1 million supported, but we’re nowhere near finished

Posted by HelenMilner

Today we were delighted to announce that our Future Digital Inclusion programme, funded by the Department for Education (DfE), has helped over 1 million people, since 2014, to gain the basic digital skills they need for life and work. This has been the result of a great partnership with DfE, whose staff genuinely understand the wider social impact of basic digital skills on the lives of socially excluded people, and with thousands of hyperlocal community partners across the Online Centres whose special abilities both engage and support people in the heart of their communities for whom digital blended with great human face-to-face support is the lifeline they’ve been looking for.

It’s been an incredible journey to get here and I’ve met so many amazing people along the way. Here a few of them:

Bertram Henry was a learner in Manchester. He suffered a breakdown and could barely bring himself to leave the house. Eventually, he felt up to visiting the Jobcentre and they recommended he go along to his local Online Centre, First Asian Support Trust (FAST). He completed lots of courses on Learn My Way, improving his knowledge and confidence. Now he’s been able to find a job as well. Bertram says: “I feel bright in the morning now, because I’ve got somewhere to go, and something constructive to do. I’m not down in the dumps anymore”

Hear Bertram’s story, and how happy he was to win one of our 2 Millionth Learner Awards:

Edith Ball from Preston learned digital skills at her local Online Centre – The Intact Centre. She was cautious about getting online but now there’s no stopping her – she’s using Skype and emails to talk to family abroad, surfing the internet to find out all sorts of information, and much more. She’s delighted with her new skills and is much less lonely as a result. Edith says: “Before I came here, I just sat in the house on my own, but coming to the IT classes brings me out of the house and gives me something interesting to do. I’m never bored and I enjoy everything I do there. I do still get a bit nervous using the computers but I would recommend it to anyone. The whole world is there online – you’ve just got to have the courage to go in and look!”

Hear more about Edith’s journey from the lady herself in this video, released as part of Get Online Week:

Rory Whittaker from Lincolnshire is a young contract farmer. He learned digital skills with his local Online Centre Lincs Training to diversify his business in new and exciting ways, meaning he can be profitable all year round. Rory says: “For all businesses in today’s current climate, evolution is vital, and even more so if you’re a rural business. You don’t want to get left behind. You need constant financial and time investment and you need to learn how to do things more easily. I think the best way to grow a business is to find a model that works and apply it to what you know. Having great people and great projects supporting you like Rich and the team from Lincs Training makes that journey even better.”

See more of Rory’s story in this video, released as part of the Get Online Week campaign:

An incredible journey

It has been a real journey to get to 1 million, made possible by the hard work and dedication of the 5,000-strong Online Centres Network. 80% of the people they’ve supported face some form of social exclusion, including poverty, low skills or a disability.

The programme has helped people to achieve a range of positive outcomes, with 86% of learners progressing to further learning, 76% increasing their employability, 60% improving their health and wellbeing, and 84% able to use public services online.

Our recently released Economic impact of Digital Inclusion in the UK report found that the benefits of learning digital skills are endless. From time savings (undertaking financial and government transactions online could mean an estimated value of £1.1bn saved by 2028), NHS savings (the more people that can use the online world to help manage their health, the more savings can be made – estimated at £141 million by 2028) and transaction benefits (being able to shop online, taking advantage of discounts and more, could collectively save people across the UK an estimated £1.1 billion by 2028).

Digital skills are so important in many aspects of life and reaching 1 million learners through the Future Digital Inclusion programme is an incredible achievement. I am so proud. Thank you to the Good Things team, the Online Centres Network, but most of all, the learners for being so brave and having the confidence to take that first step into online life.

There is still more to be done though. 11.3 million UK adults still lack at least one basic digital skill and 4.3 million have no digital skills at all. We will continue supporting Online Centres to help learners to make the most of the online world, but this is something that needs collaboration and, of course, the ‘F’ word (funding).

