Starting Point Community Learning Partnership
Born out of a community coffee shop, Starting Point Community Learning Partnership helps adults in Stockport gain the digital skills they need to make the most of the internet, so they can live their lives and improve their future prospects.
The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK, has awarded over £240,000 to the group to recruit 250 volunteers from the community, who will be supported and trained to create a new network of digital peer champions to help family, friends and neighbours flourish and stay safe online.
Here, our guest blogger Clara Jones, Head of Digital Inclusion at Starting Point tells us why the funding is so vital for the organisation.
How many times today have you used digital skills without even realising you have those skills in the first place? You may be reading this on a computer or on your phone. You’re connected to WiFi and you’ve opened an app or clicked on a link to find yourself here. I’ve made an assumption that this has been your experience. This is digital inclusion.
You have a device that works, data to use it and skills to feel confident. The reality for many people is very different and that’s where Starting Point in Stockport comes in. Thanks to National Lottery players, we are delighted to have received this award from The National Lottery Community Fund and its Reaching Communities fund, to support people within Stockport to become more digitally included.
An Ipsos report in 2022 found at least 10.2 million UK adults lack fundamental basic skills for getting online. In 2022, 1.5 million households lacked home internet access and at least 2 million households were struggling to afford internet access.*
We know that digital inclusion doesn’t sit in a silo. Those impacted by other types of poverty such as fuel and food are more likely to be impacted by digital poverty. That is why we need to focus on supporting digital inclusion one person at a time, at community level.
If you are excluded due to disability, literacy, language skills, discrimination or poverty, digital exclusion is only going to compound the difficulties you face. If you want to manage your benefits, book a GP appointment, apply for a school place or search for work, a lack of digital skills can often be the first hurdle that many people face, with many of these activities now done mostly online.
Once one element of digital inclusion is missing, other parts fall apart. Kat Dixon, Fellow of the Data poverty Lab captured this in her ‘pointless’ triangle: data connectivity is pointless without a device, which is pointless without digital skills, which are pointless without data connectivity.
Starting Point have been working with people in our community to solve digital problems for 14 years and listening to what works for them.
Formal learning does not work for everyone. Starting Point’s current digital champions can support with skills and signposting to our local device bank. We can also link people who need help with connectivity with the Good Things Foundation National Databank, a ‘foodbank’ model for free mobile data, texts, and calls. Some of our volunteers have also helped us to write a guide to social tariffs. However, we know there is more to learn, and people we are missing, and this is where the cultivation of a network of digital champions becomes so important.
Digital champions can come from all areas of our society. For example, Starting Point works with a mum of three children who is newly out of work and can’t afford her WiFi costs at home anymore. Her friend told her about Starting Point, and she contacted us as she is juggling with the time needed to apply for jobs and childcare, and her lack of WiFi is proving to be a major barrier.
While the friend who told her about us is one example of a digital champion, we even see the mum as a potential champion, as she understands the barriers she faces and is now supporting others she knows and gaining experience to put on her CV whist looking for work.
We are also currently working with a lady from a project partner, who is learning English, has low computer skills, is looking for work, and recently split from her partner. Her children offered to help her with online tasks but she was unsure if she had WiFi at home. Skills are a barrier, but so is the assumption that everyone has digital access at home and the basic knowledge and skills to use it. She says she struggles to find time to read her emails, and all the communications from her children’s school come via email. These are all problems that a digital champion, who understands these types of pressures, is multilingual and is continually supported by us could help to resolve and help this mum take control of her situation.
The funding from The National Lottery Community Fund will mean we can train 250 Digital champions over three years. Our ambition is that if you live in Stockport, you might meet your digital champion in one of our digital skills sessions, or through an organisation you know and trust already. We already work alongside over 50 partners in the local DigiKnow network established by Stockport Council and we work with Stockport Homes to host some computer clubs too.
But equally we want people to meet a digital champion who is a neighbour, a food bank volunteer, a mum at school or even someone working in their local coffee shop. Not every digital champion will be the right person to help everyone, and we want to work with partners, learners, and all our communities in Stockport to make sure that everyone can find a champion who looks and sounds like them - and understands their challenges to getting online.
Thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund, the funding will allow us to develop online training, session guides and support, so that digital champions can access amazing support unlike anything we have been able to offer before, and at times and places that suit them. Our aim is to support them to be up to date and feel safe and confident enough to help others.
Our project will launch during Get Online Week 2023 - no better time to start! You can get involved or find out more by contacting us at hello@startpoint.org.uk, or visiting startpoint.org.uk.
* UN: Human Rights Council adopts resolution on human rights on the Internet - ARTICLE 19