Introduction and background
Telecentre Europe organises two annual events every year, one dedicated
exclusively to our members (General Assembly) and another open to our wider
audience of stakeholders: Telecentre Europe Annual Conference (TEAC14).
In its 7th year, for the first time in its history, the TEAC14 took the structure of a
three-day event, each day hosted by a different European funded project: UniteIT, Trans e-facilitator and Telecentre Multimedia Academy. Telecentre Europe is
directly or indirectly involved in these projects, either as a project partner or
stakeholder with interest in the project outcomes.
Also for the first time, the Annual Conference was held this year in Zagreb (Croatia)
and was hosted by TE’s Croatian member Telecentar Zagreb. This gave us an
opportunity to tap into local knowledge through a selection of expert speakers
from Croatia and to get young Croatians involved through a media partnership
with the well-known Student TV (Televizija Student).
The event gathered a number of stakeholders, the majority being members of
TE and non-governmental organisations active in the field of digital inclusion
and empowerment. Altogether there were 110 participants from 28 countries
including also representatives from the European Commission (DG EAC and
DG CONNECT), the private sector (Cisco), public and private universities and
ministries (e.g. from Serbia and Slovenia).
The theme that united the three days and the three projects was “eSkills for the
21st century”. The policy framework was provided by European Commission’s
ongoing campaign eSkills for Jobs and its sister Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs
initiative.
The aim was to reflect the journey in policy from digital inclusion (Day 1) to the
more advanced digital skills (also referred to as eSkills) needed for employment
(Day 2), and ending with a focus on the skills of Media and Information Literacy
that are being discussed in UNESCO proceedings these last years (Day 3).
September 24th
DAY 1: Digital inclusion and empowerment as
means to fight social exclusion
Unite-IT is an EU funded project and an online platform for professionals
in the area of digital inclusion and empowerment. It represents the
effort of Telecentre Europe to create an informal and wide network of
stakeholders in the field of digital inclusion and empowerment.
Peter Palvolgyi from Telecentre Europe and the project manager of
Unite-IT opened the conference and walked the audience through the
main milestones and objectives of the Unite-IT project and network.
Since November 2012 project partners established its online presence,
recruited new members, created the good practice database and
developed the working groups. The online network counts today with
more than 600 members from all over Europe and the database of
good practice already has 76 entries. The first Unite-IT award would
be given that same evening to the best practice within four categories.
The challenges remaining now are the further growth of the database
and the relevance of the working group discussions to policy makers at
all levels. P. Palvolgyi announced that the 3rd Unite-IT conference would
be held in Belgrade, Serbia in 2015, once again within the TE annual
conference.
Gabriela Barna, the director of Romanian organisation EOS, and project
partner in charge of coordinating the operations of the Unite-IT network, agreed that the network has the
potential to reach out to policy makers on a national level (local and national governments). She invited
those present to therefore promote the network and make sure other professionals are invited to join and
submit their good practice. She reminded the audience
that only with concrete examples and clear numbers can
telecentres and other digital inclusion intermediaries
talk to national governments and advocate for the
implementation of certain social inclusion policies
or the creation of new ones. G. Barna mentioned the
successful Spanish example where due to lack of funding
some years ago telecentres around the country began
closing down. But telecentres fought back by getting
together in a common platform/organisation and they
put forward a strong united telecentre movement (e.g.
Guadalinfo network of Spanish telecentres) that had
the needed critical mass to convince governments to
continue investing in telecentres.
After the introductory presentations by project partners, the floor was given to working group speakers
in order to introduce the themes and open the discussions of the four working groups that would meet in
the afternoon.
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