Virgin Media O2 and Hubbub’s Time After Time fund awards £500,000 to projects that aim to reduce electronic waste and support digital inclusion.
The eight winning projects received grants of up to £100,000 and were selected from over 120 entries by a panel of judges.
The panel included TV presenter and environmentalist George Clarke, non-profit Material Focus, digital inclusion charity Good Things Foundation, Hubbub and Virgin Media O2.
Reacting to the announcement, Dana Haidan, Chief Sustainability Officer at Virgin Media O2, said: “The winners of this year’s Time After Time fund are an amazing set of innovative and inspiring projects led by talented people across the country, which share our vision of stopping unwanted tech going to landfill, where instead it can be rehomed with people who need it so they can get online.”
The projects includes Screen Share UK, which received a £46,700 grant to fund a laptop repair skills training programme and provide refurbished devices to more than 500 refugees and asylum seekers across the UK.
The winners of this year’s Time After Time fund are an amazing set of innovative and inspiring projects led by talented people across the country.
SOFEA, which operates in Oxfordshire, received a grant of £100,000 to repair and upgrade second-hand smartphones, laptops, and tablets and donate them to disadvantaged young people across Oxfordshire, as well as provide them with training to improve their skills.
The fund has provided Single Homeless Project in London with a grant of £52,600 for a project providing digital skills training and rehomed devices to people experiencing homelessness.
Coventry City Council received £80,000 to fund its #CovConnects programme and run a device lending bank to distribute end-of-life council devices to people across the city.
Virgin Media O2 said the devices will be powered by free O2 mobile data from the National Databank set up by Virgin and Good Things Foundation.
The University of Warwick will also carry out research into how circularity can address the climate crisis and support digital inclusion.
The Making Room received a £55,300 grant to run the Blackburn Repair Space project which aims to rehome hundreds of unwanted laptops with young people who are digitally excluded and provide digital skills and laptop repair training sessions to help them get into work.
The Time After Time fund was established in 2022 as a response to e-waste in the UK.
Gavin Ellis Co-Founder and Director at Hubbub commented: “There is an abundance of smart devices in households and businesses that have potential to help the estimated 1.5 million households that are digitally disconnected get online.
“These projects will tackle digital exclusion through research, training and the redistribution of devices and continue to raise awareness about the issues of e-waste and digital inclusion.”
