Overview
The challenge
The solution
Conclusion
Overview
LitterWeek is a digital skills training programme that teaches people to use everyday smartphones for purposeful, real-world data collection. It runs as five short sessions, that can take place in any week, in which participants learn safe photography, privacy, responsible data handling and classification - how a photo becomes structured, shareable data.
LitterWeek is built on OpenLitterMap, an open-source, open-data citizen science platform developed in Cork since 2008 and recognised as Ireland's only UN Digital Public Good. OpenLitterMap holds over 500,000 geotagged observations from nearly 10,000 contributors across 100+ countries and is cited in over 100 peer-reviewed papers - all released as open data anyone can freely reuse. LitterWeek is launching its first school and community pilots in 2026 during Ireland's EU Presidency.
The challenge
Most people own smartphones but were never taught to use them. Digital use is largely passive - scrolling and watching, generating data that others collect. Few people are shown how to use the same device to create structured, meaningful data of their own, or taught the privacy, safety and data-literacy skills to create valuable data from these instruments. The result is a skills and confidence gap, in which people are the subjects of data collection rather than informed, capable participants in it.
At the same time, community groups doing valuable local environmental work often have no simple, trusted way to document and communicate their impact - much of it, like the 1 million hours done by TidyTowns volunteers last year, goes unrecorded.
The solution
LitterWeek addresses this through a short, structured, low-barrier programme that builds practical digital skills through real-world activity.
Five sessions, any week: an introduction to what data is and how smartphones collect it; training in privacy, safety, ethics and photo judgement; a supervised outdoor data-collection activity; upload and tagging, turning observations into structured data; and review and reflection on what to share, what to keep private, and what the data shows.
Low-barrier and inclusive: LitterWeek uses devices participants already have, supports shared devices, needs no specialist equipment or training, and most materials are digital.
Privacy by design: We explicitly encourage no faces, no homes, no identifiers, with facilitator-controlled review before anything is published, making it suitable for younger learners to learn about consent and tech ethics.
Delivered in partnership: each programme can pair a group with a local partner - a school, youth or community group - to share knowledge and build local capacity.
Built on real infrastructure: participants contribute to OpenLitterMap, a UN Digital Public Good, so the data they create is real, open and reusable rather than a theoretical classroom exercise.
Conclusion
LitterWeek advances the Charter for Digital Inclusion's principles of digital skills for life, the workplace, trust and safety, collaboration and evidence-led action. By teaching people to use technology purposefully and safely, LitterWeek turns passive smartphone use into active, confident digital participation - giving communities a practical way to document and value their own work.
Built on Irish open-source infrastructure recognised internationally as a UN Digital Public Good, LitterWeek shows how digital inclusion and civic participation can be advanced together.