It’s not just about supporting people to be more digitally able and it’s not just about the new skills they’ve learned – it is what people can do with these skills that matters, and how they can apply them to their lives – to be digitally active – to apply for work for example, or to email a family member who lives far away, or join an online forum to help them lose weight and reduce their risk of Type 2 Diabetes.

At Good Things, we want everyone to be digitally equal – so they can participate in the digital society like others can and do. If people aren’t digitally equal, they’re excluded from an increasingly digital society. We don’t want this to happen – and so we’re campaigning for a 100% digital nation. These million people we’re celebrating today brings us that one step closer.

Wrapping up 2018 for Good Things Foundation

Posted by HelenMilner

Tis the season to look back at the year we’ve had at Good Things Foundation. Earlier this month we celebrated our seventh birthday, and I’m so proud of our teams on both sides of the world. Seven feels like such a turning point, and what a good year we’ve had to show it.

My Good Things UK colleagues cutting the annual birthday cake

Here are my top five of so many wonderful moments:

Celebrating English My Way’s successes

In February we usually host a smaller digital inclusion campaign – think of it as Get Online Week’s little sister – but this year we decided to do something a bit different and we hosted a campaign called Hip Hip Hooray for English My Way. This one focussed on our big social inclusion project which helps people who live in the UK and who can’t speak any English to learn to speak and read English and help them to integrate more into their local communities. The fab titled Hip Hip Hooray for English My Way campaign asked members of the Online Centres Network who are delivering English My Way to host parties and celebrate their learners’ successes, using a special party pack provided by us. There was bunting! I visited an event at Zest for Work in Sheffield and was blown away by the dedication of both the team running the course and the learners themselves and all of the food the people had brought along representing dozens of countries from around the world. It was an inspirational time.

Welcoming new faces to the Good Things Foundation family

This was a year of growth. We’ve expanded right across the digital and social inclusion sphere and that means we’ve welcomed lots of great new people into the Good Things family. And what a great bunch they are! I’m delighted by the enthusiasm and commitment they all have to our aim of a world where everyone can benefit from digital. Once again, to all the new people, we’re delighted to have you on board. To all of the not-so-new staff members at Good Things, you’re brilliant and fabulous, and passionate and committed too, thank you once again for another year of hard work.

Hitting 2,000 network partners in Australia

In 2017 we ventured out to Australia, establishing a new Australian subsidiary and winning a contract to run the Be Connected Network, supporting older Australians to use computers and the internet. There has been a crazy amount of hard work gone into getting everything set up, recruiting our team in Sydney, and persuading thousands of organisations to be part of the Be Connected Network. We had a target of 2,000 Network Partners and at the end of October, we did it! And of course, that number is still rising. What a huge achievement by the teams on both sides of the world. A big congratulations to everyone who made this happen and here’s to the hundreds of thousands of older people who will now be able to benefit from using the internet. Find out more about Good Things Australia here.

Get Online Week is 12 and goes global

This year may have seen the UK celebrating it’s 12th annual Get Online Week but it was very exciting that we also went global to bring the campaign to Australia as well. Not only were people being supported to #Try1Thing new online through 2,298 events in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but 768 events were also held across Australia by 570 community organisations to support people there too. Incredible achievements from both Good Things teams and all of the organisations that hosted events to support learners.

Awards, awards and more awards

We have been very lucky on the award front this year. Not only did we scoop a Women in IT Award, a Charity Times Award and a Connected Britain Award, in the last few weeks we won two awards at the Learning Technology Awards – the bronze for Best Blended Learning Product and our Learning Team won the gold for Team of the Year. The work that we do is very rewarding in itself but it’s been brilliant to receive this recognition. Congratulations to all.

On top of all of this, we had our amazing Digital Evolution conference; we continued to support people to learn digital skills through our FDI programme; we’re working on a brilliant project with DCMS to create a ‘Playbook’ for local digital skills provision (if you’d like to contribute, you can do so here); we ran a wonderful programme to support women to find their voice and participate in society and democracy, called Voicebox Cafes; we’re working on the local, as well as the global level, in Leeds, Salford, and Stockport; our NHS Widening Digital Participation project has been testing even more innovative approaches to tackling health inequalities in hyperlocal digital and human health systems with medical practitioners, CCGs, and Online Centres, and talking about our findings in the open on our digital-health-lab; of course we’re also working with partners in Kenya; and so much more. (No wonder we’re all looking forward to a rest this Christmas!)

