Project Overview

Literacy – the ways we use reading and writing in our daily lives – is changing fast. Once, knowing how to read or use a pen or pencil was enough, but not anymore. Literacy today is as much about smartphones, tablets, and other digital devices. As our cultures become more digitised, more visual, more multi-modal, so many of our day-to-day interactions take place online. Furthermore, our online activities occur in all major aspects of modern life – for example, work, education, health, and our social lives. Digital literacy skills have thus become utterly essential for most people.

But despite the necessity for digital literacies, across Europe almost 70 million adults every year will leave school with – at best – lower secondary level qualifications. Out of this group, 20 million will not even achieve this level. A key issue is that access to digital literacy technologies and skills can be highly challenging to adults. This is especially the case for the most marginalised and hard-to-reach members in European societies, a group which regularly include the long-term unemployed, migrants, refugees and people seeking asylum. And although teaching marginalised groups demands considerable skill, knowledge and dedication, educators working with such groups often lack necessary resources in performing this task.

The Digital Literacy in Europe (DiLitE) project aims to build digital capital across Europe. DiLitE has conducted research across six partner countries (Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the UK). This research informs the development of a new, innovative curriculum and toolkit that will support learners’ digital literacies and digital literacy skills. On this website you will find a range of teaching resources, ideas, techniques and approaches to support practitioners across Europe (including volunteers, mentors, classroom assistants, and teachers), working with adult learners across a wide range of contexts and settings. There are a range of opportunities in each country for practitioners to get involved – contact your in-country partner to find out more.

Title

DiLitE will support and facilitate the up-skilling of practitioners at all levels (volunteers, mentors, classroom assistants, teachers) through research into, and comparison of the teaching of basic digital skill literacy practices across European (EU) settings as an integral part of basic literacy practice with native and non-native speakers of the main language(s) as well as migrant populations, who are developing language and literacy skills in the host country’s language.

Objectives

Partners

Learning Unlimited is a not for profit social enterprise that specialises in adult and family learning, ESOL and integration, literacy, numeracy and teacher education.
We believe in learning as empowerment and engage adults and families in local communities who face a wide range of issues and barriers to social inclusion. We also train the volunteers and professionals who work with and support them.
We lead on local, national and international projects, develop and publish books and resources, and do a wide variety of consultancy work.

Meath Partnership is a county-wide local development company responsible for the design and implementation of local, rural and community development programmes in county Meath. We focus on building the capacity of communities through the delivery of a range of services and initiatives tackling persistent incidence of exclusion and disadvantage, playing a strategic role in the development of the County. We are a not-for-profit charitable organisation. Our activities are guided by a bottom-up approach directly responding to the needs of our target groups, customers and local partners. We are funded by national and EU funds and currently employ 33 people.

Center for Social Innovation (CSI) is a Research and Development organization, which focuses on fostering social innovation that can bring about a positive change to local, national, regional and global contexts. CSI is working closely to address social, economic and cultural challenges with governments, local administrative agencies, non-for-profit agencies, commercial entities, and educational institutions.
We identify and address systemic challenges through evidence based research, state of the art investigation of global, national, regional and local solutions, developing solutions by taking into consideration the local ecosystem, cultural dynamics, meet the stakeholders needs and implementing those solutions as we keep constant vigilance to ensure continual feedback loop and adjustments. The feedback mechanisms and processes we employ allow us certainty in keeping in touch with our stakeholders and continually update our social solutions proposition.
CSI team is composed of open-minded, fully equipped researchers, educators, social workers, social entrepreneurs, project managers, trainers and Information Technology Developers. CSI encompasses the capability and capacity to identify social needs, design and implement adjusted initiatives, and project and provide the fertile ground for sustainable growth.
Our areas of expertise are in the fields of social justice, labour market, education and e-learning, social entrepreneurship, project management, project evaluation services, product validation, and training.

European Learning Centre belongs to a network of four training centres in the rural area of the Cadiz Mountains in Southern Spain and a management office in Madrid, Spain. Their chief areas of training are in language learning, ICT, and professional training. Our region could be generally described as industrial (leather manufacturing, agriculture, mainly), geographically isolated, and with one of the highest levels of unemployment in Spain. Our institutions work primarily with youngsters, underrepresented groups such as immigrants and refugees but also with adults in the local and regional community interested in furthering their education in a non-formal context. Public funding is received to subsidise the accreditation and certification of the training received. Being part of this previously mentioned network of private and public partnerships, which has allowed us to carry out multiple initiatives regarding environmental education, integration of underrepresented groups and the specific training in digital skills, languages and social inclusion. For the last 10 years, ELC has been closely collaborating in the areas of adult education with CEPER-7V which is the permanent network of adult education centres in our region. Another important collaboration presently exists between ELC and a consortium of local authorities (Town Hall)- the Youth Information Office and the major Association of SMEs in our area. The main aim of this recently-created consortium is to improve the success in helping unemployed youth find a job and better spread the information available for youth and adults in our area.

Symplexis is a Greek non-for-profit organization that strives to ensure equal opportunities for all through actions and measures that build skills, empower and promote active engagement and participation focusing on the most vulnerable categories of the population and particularly those with fewer opportunities. Symplexis’ mission is to elevate social cohesion through integrated actions and project-based activities that aim at promoting the inclusion of disadvantaged groups at risk of marginalization and exclusion, while promoting and protecting the rights of various types of population groups that face discrimination focusing on the empowerment and support of victims, awareness raising and information sharing at all level.
Symplexis’ activity builds on user-led approaches and interventions around four main axes of expertise, namely:
– The social and economic inclusion of those most in need comprising a wide variety of activities aimed at reducing poverty, preventing marginalisation and promoting the sustainable integration of disadvantaged groups, particularly focusing on Third Country Nationals.
– The protection and promotion of human rights through activities and interventions that address the needs of a wide range of discriminated population groups, such as women, children and elderly people, victims of violence and human trafficking, the LGBTQI community, Roma and unaccompanied minors, migrants and asylum seekers/ refugees.
– Upskilling, capacity building and empowerment of vulnerable groups with the aim to promote equal access to formal and non-formal education for all and promote lifelong learning focusing on low-skills individuals that face difficulties in (re) the labour market.
– Child and youth development through actions and projects designed to reduce youth poverty, promote child protection and stimulate social inclusion and development.

Mindshift is a start-up HR Consultancy established in 2017 in Lisbon, with a strong focus on digital-based solutions. Mindshift operates both, at national and international markets, in the following core areas of business: #upskilling paths: coaching, training and mentoring tailored programmes; #competences assessment centres; #career management and personal development; #attraction, selection and onboarding of young talent; # trainees programmes; #preparation of workforce for digital transformation; #social media campaigns.
Mindshift is strongly committed with principles of Social Responsibility and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, bringing together a team of staff with various backgrounds and professional experience.