5 Million Futures: Building a better world, one future at a time

Helping to address the digital divide

Millions of people around the UK are unable to achieve their full potential or access essential goods and services because of a lack of digital inclusion. We are helping charities and individuals thrive in an increasingly virtual world by building digital skills, making connections, and providing access to technology.

Now in its third year, Deloitte Digital Connect is a programme, run in collaboration with the digital charity CAST, which aims to help charities scale their impact. Last year, to achieve this ambition, we led workshops, coaching calls and mentoring sessions for digital leaders of charities to help them build capacity and capability within their organisation. Over 90 per cent of those who attended said they have benefited from taking part in the programme, learning to develop a digital strategy.

Our commitment to help bridge the digital divide doesn’t stop there – we are helping to support the wider ecosystem around digital inclusion, driving change. Over the course of last year, we conducted a report encouraging businesses to donate their repurposed laptops to those in need, we offered recommendations to the House of Lords Select Committee on addressing the digital divide, we worked with the Digital Poverty Alliance to help quantify the cost of digital exclusion and we provided FutureDotNow, an organisation of industry leaders, with a project manager to help with their report on the digital skills gap in the UK workforce.

We also helped those without digital access get equipment they need to join the digital economy – donating over 6,000 of our refurbished laptops to schools and our partner charities in the last financial year. Many of the schools loaned laptops to students while others became a shared resource, multiplying their impact and reach many times over.