We have continued to work with fabulous national partners who share our vision at Lloyds Banking Group, Mind, Homeless Link, TalkTalk, and Google, as well as new partners too.

And there are even more super exciting things in the wings that I can’t tell you about yet!!!

Thank you to everyone who has worked to make good things happen over the course of 2018.

I can’t wait to do it all again – and more – in 2019.

Another spectacular Get Online Week

Posted by HelenMilner

We’ve now closed the curtain on our twelfth annual Get Online campaign – and what a week it’s been.

This year has marked several big achievements, including:

Going global: for the first time ever, Get Online Week has taken place in Australia as well as the UK
Exciting new marketing materials: sponsorship from Lloyds Banking Group meant we were able to provide event holders with tote bags, headphones and selfie frames
A campaign within a campaign: Get Online Week has fallen at the same time as our Bridging the Digital Divide campaign, meaning we’re raising double the awareness of digital exclusion.

A tour around Aus – #GOLWroadshow18

In Australia, members of our team went out to visit different events all across the country. This might not seem like such a big thing to us here in the UK, but with Australia being around 32 times bigger than the UK, it’s no mean feat!

National Director Jess braved a smaller aeroplane than most of us are used to, to make it to Canberra, and Partnerships Manager Cass was off to Adelaide. Meanwhile, Bridget made it all the way to Perth in Western Australia – almost 4,000 miles from Good Things Australia HQ in Sydney!

There were so many different events, from your familiar Get Online Week drop-in session to a ‘BBQ & Digital Skills’ or a ‘Digital Scavenger Hunt’. With 570 organisations registered and 768 events on the map, it was a spectacular first campaign for the Get Online Week Australia team.

GOLW-Aus

And in the UK…

The Good Things Foundation team were out and about at libraries, social housing providers, funding roadshows and more. We also made full use of the selfie frame in the office by seeing how many people we could squeeze into one picture!

How many Good Things staff members can we fit into one picture? Lots!

My colleague Chris Andersson had a particularly good visit to Keighley in West Yorkshire where he met Barabara who’d seen an advert that Online Centre Airedale Enterprise Services had placed in the local newspaper.

Barbara gets online to #Try1Thing

Barbara was a complete online beginner but had been bought an iPad by family members. Like many, however, she’d found that family are not always the most patient teachers so she jumped at the offer of free and friendly support. She was more than happy to board the community bus where the event was taking place and #Try1Thing!

There’s been lots of amazing activity taking place across the Online Centres Network and beyond, and I have loved seeing what you’ve been up to. Here are some of my favourite pictures that were posted throughout the week:

GOLW-UK

Bridging the Digital Divide

This year, Get Online Week couldn’t have come at a better time – right in the middle of our Bridging the Digital Divide campaign. Just in case you haven’t heard of it, this is our big call to action for Government and other organisations to commit to the target of getting 100% of the UK digitally included, and to take steps to help us reach this target. Get Online Week is one way we can contribute to achieving this.

Today, 11.3 million adults in the UK still lack the essential digital skills that are necessary for life and work. I’m delighted that these two big initiatives we’re running can work together to have an even bigger impact.

If you want to know more about Bridging the Digital Divide and what you can do to support it, take a look here.

Thank you!

Once again, thank you for making this another amazing Get Online Week and for helping us to reach more people with digital skills and confidence.

See you again next year.

Building a future that works for everyone. Double tick!

Posted by HelenMilner

It was great to turn on the Today Programme this morning to hear Tracey Crouch, Minister for Sports and Civil Society, talking passionately about the new Civil Society Strategy, and her commitment to working with grassroots organisations to address some of the biggest challenges we’re facing in society today.

