Digikriebels

The home environment is the most determining factor in a child's upbringing, and parents (and grandparents) have a very important role in supporting their children's educational career. Digikriebels targets vulnerable families, particularly (grand)parents with pre-schoolers, in the most deprived neighbourhoods of Ghent, where GOK equal-education-opportunity scores range from 55% to 99%, many children come from families with a poor socio-economic status or on scholarship, and the majority of the school population often does not have Dutch as a mother tongue.

To reach vulnerable (grand)parents — a group often difficult to reach — to support them in their parenting role and teach them necessary digital skills, and through them to also reach their children, strengthening the relationship between school and home.

Digikriebels runs 5 courses in schools in deprived Ghent neighbourhoods and offers schools 'Digiboxes' filled with digital materials and guidelines for practical activities, developed for pre-schoolers and their parents; schools can borrow the Digiboxes for free to organise multimedia workshops for (grand)parents and pre-schoolers, and continue using them to keep the project's themes alive afterwards. The project is funded by Digipolis, Centrum voor Basiseducatie, Brugfiguren Project and other funders.

The project reports helping (grand)parents better support their children educationally, using intergenerational relationships to improve the education of both children and their (grand)parents, and reinforcing the relationship between school and home; (grand)parents are reported to develop ICT and media literacy skills alongside their children.