Young people brush up digital skills to improve job prospects

Project: Working it Out: A Digital Journeys Programme

Purpose: To help disengaged 16- to 24-year-olds into education, employment or training by tackling digital exclusion

Funding: Working it Out programmes generally cost between £120,000 and £150,000 a year. Around 70 per cent of the funding for this project comes from Barclays

Background: In January last year, employment charity Tomorrow's People published Future Digital Journeys, a report setting out how digital technology can help enhance disadvantaged young people's employability and improve social inclusion.

The research was sparked by the charity's concerns about "digital exclusion" among young people, who were failing to tap into the potential of technology to improve their lives. "Young people use their computers or phones as a substitute for talking to each other, but they're not using it to interact with anyone other than their immediate peer group," says the charity's director of development services, Abi Levitt. "They would never dream of using Google to research a prospective job for example, or set up email alerts about job interviews."