The strategy is subtitled ‘Building a future that works for everyone’ – a mission that chimes well with me and my work at Good Things Foundation since our vision is a world where everyone can benefit from digital.

So I eagerly read the Strategy and one of the things that struck me most is the recognition for the great work civil society is already doing, and a Government commitment to doing more to support this. Meeting with a number of Online Centres when putting our consultation response together I heard an overwhelming air of positivity and ambition about what we can achieve together. It is great to see the strategy committing to building on this aspiration.

There’s so much in this strategy to be happy about.

A key theme that comes through is the need to support community organisations, charities, and other organisations with a social purpose to strengthen communities, and to ensure people can have their say about the things that matter to them, combat loneliness, and drive inclusive growth. The Online Centres Network, who are based in thousands of communities across the UK, are already doing this on a daily basis. Tick.

And it’s about putting people and communities at the heart of decisions and decision making. Tick.

The Government will also be launching ‘Innovation in Democracy’ pilots, giving local people more of a say. I’m hoping our #VoiceBoxCafe pilots will get some local people – especially local women – ready and interested in taking part. Tick.

The Strategy commits the Government to a return to grant funding which we know provides greater security, particularly for smaller charities and organisations. We are also pleased to see again the plans to release £145 million of funding from dormant bank accounts to fund activity, particularly around financial inclusion. We know that inclusive prosperity is an area in much need of investment. Tick.

I’m really happy to see the Strategy’s desire to explore how technology can be harnessed to address complex social issues. As you’ll know if you read my blog often – this is something I’m passionate about and it’s right at the heart of what we do at Good Things. The strategy talks in detail about the role of tech for good, and the importance of using technology to solve complex social issues, like loneliness, healthy ageing, online safety, and digital inclusion. You’ll not be surprised to hear that this is music to my ears! Tick.

To do this, the government has committed to working in partnership with experts in both technology and civil society. As an organisation working at the intersection of these two sectors, I’m looking forward to the important role we can play in this. Double tick.

For me, the strategy hits the nail on the head when it says ‘digital technology does not bring progress when it simply creates efficiency. It brings the most progress when it puts the user first, and when digital services are focused foremost on meeting human needs’. We don’t need to get hung up on searching for clever tech solutions and building new platforms – sometimes the biggest impact can be had in using existing, and freely available tools – like using Facebook to bring communities together.

It’s important we don’t think of tech for good as a separate element of the Civil Society Strategy, removed from the people, places and partnerships that make our society thrive. Digital needs to become part of what everyone working in civil society does every day, and for every solution civil society develops, we should always be asking what role digital can play. Tech + people can bring holistic and scalable solutions. How can it be embedded by more civil society organisations more often to help to achieve an even bigger impact? This is something we will keep championing, along with our partners working across the civil society space.

There’s definitely a lot in it to be happy about. As Tracey Crouch said: “Our strategy builds on this spirit of the common good to help create a country that works for everyone. I want people, organisations and businesses to feel inspired to get involved and make a difference. .. Through collaboration, we will unlock the huge potential of this incredible sector, help it grow, support the next generation and create a fairer society.”

As with everything, the actual success will be in the delivery and I will be interested to see how the new strategy develops quickly into tangible action. As a resetting of the relationship between Government, and those driving social action, I think it sets all the right tone. I look forward to hearing more of the detail, and to playing a role to help with that and with the implementation both as Good Things Foundation and as a voice for thousands of community organisations across the Online Centres Network.

The first civil society strategy in 15 years. So, let’s get on with it.

Get Online Week is go go go!

Posted by HelenMilner

The eagle-eyed among you will have seen my video on social media last week promoting our 2018 Get Online Week registration. That’s right, you can now sign up to take part in our big digital inclusion campaign, taking place this October from 15-21.

We’re going international with the campaign this year, running it in both the UK and Australia. There will be hundreds of new organisations taking part from the Be Connected Network and I’d also love to see lots of newbies in the UK taking part as well. It’s a great opportunity to reach new people, raise the profile of your organisation and to be part of something big.

