The mission of UnInLeCo is to bring together the knowledge and skills of academics, students and professionals on digital learning, community development and education to provide the support and knowledge required to meet the digital needs of disadvantaged social groups (senior population, migrant and refugee population, female rural entrepreneurs, people with disabilities, families and schools with children at risk of social exclusion, and Ukrainian war refugees). Its vision is to become a permanent support alliance that may increase the beneficiaries' digital readiness and eradicate the digital divide. Its main goals are: - To improve the conditions for these groups at-risk to acquire digital knowledge and skills, and to develop the appropriate attitude to access digital education, learning and social support opportunities. - To re-engage in education and support opportunities that are offered but not taken up by these groups, bridging the education and learning gaps created during the COVID crisis. - To offer toolkits and other state of the art multimedia learning material to teach and learn these knowledge and skills, and set up the appropriate training for multipliers to empower them for through the project's coach
This project was born during the COVID crisis, which had shown has revealed how certain disadvantaged segments of the society like Roma children, seniors, refugees and migrants have been hit hard by the pandemic, and were suffering from digital exclusion, while schools and civil society organizations were not able to support them fully and efficiently. This digital divide manifested differently for each target group, e.g. many families at risk of economical exclusion lacked funds for paying for hard- and software and data plans, or Senior population had problems to perform daily activities that had been automatised. Most importantly, many of these groups lacked the skills and knowledge to access educational resources that could assist them.We believe that universities, socially responsible businesses and civil society organisations are in a unique position to assist in this situation in a university-business-community partnership to train digital learning coaches to build and give support to a group of multiplier agents from relevant organisations (professionals and volunteers), some of them from the beneficiary groups of the project, to enhance their digital skills and raise awareness of the most promising digital learning tools.