An Erasmus+ project co-funded by the European Union. Thank you!
1.3.2022. – 29.2.2024.
Developing Digital Skills in Disadvantaged Groups
Why?
The skilled workforce shortage is an obvious opportunity for disadvantaged people. There is, however, often a skill gap preventing applicants from successful employment. Improving digital literacy greatly increases their chances on the job market.
Employment for disadvantaged groups is a key prerequisite to creating equal opportunities. The access to the job market, however, needs to be actually actionable in practice. A recurring pattern across various disadvantaged groups is that they are underrepresented in or even mostly excluded from digital professions. Even though the reasons for this glass ceiling are always complex, adult education is a powerful tool in addressing the problem.
What?
With this project we address two interconnected issues that the European Union its member states are facing at the moment: access to life-long learning, up-skilling, and digital literacy for many people in Europe( …) disadvantaged people; and wide-scale shortage in skilled workforce in the digital economy and beyond. Within this project, and beyond, we commit ourselves to:
- create a dedicated adult learners’ community of Hungarian and Dutch people, in which ongoing dialogue, long-term community learning, and co-created, progressive community initiatives can be born.
- support young disadvantaged individuals to improve their digital skills, literacy and wellness in order to support their employment success in a digital world.
Who?
The DigInclude project is led by SignCoders, a social enterprise from Hungary employing deaf young professionals. Hekate Conscious Ageing Foundation, in the Netherlands, is the proud partner in this project.
Driven by believes
We strongly believe that post-covid economic and social recovery can, should, and in fact must be built on the intentions, wishes, and materialistic realities of local communities and the people themselves.
We also strongly believe that post-covid recovery must put an enhanced emphasis on access to digital skills and strategically shared community responsibilities.
We also strongly believe that these developments and transitions must be driven and owned by the local people themselves, which means that the process has to be accompanied by a wide range of adult learning activities and modules.
“While using technology gives many of us brilliant advantages and benefits, those who have no access to internet or cannot access online spaces barrier-free automatically get into a position of disadvantage. Imagine people with no access to internet. Imagine people of disadvantaged groups with lack of digital literacy. Imagine great minds with physical disabilities: blind, deaf, handicapped and so on. The truth is that we don’t have information available and accessible equally for everyone. We still don’t have spaces that promote barrier-free accessibility. We still don’t design safe digital spaces to support the human needs of disadvantaged groups.”
KNOWLEDGE BASE
– Courses, educational articles, knowledge bits created by Hekate during the project –
Consciously Digital Online Course
We’ve developed an online course about Digital Readiness based on our self-developed model. The course is downloadable from our website in 3 languages (English, Dutch and Hungarian) and covers 14 topics as the core concept of Digital Readiness.
Technology: blessing or curse? 1 question, 5 opinions!
We have also initiated exciting club discussions, which have now become quite a tradition. Our first discussion was an introduction to the digital society, Artificial Intelligence and the changing world. In this article we want to present the general view of the discussion and some basic introduction to the topic.
Understanding Digital Wellbeing
“Digital Wellbeing is the optimal state of health, personal fulfilment, interpersonal satisfaction and body-mind-spirit integrity that one can achieve while using technology.” (…) Our relationship with technology defines the quality of certain areas of our lives. The Digital Wellness Institute designed a map of the areas where one could (/should?) focus on for great Digital Wellbeing.
Digital Wellbeing and Digital Inclusion: what’s the connection?
During the project we had a professional forum with two workshops in Budapest, Hungary. This was for the lovely community of one of our strategic partners, SignCoders. The topic therefore was given: Digital Inclusion. However we really wanted to take a look at it from a different point of view and approach through Digital Wellbeing, a topic that we have some expertise in. We’d like to share with you how we see the connection between these two areas!
“Yes, we do promote barrier-free digital web design, user-need based coding and inclusive digital spaces and activities, but first and more important we need to be open to listen and empathise.”
