Digital Unite is proud to be part of an exciting and unique collaborative digital skills programme developed by SCVO, Age UK, Citizens Online and Digital Unite's partners Affinity Sutton and AbilityNet.
One Digital is being launched following a £2million investment by the Big Lottery Fund and aims to help around 9,500 people with basic digital skills over 12 months in a ‘test and learn’ initiative. At its heart is the recruitment, training and support of 1,400 ‘trusted intermediaries’ (Digital Champions) to deliver basic digital skills.
The aim of the programme is to establish a self-perpetuating and sustainable Digital Champion model so that all partner organisations can provide digital skills support for the long-term, whoever and wherever their learners are.
It is a new and innovative approach to the changing digital inclusion landscape where those who aren’t online are becoming harder to engage and need personal and long-term support if they are to participate in today’s digitally-driven society.
Each of the partners will be delivering individual and specific projects within One Digital using trained and engaged Digital Champions to support their communities.
The programme will help a vast cross-sector of society with developing digital skills including those with disability and accessibility needs, young adults looking for work, the over 65s, and third sector organisations and their beneficiaries.
One Digital will also facilitate extensive partnership collaboration on all aspects of digital inclusion so that significant learnings can be shared and best practice models can be delivered for the benefit of all Digital Champions and end-learners.
All of the programme’s Digital Champions will be trained and supported via Digital Unite’s existing Digital Champions Network which is currently used by over 900 Digital Champions across the UK. The Digital Champions will have access to the Network’s existing assets and new learning content will also be specifically developed for each Partner organisation that all members of the One Digital programme can utilise.
The platform will also use its established metrics and develop new ones to measure each partner’s specific outcomes and data aspirations, and those of One Digital as a whole, reflecting the impact and benefits for both Digital Champions and learners.
Emma Weston, Programme Director of One Digital and Chief Executive of Digital Unite, said: “One of the most exciting aspects of One Digital is the unique level of collaboration between diverse and distinct organisations to achieve one common goal. We have come together to share, learn and improve our practices and to collectively better recruit, train and empower an army of effective digital champions who can in turn engage and empower learners right across our communities. Our vision is to create a truly sustainable, scalable and also very flexible ‘digital skills solution’ while developing coherent and consistent ways of measuring impact and evaluating success. Together, we hope that One Digital will show that creative, collective approaches to the digital skills deficit can build digital capacity in an exciting, emboldened way and at pace and scale.”
Notes to Editors:
The Big Lottery Fund supports the aspirations of people who want to make life better for their communities across the UK. We are responsible for giving out 40% of the money raised by the National Lottery for good causes and invest over £650 million a year in projects big and small in health, education, environment and charitable purposes. Since June 2004 we have awarded over £8 billion to projects that make a difference to people and communities in need, from early years intervention to commemorative travel funding for World War Two veterans.