL is one of the key technology partners supporting Crisis’ annual campaign to help the homeless at Christmas this year.
Starting on 23 December, Crisis will set up day care centres at various academy schools in London and take over three hotels to house guests. Here they will be given one-to-one counselling to find accommodation, navigate and access the benefits system, receive jobs and training advice along with social, health and wellbeing care.
Crisis will also feed people over the Christmas period and provide warmth, safety, and company – and a bed if required - to some of the most disadvantaged in the capital. According to the charity, rough sleepers are 17 times more likely to be the victims of crime compared to the main population.
The scale of homelessness in the UK is significant and growing. Crisis research shows that over 250,000 families and individuals across Britain are experiencing the worst forms of it today whether it be out in the cold, sofa surfing or housed in unsuitable temporary accommodation. The charity’s focus is to help people out of this – for good.
“We have some of the best technologists in the industry give back their day-to-day skills to help the most vulnerable in society at a difficult time of the year when the majority of us are celebrating with friends and family and opening presents,” said Simon Clark, CEO of The Aimar Foundation.
The Aimar Foundation sets up internet cafes at each Crisis at Christmas site – so that guests can access the internet, send emails, and connect with loved ones – along with providing the desktops that advisors need to help support them. In addition, it installs all the IT needed by operational staff, covering teams based in the shift offices at the six guest locations and the charity’s central warehouse in Canning Town.
“The IT solution is engineered so we can go in quickly, rapidly deploy at scale and come out fast in the New Year. The build time is very quick. So, for example, at the school sites, term finishes on Friday lunch time and we have to be in, set up and handing over to Crisis by 6pm,” said Clark.
To deliver this, The Aimar Foundation uses class leading IT infrastructure and runs apps and data in the cloud leveraging the power and performance of Microsoft 365, including Teams. On the desktop, IGEL Endpoint OS is being installed on 150 refurbished HP machines. This is in line with the charity’s pivot to becoming more sustainable and ‘green.’
“Every year we like to innovate,” said Clark. “This Christmas, we’re using progressive web apps, introducing single sign on and deploying IGEL’s latest software, OS 12. This is all about improving the user experience so it is more seamless and better than previous years.”
Backend infrastructure services run in a Microsoft Azure tenant. For example, The Aimar Foundation uses a hosted Print as a Service solution from PaperCut utilising Konica Minolta colour Bizhub C3531 and C3831 MFPs. For speed and simplicity, these are preconfigured at Konica Minolta’s offices and delivered to site. They allow guests and volunteers at all locations to send emails and/or attachments for easy printing as well as scanning directly from the printers to their email addresses.
IGEL has been a long-term supporter of The Aimar Foundation and Crisis and has been involved in the Christmas campaign for the past 13 years.
“At the end of the day, the key measure of success for Crisis is getting people off the streets and out of the wrong accommodation forever. They are experts in doing this and genuinely make a real difference to people’s lives. Technology is key to facilitating their work over Christmas and we’re proud to play our part,” said Darren Fields, IGEL’s vice president, sales for UK/Ireland and international markets.
The Crisis day care centres are located at three academy schools in Pimlico, Bermondsey and Stratford and three hotels in the capital which can accommodate 400 people. These are located at Hyde Park (Corus Hotel), Greenwich (Good Hotel) and Aldgate (Corner Hotel).
The key technology partners are this year’s event include Microsoft, A2C, Cloudflare, Circular Computing, IGEL, Konica Minolta, Freshdesk, WaveNet, London Grid for Learning, Virgin Media Business, PaperCut, 3CX and Gradwell.
