Anshlah is a grassroots organisation supporting migrant women with young children. Based in SHINE in Harehills, Anshlah work to raise aspirations and provide opportunities to the women they support. Anshlah’s members experience a range of barriers that make accessing services and support more difficult. These include digital exclusion, English as an additional language, literacy needs, cultural considerations, social isolation, poverty, and lack of access to childcare. The constituted group is run by volunteers, who as migrant women and mothers themselves, experience the same barriers as the group’s members.
100% Digital Leeds has supported Anshlah to form a partnership with Happiness Clinic, a Community Interest Company based in Bramley, working with women and children, with expertise in both early years childcare and digital skills delivery.
With funding and support from Leeds-based digital delivery consultancy business Axiologik, the partnership saw Anshlah and Happiness Clinic working together on a pilot project aimed at providing digital skills support alongside childcare.
“I’m now confident about being online, I can recognise scams better and I can check what numbers are calling me so I know if they are potential scams or not. I can protect my personal information and my money better. The childcare is so important, while my daughter is supervised and supported I can do the sessions.”
Anshlah member
Embedding digital inclusion support into Anshlah’s existing offer
Anshlah’s volunteers and members are keen to develop their digital skills and confidence so they can more easily access statutory services, navigate online health support, access opportunities for education and learning, and find employment once their children are at school. Connectivity is also a factor, as both volunteers and members struggle to afford access to digital equipment such as smartphones, and reliable connectivity.
100% Digital Leeds worked with Anshlah to identify a range of national and local partners who could support their digital inclusion offer. Anshlah were supported to register with Good Things Foundation’s National Digital inclusion Network through which they were able to join the National Databank, allowing them to gift SIM cards with free 4G data, calls, and texts to their members with smartphones. 100% Digital Leeds signposted the group to Leeds Libraries’ Tablet Lending Scheme where they could borrow iPads to use with members in their sessions, alongside digital learning resources developed by Leeds Older People’s Forum’s Be Online Stay Safe project.
Anshlah’s volunteers struggled to offer members digital skills support due to their own low digital skills and confidence. 100% Digital arranged for a UKSPF-funded Digital Inclusion Officer from Voluntary Action Leeds to deliver digital skills support during Anshlah’s regular sessions. The Officer trialled offering digital skills support as part of the group’s existing weekly sewing sessions. This had limited success because, although their members were expressing a need for continued support with their digital skills, almost every attendee came with one or more pre-school aged child, and members were unable to properly engage with learning whilst also looking after their children. Attempting to delivering digital learning in this way demonstrated the need for a different setting for the digital sessions, and more support for childcare.
“The support for the kids has helped the ladies a lot. Without the childcare it’s impossible for the ladies to attend the session because the children stop them from doing their work. They always need childcare but most of them aren’t eligible. They need support to do anything because with their children they can do nothing.”
Anshlah volunteer
Working in partnership with Happiness Clinic and Axiologik
Happiness Clinic is a Community Interest Company based in Bramley that works with women and children offering playgroups and volunteer opportunities, with expertise in early years childcare and an interest in supporting women and families. The organisation has a background in digital inclusion, having previously provided digital support for people accessing HM Courts & Tribunals Service – criminal, civil and family courts. Happiness Clinic is keen to develop their offer to support women with pre-school aged children into employment in a way that works for them alongside their family responsibilities.
100% Digital Leeds introduced Anshlah to Happiness Clinic to see how they might work in partnership, bringing their own expertise to support and enable each other’s priorities. This saw Happiness Clinic providing their childcare expertise, knowledge of early years teaching, and experience of delivering digital skills support, and Anshlah bringing their knowledge and understanding of, and trusted relationship with, their members. Both organisations share similar values and priorities for their communities, are passionate about supporting women and families to develop their skills and thrive, and have an interest in supporting digital inclusion.
As Happiness Clinic are a Community Interest Company, they are eligible for a wider range of funding opportunities than Anshlah. The nature of Anshlah’s legal set up and constitution means the organisation is unable to access the majority of available funding opportunities, which require organisations to be charities or registered groups. Happiness Clinic can also hold a larger amount of funding within their accounts as they don’t have the same annual limits on their income as Anshlah. A partnership between the two organisations means that they would be eligible to apply for a broader range of funding opportunities.
A family approach to supporting digital skills and confidence
Axiologik is a Leeds-based digital delivery consultancy business, delivering digital transformation for organisations including the NHS and the Home Office. The business approached 100% Digital Leeds with an offer of social value support for VCSEs delivering digital inclusion initiatives, with a particular interest in supporting women. Axiologik offered to support two VCSE organisations with a small grant, as well as skills and capacity via the business’s Employer Supported Volunteering scheme.
With financial support from Axiologik, Anshlah and Happiness Clinic worked in partnership to design and deliver a test and learn project exploring how Anshlah’s members could be supported to develop their digital skills and confidence whilst their children were being entertained elsewhere.
