Vodafone Foundation calls on 6–19-year-olds to help bridge the digital divide with the launch of the 2024 Skills Upload Jr Challenge

22/10/2024

Young people across nine European countries encouraged to help break the ‘digital divide’ in their local communities and create a more inclusive digital society.

Vodafone Foundation has today launched the 2024 ‘Skills Upload Jr Challenge’. An exciting youth initiative in which students across Europe are encouraged to develop innovative solutions to everyday problems using technology as a driving force for positive impact.

The focus for this year's challenge will be ‘Breaking the Digital Divide: Generating Inclusion through Digital Technology’, with students encouraged to create solutions related to three of the Sustainable Development Goals; quality education (SDG 4), gender equality (SDG 5) and sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11).

Open to young people between 6 and 19 years old and their teachers from nine European countries (Germany, Albania, Spain, Greece, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Turkey) this year’s challenge will open in October and close in February.

The World Economic Forum recently reported that 33% of the global population (2.6 million people) remain offline and ‘left behind’. This ‘digital divide’ persists due to barriers to connectivity such as: affordability of data and devices, the lack of necessary digital skills and a lack of access to digital infrastructure and skills.[i] The ‘Skills Upload Jr Challenge’ is part of Vodafone Foundation’s commitment to addressing this issue directly.

“We are very proud to help create a path towards a fairer and more equitable future,” says Gloria Placer, European Programmes Lead at Vodafone Foundation. “With this programme we celebrate the potential and creativity of each participant, fostering not only their technical knowledge but also their passion, innovation and ability to transform ideas into impactful solutions. In addition, we have the support of public partners, such as ministries of education, and private partners, such as NGOs, to achieve a sustainable impact in the European countries where we are present.”

Vodafone Foundation’s Skills Upload Jr Challenge is part of the charity’s Skills Upload Jr programme, which, since its launch in 2021, has reached 7.5 million students, 600,000 teachers and 8.2 million people across Europe. The programme also forms part of Vodafone Foundation’s wider strategic focus on driving inclusion through to digital learning.

How it works – The Skills Upload Jr Challenge

The methodology of the ‘Skills Upload Jr Challenge’ is based on the design-thinking model, with the students themselves proposing the problem that most affects them according to their localised circumstances, and the solutions, based on technology, to overcome it.

This reflects Vodafone Foundation's work to encourage young people to become aware of existing inequalities and realise the potential of technology to address and resolve these deficiencies, promoting social inclusion and reducing the digital divide.

The winning projects from the nine participating countries will be invited to attend an award ceremony next Spring in Bucharest, Romania. A phenomenal opportunity for students to immerse themselves in an international experience and learn about other countries’ approaches to solving the digital divide.

Launch of the new Skills Upload Jr website

Marking the launch of the competition, Vodafone Foundation has also launched a new Skills Upload Jr website: www.skillsuploadjr.eu to host information about the programme for learners and educators across Europe.

Applications for the challenge open in October; more details can be found here https://skillsuploadjr.eu/sujChallenge .

[i] Accelerating digital inclusion for 1 billion people by 2025. (2024, September 10th). World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/impact/digital-inclusion/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjNS3BhChARIsAOxBM6oUvoTX7oAF2Ra4Z62YtvImd4Z6sZF-xTPGLFM2HuPttgcg3dNC3H0aAnB4EALw_wcB