The main objective of the DIGITALIATORS project were to address the digital transformation of society and the services offered by both the public and the private sectors of the economy through developing and offering high quality, flexible learning materials to senior citizens and adults facing problems because they don’t know how to use the internet applications that would make their lifes easier. This lack of digital knowledge and skills is causing stress and the feeling that they are excluded. More concretely, the specific objectives of the DIGITALIATORS project were: 1. To define the needs of senior citizens in all participating countries by detecting the level of competence of seniors, to map the most common online transactions in each country, as well as to reveal the reasons hindering senior citizens from using and trusting online procedures. 2. To develop high quality capacity building learning material for senior citizens, designed specifically to meet their needs as far as their online transactions are concerned. 3. To test the learning material produced in all participating countries in order to gather feedback from seniors, observe their progress and make the necessary corrections and adjustments.
As COVID-19 has brought many changes in our lives, especially for the seniors who not only found themselves vulnerable in front of the pandemic, but also felt lost in the rapid digitalisation of the public and private sectors. From online and cashless payments, taxes, bank transactions, booking vaccine appointments, e-commerce portals and e-governance, the estimates show that the COVID-19 measures have accelerated by 7 years the adoption of digital services in Europe (McKinsey, 2022). However, despite all the positive effects of this rapid digitalisation, many senior members of our society had to turn to their children or even grandchildren for assistance or were unable to use the digital e-services at all. Thus, the DIGITALIATORS' main goal is the digital training, fully focused on everyday transactions, enabling senior citizens to be independent and gain competences, to make their lives easier and of higher quality. The project addresses the following needs: -to develop/expand digital training opportunities for seniors & enrich training resources and tools -to strengthen the professional profiles of IT educators and train them to work with seniors -to improve the social inclusion of seniors and their well-being