Technology in Human Services

Welcome to Episode 46 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I’m joined by Ibukun Abejirinde and Nancy Clark to talk about their work looking at how to re-imagine digital or virtual health care through a compassionate lens, focusing on Newcomers to Canada.

In an article for Canadian Diversity Ibukun wrote that it is “relevant to explore if and how the digitization of health care impacts the experience of compassionate care for marginalized groups, including immigrants and refugees.” How do Newcomers experience virtual care? How do they experience compassionate health care in general? With a number of colleagues Ibukun and Nancy continue to work on this question as well as new lines of inquiry regarding the overall settlement experience and the role of digital technology in supporting the settlement experience and setting newcomers up for success. I think their research focuses on some essential questions that should impact the entire Newcomer-serving sector’s approach to digital transformation, hybrid service delivery, and how we can ensure that our virtual and hybrid services are equally compassionate, client centred, and ultimately focused on meeting the needs of our clients and communities.

Some of the questions we discussed:

The projects Ibukun and Nancy discuss on the podcast were funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection Grant (Beyond Technology, Beyond Healthcare: Translating Intersectionality in the Promotion of Equitable Virtual Health Care Services for Newcomers to Canada) and a AMS Healthcare Compassion and AI Fellowship (Re-imagining digital health compassion through the lens of Canadian newcomers).

Some useful resources:

Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.

Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 46 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I’m joined by Ibukun Abejirinde and Nancy Clark to talk about their work looking at how to reimagine digital or virtual healthcare through a compassionate lens, focusing on newcomers to Canada. In an article Ibukun wrote for Canadian diversity, she wrote, it is relevant to explore if and how the digitization of healthcare impacts the experience of compassionate care for marginalized groups, including immigrants and refugees. So how do newcomers experience virtual care? How do they experience compassionate healthcare in general? With a number of colleagues, Ibukun and Nancy, continue to work on this question, as well as new lines of inquiry regarding the overall settlement experience in the role of digital technology in supporting the settlement experience, setting newcomers up for success. I think their research focuses on some essential questions that should impact the entire newcomer serving sectors, approach to digital transformation, hybrid service delivery, and how we can ensure that our virtual and hybrid services are equally compassionate, client centered and ultimately focus on meeting the needs of our clients and communities. I think you’ll enjoy this conversation. Welcome to the technology and human services Podcast. I’m going to let you both introduce yourselves and and a bit about your work before we kind of dive in. So Ibukun why don’t we start with you?

Ibukun Abejirinde 1:18
All right, thanks, Marco, very lovely to be in this conversation with you and Nancy. So my name is Ibukun Abejirinde. I’m a scientist at the Institute for Better Health, which is Research and Innovation Hub within Trillium Health Partners. And I’m also an assistant professor at the Dala Lana School of Public Health University of Toronto. So my work is really applied research, where I ask very interesting questions with the aim of addressing complex healthcare problems, and I focus on health inequity digital technology and what these mean for marginalized populations and how they access and experience quality healthcare. A lot of my work partners very closely with patients and caregivers, policy makers, community organizations, researchers from different disciplines, and I kind of focus more extensively on immigrants and refugees, racialized communities and older adults. And so that’s sort of the hat I’m wearing coming to this conversation. This conversation.

Marco Campana 2:24
Awesome. Welcome and thank you for joining. Nancy. Please introduce yourself and your work.

Nancy Clark 2:29
Hi Marco. Thanks for the intro, and thanks to Ibukun. Yeah, I’m an Associate Professor at the School of Nursing at the University of Victoria in Canada, British Columbia, my program of research focuses on refugee mental health. I’ve been a mental health clinician for about 30 years, so most of my work has been in clinical practice. I came to academia later than most people, and I really try to focus on the issue of equity and why people are experiencing barriers, and how can we make the healthcare experience equitable but also a friendly place to go to. So I think a lot of people sometimes talk about access and equity, but we also need to think about the quality of care. So what is, what is caring? How do we care for people like Ibukun? I’m interested in what we call, what we might categorize as marginalized communities, but looking at the structural pieces of that. So what are the policies, the bigger pieces that are sort of creating those barriers, but also what works, and why does it work for some people and not other people? So that’s sort of me in a in a nutshell, and really interested in advancing mental health outside of the mainstream. So looking at the social determinants of mental health, such as poverty, housing, social support, and for me, being an intersectionality scholar, gender is always at the forefront of how that works and how that plays out in terms of power relationships and things like that, so that that’s sort of my work. Awesome.

