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Geoff Wilkins
Geoff Wilkins
email website@geoffwilkins.net

Contents 

Geoff Wilkins' CV

Education:

1960-65 Tonbridge School Various O-, A- and S-levels; Open Scholarship in Classics to Pembroke College, Cambridge
1966-71 Pembroke College, Cambridge First Class honours in both Parts of the Cambridge Classical Tripos (Part II in Classical Linguistics); two years' research in Linguistics; MA

Employment history:

1969-72 Part-time Supervisor of Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge
1971-72 Specialist reader (in Classics and Linguistics) for Cambridge University Press
1972-73 Freelance writing and work for publishers
1973 Community Service Volunteer (CSV) at Hemswell Uganda Asian Resettlement Camp
1973-74 CSV with AFFOR, an independent community-relations agency based in Handsworth, Birmingham
1974-76 Director of AFFOR
1976-77 Community Worker for Handsworth Law Centre
1977-78 Co-ordinator of Birmingham Community Transport
1978-79 Employed by NACRO as sole worker on a small research project concerned with petty offenders in Winson Green Prison, Birmingham
1979-80 Local Director of Threshold housing aid centre for single people, Wandsworth, London
1980-81 Community Worker with Handsworth Single Homeless Action Group, working with mainly black young homeless
1981-84 Resource Worker with the Immigration Aid Unit
1984 Computer Worker, Birmingham Voluntary Service Council
1985/86 Working for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) as sole worker on their Local Authorities and Immigration Review Board projects
1985/86 Also self-employed as computer/fund-raising consultant
1986/87 Organising Secretary of the Charities Information Bureau, Birmingham
1987 Immigration caseworker with Tyndallwoods, solicitors
1988-90 Assistant to Clare Short, MP for Birmingham Ladywood
1990-93 Investigator for the Local Government Ombudsman
1993-94 Manager of the Independent Immigration Support Agency
1994-2000 Investigator for the Local Government Ombudsman (part-time)
1995-96 Software developer for Dorling Kindersley Multimedia (freelance)
1996, 2000 Software developer for COBUILD, Birmingham University (freelance)
2001 Project Development Worker, Immigration and Asylum Resource Project, Birmingham
2001-2002 In Bangladesh working with Transparency International Bangladesh
2003-2004 Development of People to Projects Bangladesh Web site (part-time)
2003-2006 Investigator for the Local Government Ombudsman (part-time)
1997-now Freelance and voluntary Internet/Web development work for BRAC (Bangladesh), Christian Aid, World Development Movement, Transparency International, Amnesty International, Red Cross, Refugee Week, Oxfam, and many others
2001-now Freelance project-development and fundraising work for Birmingham Asian Resource Centre, B-MAG, National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, ASIRT, the Asylum Seeker' Destitution Fund (voluntary), and others
2006-now Asylum/Immigration Project Development Worker with B-MAG

Publications:

(with John Plummer) Racist Movements in the West Midlands, AFFOR, 1974
Strangled by the Safety Net, on the Supplementary Benefits System in Birmingham, AFFOR, 1975
(with others) Wednesday's Children, on under-fives provision in Handsworth/Lozells, Birmingham, Community Relations Commission, 1975; Youth Provision in Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton CCR, 1976
Making Them Pay, on the imprisonment of petty offenders, NACRO, 1980
(with Clare Short and others) Immigration Law Handbook, Handsworth Law Centre, 1980
Immigration Factsheets 1-5, JCWI/IAU, 1983/4
No Passports to Services, on local authorities and immigration control, JCWI, 1985
An Immigration Watchdog, on the need for an immigration review body, JCWI, 1986
Making Sense of English in Computers, Chambers Harrap, 1993
Entries on popular music and jazz in Cambridge Encyclopedia, 1994, and Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 2000
Shattered Homelands, Scattered Dreams, on asylum-seekers and refugees in Birmingham, BRAP, 2001

Experience and skills:

I have a wide range of experience and skills, partly from my employment as described above, and also through extensive voluntary involvement in a number of projects and organisations.

As Director of AFFOR I ran a small independently-minded organisation, with a staff of around half a dozen, acting as an informal advice/casework agency, campaigning on race issues, and helping to establish other projects in the Handsworth area of Birmingham. Whilst at AFFOR I convened and chaired the setting-up committee of Handsworth Law Centre, and then became one of the Centre's first employees.

