Digital Activist Inclusion Network

East Midlands project

The WEA East Midlands Region has announced that it is part of an exciting new £1.4m innovation and transnational project part-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF). Running from April 2009 to May 2012, the project aims to develop, test and deliver approaches to challenge the digital divide, ultimately helping to widen participation in employment and learning.

DAIN is an action research partnership project and involves three UK charities; The Workers’ Educational Association, NIACE and CEFET. Also involved are four transnational partners including Institut fur Lern-Innovation (Germany’s Institute for Innovation in e-learning) which is the lead transnational partner around sharing of good practice and dissemination of DAIN project findings.

DAIN will operate in 8 areas across the East Midlands starting in Nottingham, Leicester, Chesterfield and Lincoln in year one. The project will deliver 200 community based ICT courses per year and will recruit, train and support at least 100 volunteers from the local target communities who will be known as Digital Activists. The role of the Digital Activist will be to engage and encourage people experiencing digital exclusion to get involved in using digital technology.

For further information please contact Andria Birch, DAIN Manager on 0115 9858203 or dain@wea.org.uk.

DAIN press release 21 August 2009