Especially since the pandemic, the services of the public administration have been shifting more and more towards online procedures. Many asylum seekers and refugees do not have either the competencies or the tools needed to manage these processes. Even simple processes, like booking an appointment for a medical check, submitting paperwork to the employment agency or to INPS, enrolling in school, may become insurmountable obstacles.

 

This is why we designed the project Digital Inclusion, in collaboration with Acli Trentine, Informatici Senza Frontiere and Impact Hub Trentino, and financed by the Fondazione Caritro.

 

The project consists of an Information Desk, open one day a week on appointment, where refugees and asylum seekers can get information about the various online services of the territory, and be helped to access them. The Information Desk operators are people of our association, trained by Acli Trentine operators.

 

A second element of the project is a workshop on digital skills directed to our operators and volunteers, as well as those of Acli Trentine, offered by the teachers of Informatici Senza Frontiere. The trained operators and volunteers are then in charge of planning and managing the digital literacy workshops offered to asylum seekers and refugees. These workshops are centred on the use of smartphones, the download and use of the most common apps, e-mails, the management of digital documents, internet surfing and the access to useful websites (for instance, the websites of the employment agency and the health care agency).

 

This project is still in its trial phase, that is why we are collecting and analyzing data about the accesses to the Information Desk, and the communication and spreading of information about the experience among the operators of the local welfare system. This part is in charge of Impact Hub.