Marco Campana 4:29
Thank you both very much for joining. And that notion of intersectionality Nancy is something I think will be a thread through this conversation. Because, again, as we mentioned before we started this, this conversation is about about health care and virtual health care and equity and health care and digital equity, but it, but it also is where it intersects with newcomers in particular and other equity deserving groups. And I think that that thread throughout is where people who are going to be listening are going to be quite interested. So I want to set the stage a little bit, because we came at this originally, I became out of your out of two. Projects, right? So the first was looking at a project to reimagine virtual healthcare with a compassionate lens. So not just how do we do virtual healthcare, because the mechanics of that you can find everywhere, but how do we do it compassionately, in particular with newcomers to Canada. And then that work, as you explained to me, has evolved into new lines of kind of questions and inquiry, looking at the whole did the whole settlement experience, and where digital technology fits in, supporting that experience and ensuring that newcomers are set up for success. And so the so again, the first project kind of focused on virtual care, but you’ve expanded beyond that. And so I want to kind of set the stage for people in my audience who are more probably on the settlement side. And let’s talk a little bit about what you mean, or how you define virtual health care, and what does it mean to provide compassionate care in that setting. Okay.

Ibukun Abejirinde 5:54
Thanks, Marco, so the way we how we came to this work, was really within the context of the pandemic, and the fact that public health restrictions meant that people could not access healthcare. Most people could not access healthcare in the brick and mortar way, and everybody had to go rely on digital technology so broadly when we’re talking about virtual care, it’s a term that describes all forms of remote interactions between a patient and their care providers or their circle of care, and using digital technologies, information and communication solutions to support service delivery in healthcare, enable it, provide it, deliver it. So it includes things like remote monitoring technologies, having a conversation or an appointment with your clinician over the telephone or over a video call, even messaging, right? So sometimes you have this portals where a patient could send messages about the way that we failing communicate with a nurse practitioner provider over a portal, so emails, text message and all of that falls into virtual care. But for the particular projects we’re going to speaking about today, we kind of honed in specifically on video and telephone clinical encounters, because those were the most one the two modalities that were mostly used during the pandemic, but also by newcomer group. Yeah, so that’s that’s on virtual care for compassion. I think it’s such a complex term, and I did some work as part of this project to sort of understand how it was being conceptualized and defined differently. And I find that it’s it’s this very multi dimensional phenomenon that varies per individual, and individuals have varying expectations and experiences. But one source that I frequently go to that I think gives a very clear and straightforward answer on what does compassionate care mean? Is the Oxford Handbook of compassion science, and the way they describe and define compassion is that it’s a state of concern for someone else’s suffering or the need of someone else that has been unmet, accompanied by a desire to alleviate or address that suffering. But nobody really goes around talking about, oh, I had a visit with my doctor and it was compassionate, right? What we use are like proxy indicators and tangible descriptors of compassion care. So when you hear people talking about trustworthiness of the care or the way they felt that their clinical encounter had dignity embedded, or that they have a positive relationship with their primary care provider, or they felt respected, or that somebody was provided empathic care, all of that, those are descriptors of compassionate care. And I think what makes compassion such an important concept to dig into within healthcare generally, but also within the context of digitally enabled service delivery, is evidence is showing how intricately linked the concept of compassion and how people experience and operationalize it is linked to how they perceive care in general. So a number of interesting studies have come out regarding that. In fact, one recently published from a compassion lab in from the University of Calgary, where they they looked at the experiences of 4500 patients in 14 emergency departments across Alberta, and found that compassion was key to how patients rated the quality of care that they received. I think one thing that was very important, and I’ll probably hand over to Nancy to speak to this, is that study showed that women and indigenous patients reported lower compassion scores. South Asian patients report. Significantly lower ratings than white participants, and so it was showing that patients views were modified along demographic, cultural, ethnic lines. And for our study, we used our intersectional lens as well to unpack and make sense of how are newcomers experiencing virtual care on arriving to Canada and trying to navigate the healthcare system, and that became set the stage for our exploratory work. But I’ll let Nancy perhaps speak to intersectionality, how we conceptualize it, and what does this mean for understanding this work.