For ten years I worked as a volunteer adviser with Trinity Housing Advice Centre, an independent housing-aid centre in Handsworth, and as a member of its management committee was centrally involved in its development. In 1978, together with Trinity's Senior Housing Adviser, I convened the Handsworth Single Homeless Action Group, which worked to provide accommodation for mainly black young single homeless people; I chaired the Group until I moved briefly to London in 1979, and was one of its two full-time employees in 1980-81.

For a number of years in the ‘70s and ’80s, and again in recent years, I have worked as a volunteer with the Asian Resource Centre in Birmingham, in immigration casework and as a fundraiser. In 2001 I worked as Project Development Worker for the Centre's Immigration and Asylum Resource Project (later ASIRT).

I initiated Handsworth Law Centre's sponsorship of an Immigration Aid Unit serving the West Midlands, undertook fund-raising for the project, and worked there as a Resource Worker between 1981 and 1984: this involved casework, training of legal workers, publications, and campaigning. I was also the first chairperson of the Aekta Clothing Workers Project, again set up under the aegis of Handsworth Law Centre.

In 1985 and 1986 I worked for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants to produce two reports, one on local authorities' policies and practices in relation to people's immigration status, and the other on the need for an independent review body to monitor British immigration control. In 1986 I initiated the establishment of a West Midlands branch of JCWI, and carried out fund-raising for the branch. In 1990 I initiated the formation of the Birmingham Black Oral History Project.

Another recent venture has been the People to Projects Bangladesh Web site, which links smaller community-based projects in Bangladesh with individuals and organisations elsewhere throughout the world that want to support them directly rather than through the agency of the larger overseas aid organisations.

During 1986/87 I assisted Clare Short MP with constituency casework on a voluntary basis, and I accompanied her on trips to Pakistan and Bangladesh to visit families refused entry to join men settled in this country. In 1988-90 I was employed as Clare's constituency assistant, and I worked again for her briefly in 2002-3.

From 1990 to 2000 (part-time from 1994), and again part-time from 2003 to 2006, I worked as an Investigator for the Local Government Ombudsman, investigating complaints of maladministration.

In 1993/94 I was Manager of the Independent Immigration Support Agency in Birmingham, managing a small team of five as well as undertaking casework and training in immigration and nationality matters. I continue to be involved with all the local independent immigration and asylum projects. I have worked voluntarily with B-MAG (Birmingham Money Advice and Grants) to develop and fund-raise for a very successful Asylum-Seekers’ Destitution Fund in Birmingham, and I currently undertake and develop casework with destitute asylum-seekers at B-MAG.

I have considerable IT skills, particularly in Internet/Web development work, and programming in Perl (including CGI applications), Visual C++, assembly language, PHP and MySQL, Java/Javascript and other languages, as well as a good knowledge of most standard micro-computer applications..

I have used my Web programming skills in work, paid and voluntary, for a number of international, national and local voluntary organisations, including ASIRT, BRAC (Bangladesh), Christian Aid, Global Gang, the World Development Movement, Transparency International HQ and TI Chapters in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and the UK, the Red Cross, Landmine Action, Amnesty International, the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns and Oxfam.

Other interests include long-distance running (marathon personal best 3 hours 28 minutes, 50 kilometres 4 hours 25 minutes, next target the Himalayan 100 Mile Race), cycling, jazz and writing.

References:

References may be taken up from the following:

Anthony Wilson
(former Secretary of Barrow Cadbury trusts)
10 Beacon Mews
Lichfield
WS13 7AH
tel. 01543-258016
email gaialane60@hotmail.com

Bhopinder Basi
Chief Executive, B-MAG
Dolphin House
54 Coventry Road
Birmingham
B10 0RX
tel. 0121-766-7466
email bhopinder@b-mag.org.uk

and you are also welcome to contact any of the organisations mentioned above.

January 2007

Download CV in PDF format

Fragments

Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
James Joyce
James Joyce

Freeware from Geoff Wilkins

MIRACL Calc
Miracl Calc
  • MIRACL Calc multi-precision calculator
    A fully-functioned calculator that can calculate up to 10,000 places! Includes a button to generate random numbers, 0>1. MIRACL Calc depends upon the MIRACL C/C++ library developed by Mike Scott at Shamus Software (http://indigo.ie/~mscott/ ).
  • Life
    A Windows implementation of J H Conway's Game of Life, "a kind of two-dimensional physics" (Click here for a much slower Web/Java version.)
  • Universal Turing Machine
    An attempt at the Universal Turing Machine described in Sir Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind. The programme uses a soft copy of the very large binary number u kindly provided by Sir Roger. This is included in the zip-file as the file u_number.txt , which should be in the same directory as the program-file. I have never had time to test this properly, and would welcome any feedback.