Community Learning and Development Device Fund 2023 (360G-SCVO-a13N2000002tPW8IAM)

The COVID-19 pandemic and cost-of-living crisis have highlighted the scale and severity of digital poverty in our local community. We discovered that many young people we support lack internet at home and/or IT equipment and rely on our services for access to devices and get online. We have an internet connection at our premises, the Community Flat, but we need new IT devices - the few we have are outdated and also used by staff - to enable us to meaningfully address these issues, accommodate for the volume of young people we engage, and so we can support young people with their learning and employability. There are three key strands to our project - young people accessing IT devices to gain new skills by directly supporting our work; using IT to enhance young people’s participation in group-based informal learning that improves their digital skills, online safety, and health and wellbeing; and supporting unemployed young people to access IT to develop their work skills, gain awards/certificates, and for one-to-one and group-work employability support. We want to purchase two desktop computers, two laptops, three iPads, two monitors and mouse/keyboard setups. Devices will be, in the main, retained by About Youth and provided for young people to use at our premises as part of their engagement across all our youth work provision. Two devices will be available for young people to “borrow” using a lending library approach, typically for a maximum of one week, specifically when young people require devices to progress their employability. Young people will use the devices every week during our youth groups to research healthy recipes they can cook with youth workers to aid our food provision efforts and to seek out ideas for new games and activities they can participate in together. The devices will strengthen our youth leadership initiatives via young people using them to contact leisure/activity providers to cost/plan school holiday activity programmes, help us develop new provision, design posters for projects, input into our social media, and support us with our fundraising efforts. Our youth volunteers will regularly use the devices to participate in online training and reflective exercises we provide them to improve their learning and experience. Large numbers of young people undertake youth awards with our support, and the devices will be used to help young people complete logs and evidence their achievements. We routinely deliver issue-based sessions on topics young people tell us impact their lives, such as drugs/alcohol, smoking/vaping, and mental health. The devices will enhance those sessions by enabling young people to use the internet to find information independently that they can discuss with each other and youth workers. We will use the devices to deliver regular dedicated group work sessions on keeping safe online and improving digital skills.The devices will help us to provide unemployed young people with direct access to IT to research potential careers, seek employment, make CVs/job applications, and apply for training courses or further education. We will run weekly employability workshops using the devices that will often involve young people using them to participate in accredited training opportunities.Our youth work staff are all IT literate and enthusiastic about supporting young people to maximise their use of technology. Several staff have completed training in online safety and basic digital skills and hold qualifications in digital learning and design. We have strong community partnerships with organisations specialising in IT training who have offered and agreed to support our work.