Digital literacy is quickly becoming more and more important for work, leisure and personal development and as essential as knowing how to read and write. However, not everyone has the necessary knowledge to feel comfortable in the digital era, especially people in risk groups. Therefore, teaching basic ICT skills and facilitating digital competence for these people is an issue that concerns all European countries.

It is a nice coincidence – while all Europe is concentrated on the Get Online Week 2012 events and counter, one more new European project has been launched to contribute to the development of  the information society. The acronym of the project is ‘This is IT’. This project aims to benefit people in social risk groups, by upgrading their ICT skills so they can take part in modern life, through the use of innovative approaches and good practices that rely on volunteers. The goal is to have volunteers facilitating risk groups to the access, use, and benefit, of ICT tools and material.

‘This is IT’ project is a 36 month initiative, that has been developed by a transnational consortium, of 11 expert actors from Greece, Norway, Belgium, Poland, Turkey, Switzerland and Lithuania and is co-funded by the European Commission, under the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Lithuanian project partner is Telecentre-Europe member  Langas į Ateitį, a non profit organization founded in 2002 by socially responsible business companies.

The project kick-off meeting took place in Athens, hosted by the project leader Militos Emerging Technologies & Services, at the premises of the Hellenic American Union on January 12^th 2012.

More detailed information will be available soon on the project website www.thisisit4u.eu (currently under construction).

INFORMATION www.thisit4u.eu

Elisavet ANGELAKOPOULOU E. angelakopoulou@militos.org  - T. +30 210 6772129

With the support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.

This document reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.