Siganto Digital Learning Program

With support funding from the Siganto Foundation in 2017 for a 5-year period, the Siganto Digital Literacy Workshop program aims to equip recently arrived communities with a personal computer, and the skills needed to use and maintain these. 

Each workshop series consists of four in-person sessions where the participants develop an understanding of how a personal computer works – from hardware through to operating systems, software and online safety. Best of all, at the end of the program, participants get to keep the computers they have been working on as we work with decommissioned corporate hardware and Open-Source Software. 

The collaboration with Multicultural Australia to support outreach and participation has been integral to the program, with staff from Multicultural Australia participating in and supporting the workshops. The program has also been delivered with South Bank TAFE English Language students. 

Since 2017, there have been over 200 participants from 30 different countries who have benefited from the program. Several of the workshop participants have gone on to help facilitate and deliver the workshops, which is a terrific outcome for the project.  

Libraries provide essential access to digital equipment, services and skills training.

Through funding provided by the State Library OPAL fund the project was first delivered at State Library of Queensland in 2012 as the Creative Community Computing program.
 
In 2017 the Siganto Foundation funded the next iteration of the workshop program, which allowed State Library to work with recently arrived communities in Southeast Queensland to provide digital literacy skills.  

The program has been fully documented as a train-the-trainer resource, released under a Creative Commons License in 2016 under CCCLabs, providing access to a comprehensive, how-to documentation to community organisations across Queensland and the world.