Our learning support and mentoring programs in 90 Australian communities directly help children in need achieve their goals through education.
View all programs Digital Inclusion
For the families that we support. We want every student to have access to a device that can help them to connect to education.
Ensuring all students on our flagship Learning for Life educational support program are digitally included, is a key ambition of The Smith Family’s current Five-Year Strategy.
Digital connectivity and the ability to fully participate online are crucially important for students experiencing disadvantage, who are more likely to be already behind their peers in their learning.
An estimated 15 per cent of the families The Smith Family works with don't have a connected laptop at home.
“We use the Australian Digital Inclusion Alliance definition of digital inclusion. If you break it down into its core components, it's that you have access to a laptop or a device that is suitable for your needs. You've got the skills to be able to use the device and to understand the complexities of that. And you understand how to keep yourself safe online in various ways,” says Wendy Field, our Head of Policy, Programs and Strategy.
Being ready for the jobs of the future is another consideration. “If you think about the skills for the workforce of the future, children and young people need to be able to engage with technology so that they can maybe become creators of technology as much as consumers of technology,” she says.