With support and guidance from 100% Digital Leeds, Happiness Clinic and Anshlah designed a six-week digital skills course based on the needs of Anshlah’s members, identified via a member survey.
Support needs identified included:
- The NHS platform – online bookings and prescriptions
- Form filling
- Making job applications
- Email writing
- Online learning
- Online safety
Leeds Libraries’ Compton Centre Community Hub provided the learning space for free, giving the eight participants access to a bank of computers so that each person could work at their own device. The venue was accessible to all of the participants, within walking distance for school drop off, and was also a friendly space that most of the members and their children had already visited and were familiar with.
Happiness Clinic led on delivery of the digital skills sessions while staff from both organisations shared the work of supporting the digital learners and entertaining the children in the children’s section of the library.
The six sessions consisted of the following topics:
- Course introduction, basic digital skills, library card application
- How to set up an email account, send and receive emails, and attach files
- How to complete online documents and forms
- How to identify online scams and fraud
- How to find work online and make a CV
- How to use the NHS app
Volunteers from Axiologik’s Employee Volunteering Programme attended one of the sessions, delivering a session around CV writing with the participants. The final session was celebratory, with all participants bringing food and reflecting on their progress and what a difference the opportunity had made to their confidence and skills with digital.
Impact for Anshlah’s members
Many of the participants said that while they had a lot of skills, knowledge and qualifications in their home countries they felt like they were starting again from the beginning in the UK. During the job and CV session, members learned about applying for job opportunities and were shown job sites and how to write a CV, increasing their confidence in their own abilities and showing them how to use digital tools to boost their employability.
“Overall the course has been wonderful. It’s so beneficial for me. Most of my peers don’t know how to send an email or make a CV or other digital things and they are missing out. I am looking forward to improving my digital skills and to go on to more advanced IT learning. I want a professional job here in the UK and everything needs digital skills. In the Sudan everything was on paper rather than digital. I want to go into accounting, so I need to improve my skills.”
Anshlah member
Participants spoke about how important it was for them to be able to correctly identify scam phone calls online, where they could check to see if calls were legitimate or not, which gave them peace of mind that they hadn’t missed important information. They also talked about being able to access accurate health and medication information online which gave them the language and confidence to be able to communicate effectively with their GP.
All of the participants wanted the sessions to continue and were disappointed that the course had come to an end.
“I really liked the scammer session. We used a website where you could put the phone number in and it tells you if it’s likely to be a scam. I also really liked the NHS app as normally I would check on Google for symptoms for myself and my children and it often isn’t very accurate. The accurate one is the NHS website. I can also look up more information about medication in the A-Z bit of the website so when I go to the doctor I have more information to tell them about my symptoms and to understand what the medicine will do. It’s important to me to be able to have the information I need because English isn’t my first language, so I struggle with the terminology. It means that I’m more likely to be listened to.”
Anshlah member
Impact for Happiness Clinic and Anshlah and next steps
Both Happiness Clinic and Anshlah gained valuable experience from the project, with both organisations expressing a desire to continue to work together and learn from each other on future digital inclusion projects.
“So much more work went into the sessions than we had anticipated: keeping track of attendees, making evaluation forms, making and maintaining relationships with the participants on an individual basis, and finding out how everything is going for them. The work that Anshlah did communicating with their members is invaluable. They have such a good understanding of their group. We have worked so well together, and I would like to keep that relationship and partnership going.”
Happiness Clinic
The organisations are keen to apply for further funding as a partnership. The digital inclusion project has evidenced the need for digital support which includes an element of childcare for both Anshlah and Happiness Clinic’s community, with many of the participants and volunteers emphasising how essential the childcare element was for them to be able to concentrate on their skills development.
“I would like to do more sessions as it has been so useful. It has been great to have the childcare, this has been the only group that I have been to that has provided childcare. I am learning, I don’t have to worry about my child.”
Anshlah member
Lessons learned from the test and learn project means that future programme applications will take into account the need for a separate space to entertain the children, as the children’s library was too much of an open space which proved to be difficult to keep all of the children safely entertained. 100% Digital Leeds and both organisations are speaking to Leeds Libraries to access appropriate space for future funding bids.
Delivering the project also highlighted the importance of hands-on volunteers to support the learning of the participants and how valuable going forward a relationship with an organisation like Axiologik with their Employee Volunteering Programme is for a digital inclusion programme.
Axiologik will continue their relationship with both organisations and are happy to provide additional support for future digital inclusion projects including volunteers through their Employee Volunteering Programme and materials and resources.
“I’ve not found anything as rewarding as this. The personal impact that I can have on these women one on one and see them learn has made such a difference to me. The first week there were language barriers and Google wasn’t working and it was a mess, but by the third week the ladies were bringing food and really appreciating each other and the learning.”
Happiness Clinic