Digital Mentors

Who taught you how to use a knife and fork or how to ride a bike?

Did anyone go to a formal class to learn these skills?

How did you learn to use a PC keyboard or a mouse?

More than likely someone showed you how to do it, you didn’t enroll on a course and take weeks to learn you were helped by someone, a friend, someone at work or someone from your community, someone that understands in the same way as you do.

There are number of lines of thought converging that have been shaped by project visits, Government announcements and a range of blog posts I have recently read.

In the CLG White Paper (Communities in Control) there is talk of Digital Mentors (Page 61)

Government will pilot a ‘Digital Mentor’ scheme in deprived areas. These mentors will support groups to develop websites and podcasts, to use digital photography and online publishing tools, to develop short films and to improve general media literacy. The Digital Mentors will also create links with community and local broadcasters as part of their capacity building, to enable those who want to develop careers in the media to do so. Depending on the success of these pilots, this scheme could be rolled out to deprived areas across England.

Well i’ve seen something like this already and can say that these people really are making a difference.

On our recent visit to the DC10plus project in Sunderland we were taken to the St. Davids Community Project, a “typical” 1960s housing estate style church building that played host to one of the Sunderland DC10 “Electronic Village Halls“. But what turned this drab hall into the vibrant centre of the community was the ”e-champion” or Digital Mentor who had suceeded in getting many people through the door, using the internet and the software on the PCs to remove some of the exclusion they may have previously felt. These people weren’t being taught formally or told they had to take a test, but were just enjoying technology and feeling more included in their community. (Woodsy from Bristol Wireless who was with us goes into more details about the day on his blog and some of the other EVH’s we visited). We saw the use of digital media; young people creating mobile phone ringtones and burning them to DVD, community podcasts being made, blogging and website building almost seems “old hat”!

All this doesn’t  happen by magic. The e-champions need their ‘community / media’ spark capturing, there needs to be buy-in from the local authority and the third sector hosting the EVHs and there needs to be infrastructure support so that the networks don’t grind to a halt, the broadband connection become unreliable and the nice new laptops don’t end up locked away in a cupboard because there is no-one to provide support when they need attention or training on how to use them (i’ve seen it, and I bet you have too!).

My other thoughts come in here as in Bristol (and elsewhere) there are ”Digital Media – Social Inclusion Co-ordinators“as part of the Everybody Online project. We have Regional Digital Inclusion Networks (RDINs) in at least the West Midlands and South West with ones planned in Yorkshire and The Humber and South East, which are cross sector networks between local authorities, third sector and local communities. Then we have my project of third sector regional ICT champions who are all working to fill the gaps in the infrastructure technical support and training that will enable local communities to get the ICT support they need; something that was highlighted as a Critical Success Factor in the success of the Sunderland e-champions project.

One of the critical factors for the success and continued engagement of the existing Community e-Champions is the provision of a dedicated Technical Support Officer. This provision reflects the Project’s ethos of partnership through continued support. On-site visits and telephone support offered to ensure that skills and knowledge are continually updated, in addition to the standard hardware and software maintenance.

Finally back to the Communities in Control report, there is a Digital Equality Action Plan being written (find i on page 53). Wouldn’t it be really good if all the knowledge gathered from the regional ICT champions about support needs, how to deliver it using the social enterprise model, the DC10 e-champions and the electronic village hall could be combined to send out Digital Mentors equipped ready to bring communities together using technology, ICT and social media. So, Paul Murphy MP, if you are reading this ….  oh and Dave Briggs is also blogging about this idea so surely with two of us …. !!