Fundamental Digital Skills (Microsoft Office, Google Workspace)

What you hit is common and it is not really a gap in her ability. Someone whose whole digital life happens in apps on a phone has never needed the desktop file model: a folder tree, a downloads folder, a file that exists somewhere separate from the app that made it. Attaching a document requires all three ideas at once.

Do not test. Do the task together and watch where it slows down. Ask her to share her screen while you both fill in one real form, or send her something to open and ask her to send it back. The friction points announce themselves and neither of you has to call it an assessment.

Expect these specifically: where a downloaded file went, the difference between saving and saving as, why the document looks different on another machine, and typing on a keyboard that does not have her language's characters. That last one is a real barrier and it looks like slowness.

The phone-only part is the piece our service keeps missing. Several women I work with have no computer at all, and every form we send assumes one. We keep saying they should use the library, which is open when they are at work.

Then the honest answer is to fix the form rather than the mentee, at least for the part you control. Check whether what you send can be completed on a phone, and if it cannot, say so before she spends an evening trying.

Where a computer is genuinely required, treat access as part of the plan and not as her homework: which building, which hours, whether she needs to book, whether there is a printer and what it costs, and whether anyone there speaks a language she is comfortable in. That is fifteen minutes of your time once and it is the difference between a plan and a suggestion.

Worth naming for programme design too. Both Microsoft Office and Google Workspace have free web versions that need only a browser and an account, which removes the licence question but not the device question. The device question is the one that stops people.