Last year event holders reached 45,000 people with digital skills and confidence by encouraging them to #Try1Thing new online. This year, we want to reach even more.

If you have any questions about Get Online Week, tweet me on @helenmilner, or get in touch with my team at @getonlineweek.

Taking Be Connected on the road

Posted by HelenMilner

One of the things I’ve been personally most proud of in the past year is establishing Good Things Foundation in Australia. In the UK, the Online Centres Network is essential to the way we operate. Together we’re a big club with a shared vision – a shared vision of improving lives using digital as an enabler, and a vision of a better society and a better world as a result. I know this is what we do in the UK because of our research and our evaluation as well as by talking to our Network members and to the people they’re helping. In Australia we’re starting to do this too with a new ‘big club’ – the Be Connected Network.

At the end of April I hosted six Be Connected Network Partner events in Australia – in Perth, Melbourne, and Geelong. It was great to take Be Connected on the road and lovely for me to meet organisations who are, or would like to be, part of the Be Connected Network.

It’s so nice to meet people face-to-face. In this digital world it’s great that I can co-work with people on opposite sides of the world virtually (in Sydney and Sheffield) but it’s also nice to meet people face-to-face sometimes too.

In Perth I loved it when one woman, who was thinking of joining the Be Connected Network said to me “I came along today to find out what the catch is; but there’s no catch!” Indeed there isn’t!

In Melbourne it was great to hear new collaborations starting there in the room with Network Partners talking about sharing resources as well as forming new ideas for how they could achieve more together.

And in Geelong a new cooperation was born between three Network Partners talking about how they could share volunteers and signpost between each other as they all helped people learn basic digital skills in Ballarat.

I was amazed and thankful by people travelling long distances to get to the events.

We talked a lot about all of the grant programmes that Network Partners can apply for – including the $50,000 Network Capacity Building Grants. I’m a bit jealous as we don’t have these grants in the UK, and they’re really going to help us to both innovate and scale across Australia with digital inclusion.

Not everything is perfect – a couple of Network Partners said they had older people they were supporting who didn’t want to set up an email address and therefore they couldn’t register on Be Connected. So we responded and we’ve written this guidance note which is now on our Resources page. All the Network Partners love the free online learning courses on the Be Connected website but wanted to know what new content is coming – so we responded with this overview leaflet. I’m glad the Good Things team in Sydney have been able to respond to these issues and are keeping the conversations going.

The thing that I loved the most is how similar so much of our work is in the UK and Australia. One Australian Network Partner said she had been working for 10 years and didn’t know other organisations helped older people to learn how to use the internet – I’ve heard the exact same thing in England. In Australia and the UK I love hearing the stories about people living in our countries having come from all over the world and now being in touch with relatives back home via the internet. Partners in both countries have told me about the 80 something year old or the 90 something year old who is now buying their pet’s food online or video calling a distant grandchild for the first time.

But most of all I loved hearing the passion from the staff and volunteers about spreading the message that the internet can help people to make their lives a little bit better. And then they just get on with it – be it in Geelong (AU) or Gravesend (UK), or in Perth (AU) or Plymouth (UK).

I’m really glad that Good Things is doing our bit to support community organisations and libraries in Australia, the UK, and in Kenya, to help people thrive in today’s digital world.

Thank you to our Good Things team in Sydney for making me feel so welcome.

Good Things Aus – hello world!

NOTE: If you’re in or near Townsville, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Darwin, Adelaide, Sydney or Tamworth, you’re very welcome to come along to one of our upcoming Be Connected events. (Sadly I won’t be there but others from the Good Things Sydney team will be.)

Digital and social exclusion are intertwined – let’s tackle them head on

Posted by HelenMilner

Yesterday, I attended the launch of Lloyds Bank’s UK Consumer Digital Index 2018, where I sat on a panel Q&A session, as did the Chair of Good Things Foundation’s Board, Liz Williams. This Index is an eagerly anticipated piece of research which has been released annually for the past three years – the largest measure of financial and digital capability of people in the UK.

