Get older people online, say Hackney Silver Surfers

Hackney's Silver Surfers and friends outside the Lawns, Stoke Newington

Hackney residents who do not have access to the internet are in danger of being left further behind despite a new Government initiative to get millions of Britons online by 2012.

Rick Crust from Hackney Silver Surfers, a Stoke Newington-based group who provide free computer training and free internet access to all Hackney residents over 50, voiced his frustration at not being able to help more people to get online.

“We do not have the spaces to meet demand and the computers we do have are all out-of-date. We are dreadfully underfunded’’.

Places in the Silver Surfers latest class for job-seekers filled up long ago and the centre is constantly working at full capacity. The group, an Age Concern Hackney initiative, relies on the London Development Agency (LDA)and Hackney’s education provider, the Learning Trust, for funding.

Despite the strain, the Government’s Digital Inclusion Task Force (DITF) recently unveiled the Race Online 2012 project. Ten million people in the UK have never used the web, and the ambitious scheme aims to connect four million of the most socially and economically disadvantaged. The goal will need to be achieved without any new funds however, as the DITF has no central budget.

Martha Lane Fox, Chair of the DITF and best known as founder of lastminute.com, declared that the work of local community organisations would be vital in reaching the four million mark.

A brief glance at the statistics certainly underlines the importance of the Silver Surfers. Nationally the over-65s make up 40 per cent of the digitally disenfranchised and the unemployed account for a further 40 per cent.

It is hardly surprising then – with Hackney’s unemployment rate higher than the London average – that the Surfers jobseekers’ classes are oversubscribed.

Yet for those who cannot get places, access to the internet is not simply a matter of convenience.

To gain access to jobs, Crust explained, “online applications have to be completed and returned by email, even positions for cleaners and drivers, and people are being excluded from the job market altogether.”

With the Olympic borough already lagging behind the rest of London in bringing the digital revolution to its less well-off residents, the Silver Surfers will carry on fighting an uphill battle until the agencies-that-be can find them a pot of gold.

Note: this story was revised on 27 January 2010.