Explore your city, love your city

Explaining
how the project was initiated, Milica Vladisavljević Maćešić pointed out that
the excursions had been organised by about ten pensioners who had come to the Centre
for Technical Culture (CTC) as IT course takers that for pensioners and retired
Croatian Homeland War veterans and persons with particular needs had been financed
by the City of Rijeka through the “Rijeka Intelligent City” project.

“Upon
completion of the basic course, they attended an advance course intended for
pensioners, and having completed the training course they joined programmes for
children as volunteers and helped workshop managers who worked with children. Working
with children they themselves learned and developed, completing journalism and
digital photography schools. Last two years together with the CTC they took
part in the road running “Homo si teć”, while at the end of 2010, they
launched and devised together with CTC employees the initiative ‘Explore your
city, love your city’, said Vladisavljević Maćešić.

The
entire programme of excursions was conceived by Višnja Čandrlić and Hermina
Buneta, managers of the CTC 50+, realising that neither children nor adults are
familiar enough with their city – they have never visited the “Torpedo”
factory or Vodovodna street. Since families with children are the target group,
the goal is to visit a location on a monthly basis during the school, with a
professional guide, thus encouraging as many citizens as possible to know the
city they live in and learn something more about its cultural heritage and
history.

The
first excursion to be organised on 12 March, will be a visit to the exhibition “Rijeka torpedo” at the Rijeka City
Museum and to the “Torpedo”
factory. During the visit to both locations a professional guide will be
engaged – a curator of the Rijeka
City Museum
and Miljenko Smokvina on behalf of the association “PRO Torpedo”. All
who are interested in the excursion may come to the Centre for Technical
Culture Školjić 6, at 10 a.m. on Saturday when the group will set out to the Rijeka City
Museum. After visiting
the exhibition, by bus No 8 they will set out to the “Torpedo”
factory. The return is scheduled for 1 p.m. by bus No 8. The price of the museum
admission ticket is HRK 20 for adults and HRK 10 for children, pupils and
pensioners, plus a bus ticket which will be necessary to take part in this
interesting excursion.

CTK
50+ members will be active during the excursion as well. They will take
pictures and will collect materials, afterwards will prepare reportages that
will be published in the e-newspaper of the CTC “Rijeka-in” under the
heading 50+. Their long-term goal is to prepare a certain Rijeka guide book, as seen by its inhabitants.

Not
only has the City of Rijeka
been organising for a number of years free IT workshops, but it has also
provided support to this project. Tatjana Perše, manager of the Internet
Support Service pointed out that the City of Rijeka, with the free IT training
courses, had wanted to enable citizens to have access to the internet and educate
citizens who up to that point had not have an opportunity to get acquainted
with modern information and communication technologies. Furthermore, a new
project has been started financed from EU funds, EGOV4U,
which goal is to enable socially disadvantages citizens easier social inclusion
by accessing information technology.

“We
are very satisfied with the fact that the pensioners who attended free IT
training courses apply the gained knowledge, since this exactly was our goal –
educate citizens that by using the internet and PC and the web resources
provided by the City of Rijeka their lives become easier,” said Perše,
adding that the City of Rijeka had realised an interesting application. The
application could be useful for anyone who wants to become more familiar with
one’s own city – The streets of the City of Rijeka – where, further to their location, information
can be found on the origin of street names and their earlier names.

The
visit to the Rijeka City Museum and the ex factory “Torpedo” is just
the first excursion, in the months to come, the diligent pensioners plan to visit
Vodovodna and Ružić streets, the Paper Mill, the promenade Šetalište XIII.
divizije, the beaches at Pećine, Villa Ružić, the “Rikard Benčić” Factory
and places in the neighbourhood of Rijeka.