Helen

The headline stats

One of the key findings from this year’s Index is that there are now 4.3 million people (8%) in the UK with zero Basic Digital Skills – this is 470,000 fewer people than in 2017. Though the proportion of UK citizens with the full five basic digital skills has barely changed with 11.3 million people (21%) having limited abilities online.

There are three key tasks that the UK population are unable to do:

Create something new from existing online images, music or video – 23.2 million people (43%) can’t do this;
Verify the sources of information found online – 13 million can’t do this (24%);
And fill out an online application form – 8.6 million people can’t do this (16%).

A stand-out stat is that there are 3.2 million people on the cusp of the full five skills. If they were to gain the missing digital skill, there would be 8.1 million people without basic digital skills.

Making it happen

The big question surrounding this final headline stat is how can we make this a reality? How can we help these 3.2 million people to gain that one missing skill?

It’s Good Things Foundation’s aim to make social change happen through digital. Our UK-wide network of Online Centres support the hardest to reach in society, not just through teaching them about computers and the internet, they are real pillars of support and trust that people can rely on.

A lot of the people who visit Online Centres face some form of social exclusion which can contribute to them being digitally excluded. This year the Index contained key stats on inclusivity as well as digital skills. 3.5 million people with a registered disability are offline – that’s 25% – and 28% of those over 60 are not online, with an amazing 84% of this group saying that nothing at all could motivate them to get online.

The benefits are clear:

10% of the workforce do not have basic digital skills, but if they did, they could be £13,000 a year better off.
4 in 10 people say that being online helps them feel less alone; 21.2m people are less lonely due to digital.
5 in 10 people say that the internet has helped them find a job.

As more and more people get online, the ones who are still left behind become harder and harder to reach. That’s why we need Online Centres. It’s the level of trust and honesty that they offer that these people need and in their own local communities – on their street. They won’t open up to just anyone.

As the digital and social exclusion crevice narrows, it deepens, but thankfully, more and more people are coming together across the sectors, abseiling gear in hand, to make sure we can reach and support those in need to live life to their fullest potential with digital.

Why rural areas are still fulfilling the digital cliche

Posted by HelenMilner

Last week I attended a roundtable on rural connectivity, hosted by Lord Gardiner, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Rural Affairs and Biosecurity. DCMS were there as well in their broadband capacity as opposed to digital skills. When I was invited to attend this roundtable, I was very keen to go, as a lot of our Online Centres are based in rural areas (our Princes Countryside Fund funded centres to name a few) and it’s important to me to be the voice of those centres at events like this.

Digital exclusion in rural areas – the headlines

Most people will associate rural areas with poor connectivity, low digital skills and isolation. Digital exclusion is the same in rural areas as in urban; nationally, c. 10% of the population lack the skills, confidence and motivation to use the internet, however, people in rural areas face additional barriers, such as accessibility. In this case though, the phrase ‘build it and they will come’ isn’t entirely relevant because even when the right solutions are found for rural broadband there are still people who are digitally excluded in rural areas. We need to reach these people.

The cost of connectivity can be higher in rural areas as it often needs to be supplied by alternative methods, such as satellite. Our rural partners have told us about newer organisations like Gigaclear who have different business models, however, specialising in ‘connecting rural communities by installing pure fibre straight into the home – reliable, future-proof and simple to install’.

In relation to the ongoing dilemma that is Universal Credit, connectivity and digital equipment issues are increased in a rural setting for UC claimants. Some of our Princes Countryside Fund Hubs have told us about individuals they have supported who are required to job search daily and complete online claims whilst trying to combat poor connectivity or having to travel large distances in order to do this using equipment and/or connections in community locations such as Online Centres or libraries. As Universal Credit becomes a bigger and bigger issue, it’s important to make sure jobseekers in rural areas aren’t further disadvantaged.

