As quickly as it came around Get Online Week is over for another year – and what a spectacular campaign it was! A very fitting and busy celebration for a tenth birthday indeed.

Get Online Week is a great opportunity for the UK online centres network, and everyone else who wants to spread the digital inclusion message, to jump on the bandwagon and reach the 12.6 million people without basic digital skills, to show them how much easier a life online can be.

A front row seat

The Tinder Foundation team got out and about throughout the week to see Get Online Week activity firsthand and everyone was so impressed by all the great work they saw. I personally made it my goal to celebrate the big one zero by visiting ten different events. By the time I got home on Friday I was very tired but very pleased to have met so many wonderful people and seen so much exciting activity happening.

1. Learn for Life, Sheffield

I visited Learn for Life in Sheffield with my colleague Boryana. It was so wonderful to catch up with the team there and meet all the learners who were finding out about all the wonderful stuff they could do online through Learn My Way and English My Way. Learn for Life supports refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, as well as people from the local community. It really feels like a family there, it was so busy and vibrant. A great start to the week.

2. Edlington Hilltop Centre, Doncaster

On the Tuesday I popped across to Doncaster to visit Edlington Hilltop. The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that Rachel and Rob, two of our Get Online Week poster stars, were from this centre. It was lovely to chat to the team there and to hear about all the great stuff they were doing. I can’t believe they achieve everything that they do with just 2.5 staff (or full time equivalents) – they can only do it with the hundreds of volunteers they have.

With Get Online Week star Rob, and Edlington Hilltop’s Centre Manager Rob

3. Rotherham Libraries

After visiting Edlington Hilltop I went across to Rotherham Libraries who were using Get Online Week as an excuse to get out to five different locations. I visited them at a coffee shop in the centre of Rotherham. They had a great set up to register people as members of the Library, and then talk to them about eBooks and the internet. However, I did meet an older woman who didn’t want to ever use the internet. However persuasive I tried to be, she wasn’t budging. I hope I planted some seeds about the benefits to her of being online and that Rotherham Libraries can nudge her a bit more next time they meet. Everyone at the cafe was so nice, and I have to say, 10/10 for cakes and coffee!

4. The Connection at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London

A few steps from Trafalgar Square and I was in this amazing day centre. From digital skills drop-in and lessons, to the provision of job interview clothes, this centre does everything they can to help homeless people in the capital. I gave one Big Issue salesman, Steve, his Learn My Way certificate, and spoke to lots of men, both learners and volunteers about their stories. Steve told me he used Facebook to communicate with his family via his phone but he knew nothing about email and searching. He was happy to learn that the internet had so much more to offer. A great visit.

He said that gesture meant victory! Victory indeed for Get Online Week 2016

5. Lloyds Charity Digital Skills workshop

A big thank you to our campaign sponsors, Lloyds Banking Group. The balloons, pens and notepads went down a treat and I was delighted to attend their Charity Digital Skills workshop on the Wednesday evening. More than 100 people were there to learn more about digital. Lloyds also launched their UK Business Digital Index 2016 on Wednesday to coincide with Get Online week.

6. Peabody Darwin Court

The team at Peabody Darwin Court in London were so nice and it was surprising to see that they had a whopping five volunteers to support all of the people learning digital skills. Covering everything from job searching to copy and paste, it really was great to see people of all skill levels learning something new during Get Online Week.

7. Cabinet Office Get Online Week event

I had a lovely time at Whitehall on Thursday lunchtime chatting to people from DWP and Jobcentre Plus Maidstone. It was great to hear how digital skills is now playing a bigger part in their day-to-day jobs, and I was delighted to show them how they can become a UK online centre and use Learn My Way to teach clients about all the wonderful stuff there is online to help them with their job search. It was a really insightful event and I hope we can work together in the future. Thank you to Chad Bond, from GDS, for organising these events throughout the week.

8, 9 and 10. I spent the Friday visiting three centres across Liverpool: Liverpool Carers Centre, Mersey Learn (at Mersey Travel) and Kensington Community Learning Centre.

They were all doing such great stuff and there was even a raffle game at Kensington where learners would receive a free raffle ticket for each online activity they completed. Alan Tapp, at Kensington (Liverpool), should help us out with next year’s toolkit – he had prizes from local businesses, he had an online games competition, and a huge turnout for his event.

Talking to amazing carers about Twitter. Communication is so important for people who are often at home alone with those that they are caring for

Louise Ellman MP at Mersey Learn at Mersey Travel

Pulling out prizes from the box at Kensington Community Learning Centre

The fun’s just beginning

Get Online Week 2016 was a truly brilliant campaign. I visited these ten events but I saw so much more happening across social media – look up the hashtag #GOLW16 to see how much was happening and other great photos from the thousands of events around the country.

We may have reached even more people over the past week, teaching them digital skills that they can use to make their lives easier, but the stats still speak for themselves. There are still 12.6 million people in the UK who aren’t able to access the online world and it’s so important that we’re there to offer them support.

Get Online Week is like getting a dog for Christmas – Get Online Week is for life. It’s so much more than a seven-day campaign; it’s an accelerator for activity throughout the rest of the year. Get Online Week may be over, but the fun is only just beginning.