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Martine Ekango, 35, has been a Digital Champion for The Hyde Group for the past four months. She came across Hyde’s Digital Champion programme when she was using the computer facilities at Hyde’s local community centre in Brent to support her job searching. Now she helps 16 learners at the same centre every Tuesday with a range of tasks from handling a mouse and keyboard to sending emails and using Skype.

“Congratulations on a well-designed new site - I look forward to using it” Robert, Digital Champion for Hyde

The Digital Champions Network for Housing (DCN4H) has just been relaunched and now boasts updated training courses, improved functionality and the ability to use it via any mobile device, among many other things.

It has been 12 months since our Digital Champions Network for Housing (DCN4H) was launched and with 18 members and over 500 Digital Champions it continues to go from strength to strength.

In the Spring Online Best Event Awards 2014 announced at an official ceremony in June, Wigan and Leigh Housing were named Joint Runners Up following their fourth successive year of being involved in the campaign.

Around 600 Digital Champions are now being supported and trained by Digital Unite to help residents to get and stay online.

With research showing that those with low levels of digital literacy prefer to learn new online skills informally by watching and asking others, developing armies of local Digital Champions can provide an effective solution to getting more people online.

Digital Unite has recently been successfully helping Hyde Housing to support a number of their residents to get and stay online.

Between November 2013 and July 2014 18 residents in the Kent area were provided with up to four regular one-to-one training sessions in their own home with a Digital Unite tutor, each of the sessions being specifically tailored to the learners’ individual needs and interests.

On Thursday 3 July 2014, Digital Unite and its website (digitalunite.com) were Highly Commended at the Nominet Internet Awards 2014 in the category Online Skills and Training.

Digital Unite has been enlisted by the Octavia Foundation community charity in London to recruit, manage and train ten Digital Champions to help residents get and stay online.

Citizens Online Nairn was named this year’s overall winner of the Spring Online Best Event Awards 2014. Nairn Get IT Together project co-ordinator Brigitte Vallance accepted the top award from broadcaster and presenter, Angela Rippon, during an awards ceremony at the City Hall in London in June.

We are delighted that Digital Unite and its website (digitalunite.com) have been shortlisted for the Nominet Internet Awards 2014 in the category Online Skills and Training.

On Thursday 12 June 2014, broadcaster and presenter Angela Rippon presented awards to nine local organisations that helped older people and others to get online as part of Spring Online 2014.

Wales has become the latest member of Digital Unite’s Digital Champions Network as part of a new national project to improve the digital skills of Welsh public service workers.

Volunteers, community organisations, libraries, housing providers, businesses and many more responded enthusiastically to our call to help older people and less confident users to get online during one of the biggest digital inclusion campaigns of the year, Spring Online in association with Carphone Warehouse.

The Post Office and Fujitsu have come together in a bid to help more people to get online as part of the national Spring Online campaign.

The World Wide Web may be 25 years old this month, but the UK’s digital divide perseveres, with nearly six million older people who have never been online. Spring Online in association with Carphone Warehouse aims to change all that, with hundreds of free internet taster events being held across the UK next week (March 31 – April 4) to help people take their first steps online.

'For the past 25 years, Carphone Warehouse has witnessed a considerable evolution in technical trends.  Advances in technology have emerged that have not only changed our work and social habits, they have fundamentally changed how we live our lives.

Four more housing providers have joined the Digital Champions Network for Housing (DCN4H) helping thousands more residents to get and stay online.

streetlife.com, the local social network, is supporting Digital Unite’s campaign to help tackle digital exclusion through local community events.

Following the success of last year’s Spring Online campaign, Streetlife is once again encouraging local people to help others to achieve a lasting use of the internet.

Here at Digital Unite we’ve been helping people with improving their digital literacy for around 17 years and in that time we’ve read and written a lot about digital skills, digital exclusion and everything in-between.

So, let’s cut to the chase and reflect briefly on where we are now in the challenge to get the nation ‘digital by default’?

Our experience suggests the following:

We are proud to be working with Hyde Housing, a partner of our new Digital Champions Network for Housing, who has extended their digital inclusion programme with face-to-face home tuition for residents in central and east Kent.

After the success of last year’s partnership, Digital Unite has announced that Carphone Warehouse will again act as Headline Partner for Spring Online, one of the UK’s leading digital inclusion campaigns which will run from 31^st March – 4^th April 2014.

CrossCountry is the largest rail network in Great Britain, linking major towns and cities like Cardiff, York, Edinburgh, Reading, Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol and Manchester. As a train company we don’t operate any stations so often our only contact with our customers before they get on board is through our website, mobile site and app.

Enlisting 102 Digital Champions to the Affinity Sutton Get Connected project and seeing the programme shortlisted in the TPAS Awards 2013 have been two great reasons to celebrate this month.

Digital Unite has announced that CrossCountry will act as a Supporting Sponsor for Spring Online, one of the nation’s largest, annual digital inclusion campaigns which runs between 31 March – 4 April 2014.