Gabriel Rissola brings to Telecentre-Europe 24 years of extensive international experience in digital inclusion projects. With a long-lasting interest in the development of telecentres as engines of learning, empowerment and social change, Gabriel always looked for the opportunities to put technology at the service of people. After a decade devoted to the Internet industry (where he was an entrepreneur both in the online media and learning sub-industries) Gabriel started to run action-research projects with a policy perspective, becoming expert in fund-raising and project management of transnational initiatives, always around the topic of ICT for learning and empowerment.

One relevant result of that was the book “Suturing the Digital Gash” (2007) which opened the doors to a permanent collaboration with the European Commission culminated in his previous position as Senior Researcher at JRC-IPTS; that book (contemporary to the formation of Telecentre-Europe) was already claiming at that time for the recognition of telecentres as education and inclusion actors, and it opened the way to a set of projects to build capacities and resources for telecentre networks (Employability Toolkit, vocational training for e-Facilitators, intergenerational learning, impact measurement of eInclusion intermediaries interventions).