Nancy Clark 10:36
Thanks Ibukun, that’s a really interesting lens that you bring around compassionate care, especially when we think about the context of the healthcare crisis, the increasing migration, or lack of migration, that’s happening at the borders in the context of covid 19, and the fact that you drew attention to the role of virtual slash digital care in that context and where we are. Now, one thing that’s come out clearly during, I would say, covid 19 is, as you’ve heard, this sort of acronym, that it was a social X ray to see of where things are in terms of the disproportionate impacts of who is the most marginalized. And I’ll talk about intersectionality in a second. But one thing in that context that stood out for me, what you were talking about, was this notion of compassion, and I can’t help but think about also, sort of the other side of that, which might be burnout, in terms of what we heard, what happened during covid 19, and so how things started to crumble, which then impacted Those communities and populations that are racialized, that are newcomers, etc, etc. So there’s this big, broader, I think, structural piece, and that’s really what intersectionality, I think, if we could, it’s a very complex idea, but essentially it’s trying to get at, how do we disrupt and enable those structural pieces to make it equitable for all? And so that, you know, when we look at the UN Global Development Goals now, it’s like, you know, we don’t want to leave anybody behind, and yet, we’re looking at who’s the most impacted, one of the or sorry, affected by these structural processes that don’t work for everybody. So because of their unique social positioning, such as their ethnic background, their migration status, their literal literacy status. So the other thing that you mentioned was that women, I think you mentioned women and indigenous people, had lower experience of compassion. And that’s very interesting when you come at it from a gender based analysis, because typically, we know that women tend to be constructed as care providers, as people that can access resources and supports in different ways than Men and other genders, because of perhaps femininity or masculinity, and often those things are so. So it’s interesting because you specifically drew on women, but what we see in the bigger discourses in terms of forced migration and also resettlement is that the voices of men and their vulnerabilities are excluded, and so one of the things that we have to think about when we’re reading these kinds of data is to potentially not reinforce those marginalizations and potentially not reinforce stereotypes. IE, women are vulnerable, men are tough and strong. These are just very basic sort of ideas. But these notions prevail throughout and so when we think about constructing or CO creating, how digital technologies can really address some of those inequities, we have to be kind of thinking about, well, what do we already know that works and doesn’t work, and how are we sort of perpetuating or reinforcing some of those ideas within these new AI technologies and things? And I apologize if that’s a. An abstract idea, but it really comes back to, I think the essence of intersectionality is those identity constructs that shape the outcome, the health outcomes of people, and we can’t really disconnect, as you were saying, Ibukun the micro from the macro. And then one of our interests in this project is So, where is the mezzo in this where is the people that provide the care in our in our context, the connections that the primary care sector as well as the settlement sector have and who’s who’s doing what kind of work. And I really think that often, one of the big learnings for me was that the immigration and the settlement sector receives a lot of funding from our federal government, also from provincial funds to really look at supporting integration settlement and health, and often they are actually the first people or the first services that people receive. And so that brings us to then, what role does technology and digital health play within that sector, because if they’re the if they’re the first point of contact, one can imagine, then that, you know, like that, that might actually be more significant in terms of playing a role versus going to health, because that was one of our findings was that as a newcomer person, for example, an asylum seeker or a refugee, both under the umbrella of forced migration, those folks would not tend to access health. Right off the bat, that was one of the biggest things that we found was that primary care or accessing a community health center happens last so how can we forefront the the use of technology and health at the beginning, within the set, within the broader notion of resettlement and settlement context? So sorry, I went off a little bit there, a little bit winded, but really so compassionate care, then this is a really interesting topic, but I want to get back to that I would because I come from a critical orientation. I think we need to be able to operationalize compassion so that we don’t have the negative impacts of that, such as burnout and things like that, because we understand that resources have been constrained and that the when people access care, they usually access it with multiple comorbidities and very complex health issues. Yeah,

