At Sapphire, we believe that bringing and working together with people of all backgrounds can help us generate ideas or perspectives that aid the delivery of our innovative services.
Diversity is important, and that is why we were delighted to be part of the Scottish Cyber Awards.
In November 2021, Sapphire attended the Scottish Cyber Awards in Edinburgh. Hosted by the SBRC (Scottish Business Resilience Centre), the Scottish Cyber Awards celebrate innovation and cybersecurity achievement. Sapphire sponsored the Diversity Champion award in which colleagues in public, private and charity sectors showcased their important work.
Lead Scotland was the winner.
Lead Scotland is a national charity (based in Edinburgh) supporting disabled people and carers by providing personalised learning, befriending, advice, and information services. Lead Scotland has learning projects in several areas of Scotland, including Adult Learning and Digital Skills.
The team at Lead Scotland has supported people with their digital and cybersecurity skills throughout the pandemic, particularly during Cyber Scotland Week. Lead Scotland’s work around cyber work has also been recognised by the Scottish Charity Awards 2021.
The digital learning aspect of their projects supports disabled people and carers to learn new digital skills and become cyber resilient. We spoke to Lead Scotland Engagement and Fundraising Officer Sibyl Adam about their impact.
“Disabled people and carers can face many barriers to digital learning. At Lead Scotland, we want to support people to increase their skills and confidence so they can overcome any obstacles they’re facing. Often learners get in touch with us, wanting to improve their digital skills so they can get ahead in life. Whether getting into formal education or employment/volunteering, or improving their mental health, our services are designed to positively impact learners and their future.
One of the ways we do this is by supporting learners with their cyber resilience.
Using what we have learnt from decades of home-based and community learning, we co-designed an essential digital skills course with disabled learners and volunteers in partnership with the Open University in Scotland. The course aims to be an accessible guide to basic digital skills for people that may find other resources too confusing.
Our cyber resilience projects that ran during the pandemic focused on supporting people to stay safe online. Individuals were often unsure how to use online banking, shop online and talk to their family – all important activities during COVID19.
We tailored our programmes around the needs of the learners. For example, we had webinars, classes and 1-2-1 support that showed learners how to manage their passwords, learn about two-factor authentication, recognise online scams, and what they need to do if they have been hacked.
The survey feedback for our cyber resilience webinars was incredible. 97% said they felt a little or a lot more confident supporting someone to recognise an online scam, and 99.5% of 209 survey respondents said they would recommend the training to others.
In addition to the positive feedback from our learners, The Scotsman picked one of our webinars as one of the ‘Ten events to watch out for at Cyber Scotland Week’. Our ‘Every day computer skills’ course has had over 150 people complete it to date and has been shared widely with partners and on social media.
While ‘Cyber Resilience’ is a term often used for businesses and organisations to be better prepared against any cyber-attacks or breaches, it’s also an important aspect of digital skills learning for ordinary people who want to use the internet safely”.
We want to thank Sibyl for speaking to us.
To learn more about Lead Scotland, please visit their website here.
