- The UN gets after the goal of achive the universal connectivity by 2030 ensuring the equal access to digital opportunities.
- Destine follows the Horizontal ERASMUS + priority “Inclusion and Diversity in all field of education, training, your and sport”, a project that face the challenge of ensure the equality, access and tolerance in the digital sphere.
Nobody will discuss that technology and online connection has become a fundamental tool of our routines. Europe leads the world internet access with 89%, a percentage that is reduces to the 40% in continents such as Africa, according to the latest International Telecommunication Union (ITU) report. An inequality that, although not so prominent in our continent, is worrying taking into account the digitalization of the employment and academic field.
Covid-19’s burst precipitated the translation of digital environments to academic and labor fields, an irruption that society was not prepared for. As a result, a large number of persons under vulnerable conditions had no choice but to resign themselves to the fact to give up their education level as a result of the lack of access to the proper material and tools. For that reason, the UN has recognized the necessity of obtaining total accessibility as one of the targets of the 2030 Agenda. In a decade where it is hoped 100% of the population with more than 15 years use internet, all schools are connected to the internet and assure gender parity of the internet use, mobile phone ownership, and digital skills.
In addition, digital inclusion is one of the main challenges that the UN faces as it is enabled by human rights-based. A goal that pretends to achieve assuring international approach, equitable inclusion, availability, access, affordability, and participation through this roadmap:
- Form a multistakeholder digital inclusion coalition
- Agree on set of metrics
- Promote public-private partnerships
- Fund detailed data collection initiatives
- Improve coordination and information sharing
- Wider advocacy of guidelines on policies
- Apply a gender lens to all interventions
- Pay greater attention to the situation of people on the move
A challenge that the Destine project supports and is bound to change, promoting digital inclusion through strategies such as the creation of an online learning platform that contains material focused on tolerance and diversity methods. As well as, the development of a freely accessible toolkit for teachers, trainers and mentors, and interested learners. Or the contribution of building a cooperative environment between institutions, facilitating the creation of synergies and transnational cooperation.
About DESTINE
In a context marked by recent technological changes, shifts in global economic power, accelerating urbanization and demographic changes, coupled with the importance of digital as recently highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic; the DESTINE project, funded by the Erasmus + program, responds to the challenge of addressing the issues of inclusion, diversity, and tolerance in the online and distance learning environment. Specifically, the project aims to develop and improve the skills and competencies of teachers, trainers, and mentors in the field of inclusion and diversity as applied to e-learning.
About ERASMUS +
Erasmus+ 2021-2027 is the European Union’s renewed program in the fields of education and training, youth and sport, offering opportunities for all people and in all education sectors (School Education, Professional Training, Higher Education and Adult Education). This new Erasmus+ is more international, more inclusive, more digital and greener, supporting digital transformation, inclusion and diversity, as well as the environment and the fight against climate change. With a budget of more than €28 billion, it will fund learning-related mobility and cross-border cooperation projects for 10 million people of all ages and from all backgrounds.
“This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication] 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.”