Get Online Week 2014

The 5th annual European Get Online Week (GOW) organized by Telecentre Europe took place in 25 countries on March 24-30, 2014. Apart from its main mission to encourage people to gain basic knowledge about the Internet, the focus of this year’s GOW was to raise the awareness amongst the young and unemployed on the e-skills needed for the 21st century workplace.

Microsoft and Liberty Global supported the campaign as in previous years. In 2014 GOW was also part of the year-long eSkills for Jobs campaign organised by the European Commission, European SchoolNet and Digital Europe.

Roughly 104,000 Europeans were involved in the GOW 2014, almost 54,000 taking trainings while another 50,000+ attended over 5,000 events at national or local level, like seminars and workshops. More than 7 million people were reached in total during 2014 campaign through media and social media.

Get online for jobs

Many activities were taking place to help those unemployed to learn new skills and find a job. About 12,000 unemployed and job seekers were involved in the GOW events, half of them young people.

Microsoft provided free vouchers on Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) and Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) distributed by national partners to young people to take certification exams. 3,000 vouchers were distributed thanks to GOW partners.

Liberty Global supported the launch of a new youth career site YouRock which took place in Berlin as part of the Germany’s GOW campaign. Telecentre Europe with the help of Liberty Global developed an infographic Is there a job in ICT for me? which addresses young Europeans and job seekers and gives them insightful information to consider ICT career prospects.

HP Life Programme was promoted during GOW in events and by organizations with a focus on entrepreneurship. Social innovation and entrepreneurship have been present in trainings, webinars, games and best practices set up for young entrepreneurs. 

GetBusy.gr created through Microsoft YouthSpark was widely used to get young people skilled and ready for digital jobs. More than 5,000 young people have been active on the platform during the campaign in 2014.

Get online for inclusion

e-Skills for offliners trainings were organised as well as activities such as first click for seniors, online safety games for kids and introduction to social media took place everywhere. The educational games were used in informatics lessons at schools all over Estonia. My Tablet-PC and me – getting to know, try out and make experiences was an event organized for seniors in Germany. At least 1,500 people have been trained in 140 libraries in Lithuania on income tax declaration and public e-services. Wikipedia writing workshop took place in Sweden.

To encourage the digital inclusion of persons with disabilities, the first-grade pupils from the Serbian primary school from Aleksinac visited an association of persons with mental disabilities and helped them to acquire e-skills and use the Internet safely.

 

Country highlights include:

• 38,000 participants in GOW activities in Latvia
• Spain reached 160,000 people on Twitter with GOW messages
• Almost 1,000 events organized in Poland
• Sweden breaks record on previous GOWs with almost 5,000 people involved
• Croatia launches European coalition for media jobs in digital industry
• YouRock employability platform launched in Germany and Ireland
• More than 1,000 Romanians used Skillage to assess their eSkills for jobs