Millions of people in the UK don’t have the basic digital skills they need to thrive in today’s world. In 2019 a collaboration across the public, private and voluntary sector formed the East Riding Digital Divide subgroup The group's purpose was to investigate the main challenges of digital exclusion within the East Riding, including:
Group members would connect their own resources and learnings to share and develop a range of accessible solutions and recommendations to tackle the issue with the region. See 'Digital Community Champion project below'
The ‘Community Digital Champions’ project is enabling community-led digital training to improve resident access to online services. This test and learn project is being run in partnership with HEYSmile Foundation working with teams from East Riding Adult Education and Digital Teams.
In late 2021 community groups in the East Riding were invited to bid for funding of up to £5,000 to become a pilot digital hub to develop a resource within their community where people can come in to learn how to access and use computers. The successful pilots were chosen based on population, current access to online services, the scale of the challenge and what opportunities existed to improve access and facilities.
Known in their local community, these groups have well established relationships with their communities based on trust which enable them to engage those who would not normally engage with public services. As well as offering digital access many of these 'hubs' provide a wide range of services and support spanning topics like employment and debt advice, health and wellbeing, community cafes and specific functions, such as running a food bank.
The pilot projects are:
Assistance is being given to these community groups, including:
Key outcomes include the following:
Each pilot is at a different stage of development, however now that lockdown restrictions have lifted progress is being made and the expectation is these sites will be up fully up and and running by April 2022
Sight support - Home Visiting Technology Service AbilityNet supports anyone living with any disability or impairment to use technology to achieve their goals at home, at work and in education.
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