EVENTS
– Events created by Hekate during the project –
Conscious Ageing Club conversations
During the project we’ve kicked off Club conversations to create space for dialogue. Here are the conversations we had:
Ageing Consciously in a Digital and AI driven world? – We’ve had this both in English and in Hungarian.
Will robots care for us? – We had this in English.
Digital Inclusion Professional Forum
We designed and delivered a comprehensive workshop about Digital Inclusion, Digital Citizenship and Digital Wellbeing to our professional communities. The event took place in Budapest
Introducing our online course on Digital Readiness
In a FB live event we introduced our online course that we developed within this project. As well as we’ve made an Advent Calendar and FB campaign with everyday posts with knowledge bits to promote the material.
COMMUNITY
– The forums and group where you should join to immerse in the topic. Everyone can contribute, we shape the space together. –
Digital Learning Hub
Hekate’s own online platform to accommodate the peer-connection and learning together about Digital Inclusion, Digital Wellbeing and MORE.
Conscious Ageing Club conversations
Join our upcoming conversations. It’s up to also you what we’ll talk about, let’s just have a nice conversation to move us forward. All topics digital and more.
DigInclude Facebook Group
A closed and dedicated Facebook group co-created with our partner to build a community of disadvantaged groups and professionals.
Hekate Insights Newsletter
A good old newsletter where you can stay informed about our projects, DigInclude included and have a sneak-peak of what we’re working on. Events are shared, too.
“People forming a community is not coming from an external force, it is an organic process that takes time as well as effort of each individual. In a community people want to connect, both want to give and take, are willing to dedicate their time and are open for others. In a community people belong. Belonging is coming from various feelings such as trust, self-love, self-acceptance, compassion amongst many more. All of these are being built through shorter or longer process depending on each individual. Which is beautiful and ok.”
LEARNING
– Our personal and professional learning of this project –
Digital Inclusion as we #Hear it
When we came up with this project, we had in mind a lot of tangible goals and desired outcomes. While we’re implementing more and more activities to achieve the goals, suddenly we realised that we’re going even further than we ever could have imagined. Shining eyes, sparkling motivation, constant inspiration, dedication to give and create, 120% involvement and a genuinely beautiful co-creation within deaf and hearing are one of the non-tangible yet most valuable outcomes we’re thrilled to see and experience! Our reports will talk about numbers, activities and so on. This article has a different purpose: let it talk about what we experience and why we love doing this project.
How to be really inclusive? The learning from an inclusive workshop on inclusivity
From the process of designing and implementing our Digital Inclusion Professional Forum event, we’ve learned a lot. Let us share with you some of these thoughts, takeaways, hints & tips. A bit in advance:
* Design is key
* Preparation is another key
* Make yourself at home and trust the process!
When a project won’t just end
Here we’ve gathered our final learnings of this project as well as shared a beautiful testimonial that shows why this project was so important.
“DigInclude has opened up a world for me, partners abroad have been completely open, welcoming and curious about my situation, the process and how to collaborate. They learned a few sign language signs and were not afraid to laugh together, and to resolve situations when there was a barrier to communication.“
EPALE
– Check us out on the EU’s Professional forum and/or connect. –
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
OTHER REFERENCES
– Some more material that has been developed during this project –
DigitaIdentity, equity, inclusion – a quick personal guide for self-reflectionl Inclusion as we #Hear it
Identity, equity and inclusion are some of those big concepts that are not the easiest to grasp. We hear these all the time, we might have learned about these in school, we might be given courses about these at our workplaces, yet these might mean something different to each one of us. With this interactive, self-reflection based course our partners in our DigInclude project, SignCoders, aimed to guide individuals of all backgrounds through a quick discovery of the basics of these – on a personal level.
Quick to learn Digital Professions aka the basics of Digital Career
We live our life in a digital age with tons of activities we perform online, from communication, through studies till banking and administration. For many of us, a great part of our works are online, too. But not for all of us, and not entirely. There are several job opportunities out there that are specifically based on the use of computer technologies and allow people to build a digital career. But what are these opportunities? Where can one start? What to look out for? Here are the answers from SignCoders.
Hekate 