Community members across 6 regions in Uganda will be equipped with digital awareness, confidence, skills and online safety knowledge.
Status: Closed
Partner: Hello World
Impact goal: 200 people
This project equips Hub community members across 6 regions in Uganda with the digital awareness, confidence, skills and online safety strategies to enable them to use the Hub and other digital tools meaningfully and safely. This responds to low digital literacy levels assessed in Hub communities and the need to accompany Hello World’s existing digital infrastructure with digital literacy training. The project will extend the impact and sustainability of Hello World’s existing digital literacy training program by training further community trainers and optimizing our existing curriculum for the needs of Hub communities, with a specific focus on digital safety and long term digital adoption.
This project successfully reached 200 community members, 100% of whom increased their digital literacy over the course of the 2 month training. This was measured by comparing participants’ test results from a one-to-one digital skills assessment conducted at the beginning and the end of the training. On average, the participants improved by 59% between baseline and endline. Fundamentally, this means that people who didn’t know how to send an email, type or identify a spam email now have these skills, and many more.
This story from trainer Jolly represents that impact:
“In Busabala, a rural school in central Uganda where chalkboards and textbooks are the cornerstone of teaching, a group of dedicated teachers embarked on a journey of transformation through the Digital Skills Training Program. For many, this was their first encounter with technology and even the simplest tasks like turning on a computer.
I started with the basics: explaining what a mouse and keyboard were, how to hold them, and their functions. Teachers looked at each other as they held the mouse for the first time, struggling to control the cursor on the screen. Clicking an icon or typing a word felt like mastering a new language. Yet, step by step, their apprehension gave way to determination.
Among them was Gabuni Samuel, a teacher with years of experience in the classroom but none with technology. For Samuel, holding a mouse for the first time felt exciting. “It was so different from anything I’d ever done,” he admitted. “I didn’t even know how to click properly at first.”
Samuel’s journey mirrors the shared experience of his colleagues. On the first day, the trainer tasked the teachers with moving the cursor across the screen and clicking to open a simple programme. Samuel struggled at first, his hand trembling as he tried to align the cursor. When he finally succeeded in clicking on the program, everyone was excited and applauded him. That small moment of victory marked the beginning of his confidence in technology.
Over the weeks, Samuel and his fellow teachers learned to navigate through folders, type lesson plans in Word, create email addresses, and spreadsheets, and use the internet to find educational resources.”
213 people with increased digital confidence, awareness, literacy and understanding of how to stay safe online. That includes 99 women and 110 men.
Hello World's recent survey showed that on average, each participant trained shares their digital literacy skills with 12 people. Based on this, estimates are that the indirect reach of this project is over 2400 people, including children, brothers, sisters, parents and colleagues. Some participants were teachers, who have average class sizes of 54, meaning that the indirect impact of the project is even higher.
By allowing communities to self-select participants, it was possible to compare the impact of this training on different groups of people. This showed that when primary and secondary school teachers were the participants, there was the most impact. These groups were the most engaged and also the most likely to pass their skills onto the highest number of people, their students. This learning is likely to direct the delivery of the program in the future, with a particular focus on teachers.
Hello World is a United Kingdom based organization. Their goal is to bridge the digital divide by connecting hard-to-reach communities to online education and Wifi connectivity.
Visit their website here to learn more about them.