Tackling Technology Together

The WEA East Midlands Region will play a key role in a new £1.4 million project to establish successful approaches to challenge the digital divide and deliver 200 community-based computing courses in each of the next three years. The Digital Activist Inclusion Network project will also recruit, train and support at least 100 volunteers, who will engage and encourage people who feel excluded from digital technology to get involved in using it.

Mike Attwell, WEA Regional Director for the East Midlands says: 'The key project staff are now in post and we are looking forward to taking the project forward. DAIN fits well with the aims of the WEA as an organisation which has always championed educational opportunities for those who have missed out in some way. It is an excellent opportunity to continue our work by challenging digital exclusion and enabling everyone in society to benefit from the advantages of using technology as part of their daily lives.' The project will operate in eight areas across the East Midlands, starting in Nottingham, Leicester, Chesterfield and Lincoln.

DAIN is an action research partnership project involving the WEA and two other UK organisations- the National Institute for Adult and Continuing Education and CEFET (which is the East Midlands Third Sector strategic body for the European Social Fund). 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. The project is part-funded by the European Social Fund. It began in April this year and will finish in May 2012.

For further information please contact Andria Birch, DAIN Manager on 0115 985 8203 or dain@wea.org.uk