New initiative to create hundreds of digital champions

1,400 Digital Champions to bring the benefits of being online to thousands

A new initiative to create hundreds of ‘digital champions' who will help more than 9,500 people develop basic digital skills is being launched following £2 million investment of funding from the Big Lottery Fund.

The test-and-learn initiative aims to recruit more than 1,400 digital champions within disability, youth and support organisations who will engage with people who are not online and provide them with personal long-term support.

Digital Unite, a leading provider of digital skills learning, will lead a consortium comprising Age UK, Citizens Online and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO). These diverse organisations will work closely together to provide bespoke training, share and improve practices and develop consistent ways of evaluating success.

The One Digital consortium will benefit people with disabilities and accessibility needs, young adults seeking work, over 65s, and charities and the people they support, so they are able to access essential online services, search and apply for jobs and stay in touch with friends and family.

The digital champions will, for example, demonstrate the use of Skype to an older person to help them stay in touch with grandchildren and family, or provide a young person with the skills to search for work and complete an online CV. Four out of five over 65s use computers at least once a week which help to alleviate loneliness and connect people to essential services*.

Digital Unite receives £749,611 for projects delivered in partnership with housing association Affinity Sutton and charity AbilityNet. They will train, develop and expand a network of volunteers who will provide free digital skills to 1,000 disabled people in their own homes and encourage young people to become digital champions, gain the skills needed to get jobs and support local residents to get online.

Age UK receives £326,136 for a project using digital champions to support at least 2,000 older people in Oxfordshire, Leicestershire and Rutland to develop their digital skills. Local Age UKs will work with local organisations and businesses including health and social services, care homes, clubs, hairdressers and taxi drivers. Community work will include pop-up taster sessions in local shops, GP surgeries and hospitals.

The charity Citizens Online receives £466,981 and will work in four local authority areas - Brighton, Plymouth, Gwynedd and Highlands Council to train, recruit and deploy digital champions to improve the online skills of 4,000 people. Citizens Online will deliver a project that aims to support the uptake of digital skills and services in each area by creating a sustainable and supportive partnership network.

SCVO receives £528,219 to develop and assess the contribution that existing frontline third sector organisations can make. It will improve the skills of up to 2,000 people, develop digital champions and improve the online skills of 250 voluntary and community sector organisations.

The One Digital programme will measure the impact and benefits for the digital champions and those they teach so that successful practices and lessons learnt can be shared.

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.'

Dawn Austwick, Big Lottery Fund Chief Executive, said: 'We are becoming increasingly driven by digital technology. This funding will help local people share their digital skills with others in their community so they can access services and opportunities to connect with people online. New approaches, evidence gathered and lessons learnt will enable more people to gain the digital skills to improve their quality of life.'

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Notes to Editors:

*Four out of five over 65s use computers at least once a week which help to alleviate loneliness and connect people to essential services*. - Ageing in the UK, by Trajectory, commissioned by Big Lottery Fund, June 2015.

10.5 million people in the UK lack the skills to access many key online services. BBC Basic Digital Skills 2014.

49 per cent of disabled people and 42 per cent of people with a household income of less than £12,500 a year, do not use the internet. Oxford Internet Survey 2013.

In June this year Tinder Foundation received £329,958 to support three groups - homeless people, families in poverty and people with mental health problems. It followed a major award in July 2014 when the Big Lottery Fund awarded £5.8 million to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) to engage with a million people and raise their awareness of the range of equipment and programmes that can help to make technology accessible to people with sight or hearing loss. The grant came from the Fund's Basic Online Skills funding programme which was developed as part of their commitment as a board partner of digital skills charity Go ON UK which aims to ensure everyone in the UK has the basic digital skills they need.

• 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.
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