World Youth Skills Day: Vodafone Bridges Digital Divide
Today is World Youth Skills Day, with the theme of "Youth Skills for Peace and Development." Ten years ago, the United Nations General Assembly marked 15th July as the first World Youth Skills Day, to celebrate ‘the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship’.
Vodafone is supporting this mission in a range of ways, such as running local education programmes to empower young people with digital skills and assisting teachers to use technology in order to teach digital skills. This is with the aim of helping to bridge the digital divide.
Vodafone supports Europe’s teachers teach their students in-demand digital skills
Vodafone Foundation is dedicated to providing support to educators and students through the Skills Upload Europe programme. Vodafone aims to close the digital gap and empower the next generation with the skills they need to succeed in an increasingly digital world. Many teachers have had a positive response from the initiative.
Markus Kohlstädde, a teacher in Germany, shared that the Coding For Tomorrow programme helps his students with special needs to develop essential digital skills.
“Children who initially had no basic knowledge in coding are now able to create their own computer games,” said Markus.
Antonia Kaloudi-Hatzea, a chemistry teacher in Greece, has utilised the programme to mentor students in STEM subjects.
“Students have demonstrated heightened enthusiasm for subjects traditionally perceived as challenging, such as physics,” she said.
Iulia Caba is a speech therapist at the School Center for Inclusive Education in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She uses the “School of the Future” programme to develop digital skills in students with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorders.
“We used innovative methodologies to develop students' digital skills through games and experiments,” she said.
Vodafone’s programme has clearly had a positive impact on students across Europe, but they will need to keep up with their digital skill development before joining the workforce.
Vodafone provides free SIMs to homeless charities
This is the latest of Vodafone’s efforts to bridge the digital divide. In Vodafone’s charities.connected initiative, the company provided over 50,000 free sims to homeless charities across the UK. These SIMs were designed so that they did not require a name or an address. They came pre-loaded with free data, unlimited texts and UK calls.
The telecoms giant has partnered with LandAid - a UK youth homeless charity - to distribute the SIMs across the network, which includes both national and local charity locations.
“I’m pleased we are supporting homelessness charities across the UK by providing free connectivity that doesn’t require a name or address,” said Ahmed Essam, the UK CEO of Vodafone. “Being connected is vital to access support services and stay in touch with friends and family. Now more than ever, it’s important that we help those who are digitally excluded. We call on all registered charities to apply for free connectivity so we can help as many people as possible.”
More recently, Vodafone has turned its attention to lowering the carbon footprint of the mobile sector. The company has launched a new option, A Good Grade device, for devices which are in excellent working order but have some visible signs of use, such as small scratches, dents or marks on the case and screen.
From now on, customers will be able to choose from a range of Good Grade devices, including iPhone 12, iPhone 13, iPhone 14 and Samsung Galaxy S23.
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