News from Lemos&Crane

Get Online Week and Digital Empowerment Awards

Coming Soon: UK Get Online Week 2013 and Lemos&Crane Digital Empowerment Awards

The UK’s seventh national Get Online Week takes place 14th-20th 2013 October in the run up to Lemos&Crane’s Digital Empowerment Awards. Get Online Week (GOW) is an annual digital empowerment campaign that aims to engage people who have had little to no experience using digital technology. The week aims to teach anybody who wants to learn about the opportunities that the internet has to offer, and to show service users how to access these resources. Online training teaches users how to save money, find healthy recipes and keep in touch with friends and family online.

Seminars, conferences, demonstrations, discussions, competitions, workshops and training sessions will take place in public libraries, housing associations, community centres, charities, schools and colleges across twenty four countries in Europe. Since it began in 2010, GOW has reached more than 500 000 Europeans, 100 000 of whom were using the internet for the very first time.

Get Online Week could not have come at a more exciting time for Lemos&Crane. Applications for the Digital Empowerment Awards 2013 will be opening shortly. The awards will celebrate projects which enhance the lives of homeless and vulnerable people through new and emerging digital technologies. These technologies might include computers, the internet, social media, mobile phones or any other device that could engage and empower vulnerable people.

Projects will be awarded for acheiving a broad variety of goals. Some projects may give homeless people new opportunities to express themselves and their experience ‘as citizens’ to reach a public audience and to challenge cultural stereotypes. Other projects might facilite new ways for homeless people to communicate ‘as consumers’ with service providers, redressing the power imbalance between them, and providing feedback to inform and shape service development. Some projects might support homeless people's needs by providing live information feeds, ‘nudging’ take up, and reminding homeless people of appointments for housing, health, employment and welfare services. Projects might also focus on improving skills in numeracy and literacy for employment and enterprise, offering volunteering opportunities, and providing information on mainstream / high-street services that make day-to-day life easier, cheaper and safer. Lastly , and not forgetting social networks, some projects will be awarded for facilitating contact for homeless people with family members, peer networking and support, and creating new opportunities for friendships through shared-interests and social activities for happiness, well-being and life-enrichment.

For more information on the Lemos&Crane Digital Empowerment Awards click here.

For more information on Get Online Week see the website.

To follow all the activities that are taking place as part of Get Online Week 2013: search #golw13 on twitter.

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