And finally, a stat to round off the headlines, under the Universal Service Obligation, basic fixed line services are required to be available at an affordable price to all citizens and customers across the UK, but shockingly, 4% of the country doesn’t currently have a solution for achieving the Universal Service Obligation.

What are my recommendations?

Thinking about all of these problems, here are my big recommendations, which I talked about at the roundtable. They are:

Don’t talk about technology and all of the techy solutions but talk about local people and about the benefits that technology will bring:

for people, including people on Universal Credit
for small businesses and SMEs

Find and empower local community champions
Utilise our model of national systems/models but also allow local solutions and local ownership to flourish
Embrace the concept of ‘doing digital in a place’ eg a digital village where everyone is supported to use the internet. Also, aggregated demand can be a solution to getting commercial or community providers to put the broadband in place
Establish Community Hubs (note not a focus on digital but on community) to help with the holistic needs of that rural community including (and importantly) digital eg. schools, village halls, pubs, et al.

What we need to do is empower ALL communities to take advantage of digital. It’s going to take a lot of hard work but we WILL get there.

The Digital Garage – not just for mechanics

Posted by HelenMilner

Self employment is on the rise in the UK. According to recent research released by the Resolution Foundation, there are nearly 5 million self-employed workers in the UK today, with this rise in numbers contributing to almost half of the country’s growth in employment. Looking at this research, it’s clear there are many problems facing people who work for themselves, everything from employment rights and protection to lack of pension pots. I’m not saying there is a digital solution to these problems, far from it. But when I was reading about this new research it did get me thinking about the importance of digital for the UK’s 5 million self-employed people and how our The Digital Garage project with Google is helping us to reach them.

It was a pleasure for me to meet Dawn Shotton earlier in February when we hosted the 2 Millionth Learner Awards where Dawn was the winner of the Learning for my Business category. After 25 years working for the NHS, Dawn was determined to establish her own business as a freelance dietician. But Dawn only had very basic digital skills and struggled to establish the online presence her new business would need.

Thanks to the training she received at Online Centre Destinations@Saltburn – using Learn My Way at first then moving on to use The Digital Garage business resources – Dawn’s website is now stylish and professional, she has active social media channels, she’s taken on staff and volunteers and she has clients from across the globe – and she hasn’t looked back since.

Last year, we partnered with Google to bring the Digital Garage programme to the Online Centres Network and the people in their communities. From July 2016 to July 2017, we have committed to helping 10,000 people to improve their digital skills and their digital business skills.

We’re delivering this through 100 community organisations within the Online Centres Network, focussing particularly on small businesses, sole traders and people setting up businesses, supporting them to make the most of The Digital Garage resources.

The stats bit

Here comes the stats bit (you knew it was coming). According to Lloyds Banking Group’s UK Business Digital Index 2016, 62% of small businesses have all five Basic Digital Skills. Good news? Not totally. It means that there are 1.44m (38%) small businesses who don’t have the digital skills they need to succeed.

The Index also shows that there is a strong link between digital skills and organisational success. Nearly three in five small businesses (58%) report increased sales as one of the key advantages to using digital. This rises to 68% for start-ups.

The more digital the small business is, the more the stats paint a picture – the most digital small businesses are more than twice as likely to report increased success than the least digital (64%), with three in five of the most digital seeing a profit increase of more than 20%.

There is definitely a clear correlation here.

Whether the people we are supporting are doing something as simple as creating a business Facebook page or something more intricate like designing their own website, The Digital Garage is an essential resource, and I’m so happy that we’re running this project with them.

You can see updates here as the project continues and read our case studies too.

Helen Milner

Chief Executive of Good Things Foundation

digital skills

1 million supported, but we’re nowhere near finished

Another spectacular Get Online Week

Building a future that works for everyone. Double tick!

Get Online Week is go go go!

Taking Be Connected on the road

Digital and social exclusion are intertwined – let’s tackle them head on

Why rural areas are still fulfilling the digital cliche

The Digital Garage – not just for mechanics