Building Self Belief (BSB) is a charity whose core focus is helping vulnerable young people. They are part of our Let's Get Digital, Durham project, which supports organisations to help others with digital skills. And they've found it has had a transformative effect on their work.
We spoke to Peter Thomas, one of their founders and to Shauna Nixon, Youth Work Apprentice, about how the Champion training has helped their organisation and changed the way they think about digital.
Building Self-Belief (BSB) is a community-based charity in Consett, County Durham. Since their launch in 2018, they’ve supported over 8,000 vulnerable young people.
Their core focus is on strengthening communities by building self-belief in young people aged 9–24 from disadvantaged backgrounds. Many of them are facing significant challenges around issues like mental health, poverty, domestic circumstances, anti-social behaviours, low self-esteem and future aspirations.
Many of the communities BSB work with are in the bottom 20% on the National Index of Multiple Deprivation. In 2023, 38.7% of children in County Durham lived in poverty (compared to 27% nationally). And 20% were living in absolute poverty.
BSB offer all sorts of support. “We provide a range of mental health, employability, local heritage and environmental programmes that give people the opportunity to maximise their potential and fully engage with their local communities” says Shauna.
They run youth clubs, have a warm space provision and a community garden too. They've also provided over £80,000 in direct household support to help families cope with the cost-of-living crisis.
BSB were already doing some work around digital skills but they knew they needed more support and training to tackle the problem of digital exclusion and isolation.
So they signed up to Let’s get Digital, Durham, a project funded by Capgemini and run by us. We offer organisations free membership of the Digital Champions Network to train staff or volunteers to become Digital Champions who help others with digital skills. We also provide a local project coordinator to help organisations get their projects up and running, signpost to new opportunities and link people up with other like-minded groups.
BSB were one of the the first organisations to sign up to the project. Their first Champions did their training in June 2024 and very quickly began to help learners with digital motivation, confidence and skills.
Most Digital Champions at BSB are aged 18-24. Initially their digital skills support was targeted at the older generation, as part of a wider project to tackle isolation called Know your Neighbourhood.
They're been helping people with tasks like finding affordable internet, getting on the NHS app, researching health online, managing money and understanding digital payslips, connecting with friends and family on social media, and even learning how to use basic editing software.
This approach is a double win. Their work hugely benefits the people they’re helping – but it also helps the Champions themselves. We know that it improves the Champions' own digital skills and their employability (through practicing skills like soft listening). It also helps people in other ways, with the genuine satisfaction that can come from helping others, making connections and being an active part of the community.
The ripple effect has been huge. We’ve seen increased confidence, independence, and curiosity from people who may have previously felt excluded from the digital world. We’re now making sure digital support is available across all of our services, whether it's one-to-one help, group sessions, or informal peer learning.
BSB already knew some of the negative effects that a lack of digital skills brings. But they now approach digital skills not as a stand-alone issue, but as a cross-cutting factor in tackling poverty, health inequality and social isolation.
For example, life expectancy is falling across Country Durham. Shauna says “it’s clear that lack of digital access, skills and confidence goes on to affect health based outcomes across our community… This highlights the importance of early intervention-based work to prevent this from further widening the health gap."
Digital Champion support is now woven into other services that BSB run. These include outreach programmes like:
Digital skills are vital - as many food banks, fuel voucher schemes, and hardship funds require online applications or referrals. But with skills and confidence, people can also find cheaper deals, compare prices online for food, energy, and household essentials, switch suppliers and find discounts or vouchers. They can track their spending, using budgeting and banking apps, and reduce their bills with smart meters.
We've also supported BSB to reach out to local funders and organisations like Point North and the Bernicia Foundation for help securing digital equipment, staffing and space to deliver their sessions and connected them with Jangala, an organisation we work with that provides free internet connectivity for anyone who needs it.
As part of BSB's employability-based support, service users were given help to promote themselves and their skills online via apps such as LinkedIn.
Digital Unite's support has had a genuinely transformative impact on our work. It’s not just about helping us with digital access - it’s about opening our eyes to how digital inclusion can become a core part of everything we do.
Building Self-Belief have used the Let Get Digital training to maximum effect – to expand their services, build internal capacity, and respond to growing community demand. And they've embraced it in a way that has enhanced all their services.
They recently renovated a former dance studio into a fully functioning community hub. They plan to expand their digital work from their new hub offering dedicated digital sessions. Peter says "the 'Let's Get Digital Durham' programme inspired us to set part of our weekly programme of community support aside for digital isolation based support and the downstairs space is being designed with future digital isolation support at its core."
With strong foundations and a committed team, they’re well placed to scale their impact, support more people, and build even stronger, digitally confident communities. We're pleased to say that Let's Get Digital Durham has been funded for another year well in to 2026, and we're excited and proud to work with them on the next steps!
The training that we have received has allowed us to significantly improve our digital based skills, which has in turn increased our level of programme delivery and enabled us to reach many hundreds more families in need.