We first met Anna from King’s Church Lewes by being part of the Lewes Cost of Living Partners Action Group – a forum for community organisations funded by Lewes District Council to work together.

We’d already been running digital drop-in sessions throughout the county, but Anna wanted to get King’s Church set up as a “Digi Hub” to provide additional support – and so got in touch with us.

Together, we drew up a list of equipment needed to run a digital inclusion hub. It’s not just about picking random affordable laptops off the shelf – it’s worth thinking about operating systems, storage, and accessories. We helped them source two reliable Chromebooks, as they have an easy ‘guest account’ mode which wipes data after use, and an intuitive, stripped-back user interface for novice users. It’s easy to overlook, or not understand, key specifications or the need for certain accessories, unless you’ve delivered thousands of hours of digital support as we have.

Sean & Miles then delivered this equipment, and demonstrated how to use all of it as part of a training session for their wonderful group of volunteers. We explained the different ways digital exclusion can appear and affect people, some common solutions to try, and support options to refer or signpost clients to.

Part of our support package also included setting up and maintaining a Slack workspace for the team to ask us any questions – so if they needed a technical question answering, we could reply to them remotely and suggest some solutions.

After this training, they launched a “Digi Hub” session at the same time as the Foodbank session – every Monday morning, from 11am to 2pm. It took a few weeks before people started asking for digital help – but having the presence there (and the snazzy blue ‘Digi Hub’ shirts) meant people felt able to come back with their devices in the following weeks. Maintaining a friendly and regular presence is vital to making support easy to access.

We returned in November 2023 to find their volunteers providing a fantastic digital inclusion service – working patiently 1:1 to build digital skills and provide support. Pictured below is Jemma with a visitor who wanted some help with his iPad, and the busy room! The Church is open for the “Digi Hub”, Foodbank, and as a warm space on a Monday – meaning digital support is right on hand for those who are the most likely to need it.

While we try our best to cover as much of East Sussex as we’re able to ourselves – however funding and staffing capacity makes this difficult. Being able to train up the staff and volunteers of keen organisations such as King’s Church Lewes means we’re able to ensure people are getting help via a trusted partner organisation.

Do you run an organisation that would like to run a “Digi Hub” of your own? Do you see clients who struggle digitally, but aren’t sure how to help them? Please do get in touch with us, and we’d be happy to help you begin, or develop, your own digital inclusion support scheme.

We look forward to continuing our work with King’s Church, and hope to help more organisations like them in the future.