Communities

Digital Poverty Alliance

Currys partnered with the Learning Foundation in 2021 to launch the Digital Poverty Alliance (DPA) as a Founding Partner, a project that quickly grew into a leading initiative. In 2024, the Learning Foundation officially became the Digital Poverty Alliance, reflecting its success and impact.

We remain committed to working with government, industry partners and charities to address digital poverty and reduce inequality. As signatories to the DPA’s Charter for Digital Inclusion, we continue our commitment to raising awareness, boosting digital skills development and creating partnerships for impact. This year we expanded that commitment to include refurbishing and donating corporate devices.

In June 2025, we became one of the first business signatories to the new UK Government IT Reuse for Good charter, encouraging a ‘reuse first’ approach to IT assets to increase device refurbishment and donation for the 1.5m people in the UK who currently lack essential digital equipment – helping address both the digital divide and tackling e-waste. As well as our strives for systematic change, we have helped support those in digital need in the short-term with our local initiatives in the Nordics, the Tech4Families programme in the UK and launched a free Wi-Fi service in all UK&I stores to help customers stay connected.

• Raising awareness: Amplifying colleagues’ and customers’ understanding of digital poverty and its extensive impacts.
• Digital Skills Development: Providing resources and training to enhance digital literacy and skills across our workforce and communities.
• Partnerships for Impact: Collaborating with other organisations to maximise efforts and achieve greater impact.

Read more about the DPA’s Charter for Digital Inclusion on their website at https://digitalpovertyalliance.org/charter-digital-inclusion/

Read more about our work on digital poverty in the 2025/26 Annual Report.

Tech4Families

It’s never been more important to make sure families can get online. One way we’re doing this is to help families who need a laptop to get one. During 2025/26, funds collected through Pennies from our UK stores supported a further 889 vulnerable families by providing life-changing access to digital technology. Our RepairLive team are also helping make sure families receive the right support as they get digitally connected as refurbished laptops going out to families now include a clear, easy to-find leaflet with RepairLive contact details.

Working with Pennies, this year we initiated two major changes to our micro-donation offer to help double donations in 2026/27: new in-store payment terminals from Stripe have helped deliver a 78% uplift in donations and the integration of Pennies into the online payment journey was launched in June 2026.

In February 2025, the government announced the launch of their Digital inclusion Action Plan, setting out five key actions to tackle digital inclusion. We are delighted to support them in this work and in June 2025 were one of the first signatories to the Government’s IT Reuse for Good Charter. We will now be boosting the number of laptops provided through our Tech4Families scheme by allocated refurbished corporate devices.

Find out more about Tech4Families, including how to apply, at https://digitalpovertyalliance.org/tech4families/

To find out why the scheme is so impactful, we launched a short video case study highlighting the difference that laptops provided through Tech4Families has made to the lives of families in the UK. To watch:

All Digital Weeks on Partnering for Impact: How Collaboration Drives Digital Inclusion:

Jennifer Neely, Development Manager at the Digital Poverty Alliance, and Catrin Hale, Group Social Impact Manager at Currys, talk about our shared experience of Tech4Families and reflect on how businesses and charities can partner together to deliver scalable programmes of support for digital inclusion.

Digital Empowerment: The Tech4Families Initiative and Its National Impact:

Elizabeth Anderson, CEO of the Digital Poverty Alliance talks to Dr Becky Faith, Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and Catrin Hale, Group Social Impact Manager at Currys, about the significant findings of the DPA’s research into our Tech4Families scheme, which sheds light on the persistent digital divide in the UK and its profound effects on children’s education.

Digital Skills Development

Following a pilot, we continued to provide UK & Ireland corporate colleagues with volunteering opportunities on community-based projects tackling digital poverty.

Local Fundraising

Community fundraising is encouraged right across Currys, and each year our colleagues support many causes which resonate locally.

Our UK&I Retail colleagues have climbed, ran, cycled, dressed up and completed incredible challenges to raise thousands of pounds for charities important to them.

Fighting digital exclusion in the Nordics

Elkjøp Nordic is using our position and role in society to fight digital exclusion. We work to raise awareness, increase knowledge, and enable access for people who are falling behind in the rapid development of technology.