Ibukun Abejirinde 18:05
no, you’re absolutely correct. And I think from the interviews that we did so we spoke to 25 newcomers. And when I use that term, I use it very broadly to include economic immigrants, refugees, asylum claimants, those with precarious status, temporary foreign workers. So that’s the way we sort of pocketed it broadly. And when we spoke to 25 newcomers and nine service providers, settlement service providers, who provide primary care services, and one of the things that came out so strongly is more most of the providers we spoke to have lived experience themselves of being newcomers to Canada and while and on the one hand, that put them in a very optimal position to be able to meet their clients where they were at, to relate to them, to build that trust to develop the relationship quickly. It came at a very big cost to those providers at an individual level and even within the sector as a whole, at least from the primary care perspective, although I think, like it cuts across the sector as a whole, was that within the context of underfunding on the staffing, not having enough support at a systemic level for the settlement sector to provide these hugely demanding and very critical services, is that there was a lot of burnouts. That was the trade off, is providers themselves needed to go the extra mile to bridge the gaps that digital technology could not bridge, and that the system was not bridging, and so that came at an extra cost. So I appreciate the fact that you’re looking at the benefits on the one hand, but then at the expense of what? And I think that that’s something we need to keep top of mind.

Marco Campana 19:58
Yeah. I mean, I. Don’t accept your apology, Nancy, because I don’t think you went out of the scope. Because I think what you’re what you’re describing, is a broad, complex systems navigation for both those accessing care and those providing it. And the word for me, that always comes to mind when we have the and then and now, we’re layering digital on top of that. So forget the digital we’ve been talking about compassionate care probably for a long time. And how do you do it at the same the same time? We’re talking about the parallel processes of burnout. Virtual care layers something on top of a system and conversations and research that are still nuanced and undone and still works in progress and not undone, but works in progress. And so the complexity of that and then nuances. So as you described the difference, you know, there’s a lot of anecdotal or assumptions about the differences between men and women or ethnic groups. Forget about the diversity within those ethnic groups. So for example, if you can mention, you know, South Asians had bad experiences in Alberta. But what about nuances within those those groups? Or what about women from Afghan backgrounds versus Afghans in general, for example, right? The nuance in that care is something that is a huge conversation in our sector. And then, of course, the intersectionality. So you’re young, you’re a woman, you came as a refugee claimant, you’re living in poverty, and you’re, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You start to layer all of those pieces onto it, and now we layer a digital version on which may or may not benefit you. Maybe you are digitally literate, maybe you’re not, and is your provider digitally literate? So when we’re looking at that whole, that whole mess, that system, that kind of approach, I think you’re, you’re talking about what we what we need to be talking about, and we will get to some of the practical parts of the conversation. But I think it’s important to look at that, on that on that level, to say you’re describing the health system that also describes the settlement system, right is that is, as Ibukun is mentioning people, people who are trying to figure this out, who are underpaid and doing things on the side of their desks, serving clients who they’re not officially allowed to serve because of eligibility requirements, but they must serve because it’s compassionate to do so for example, which is another definition of compassionate care, right? So I think that there’s a it’s a big conversation. I’m glad you kind of put it in there, because I think that sets some of that context as well, so that projects like these can start to address and answer some of them, the sort of more practical questions, but we always have to have in mind that we’re sort of, we’re doing it in this context that is an un unfinished work in progress that we have not resolved yet. So as we talk about compassionate care, clearly my question would be, well, if we’re doing all of these studies, where are those studies then being operationalized in the healthcare settings, so that it’s not a study that has to be done externally, but there are questions that are being answered internally, with with accountability mechanisms in place to ensure that we are embedding compassion into the the healthcare system, for example. So we won’t go down that road, because I think, obviously those are works in progress, but, but I want to, I want to take us back a little bit more to the specifics. So Ibukun you wrote in an article for for Canadian diversity magazine that the why, a little bit of the why, right? It’s relevant to explore if and how the digitization of health care impacts the experience of compassionate care for marginalized groups, including newcomers. So what did you find?

Ibukun Abejirinde 23:26
Big question and but very interesting. And the way I always describe this to people is be careful if you want to be a researcher, because sometimes you don’t find what you’re looking for. Sometimes you do find what you’re looking for, and it’s not what you thought you were looking for. And then sometimes you find what you’re looking for, and it’s much more than what you were looking for. And I think in our case, we fall into the last bucket. It was opening up this Pandora’s box. First off the bat, it was there were mixed perceptions and experiences of virtual care. And the findings were interesting. We did see that, you know, if we’re using this idea, which is very important, of layering and how one person is constructed and positionally located along different axes on a social scale, some patients preferred preferred virtual care. Others preferred in person care. But what was interesting was their social identities, of how far along Am I my migration journey, or the gender of is this someone who identifies as a woman or as a man, or their ethnic and cultural backgrounds, their comforts, digitally with digital tools, and also clinical factors like mental hits, health status affected how people perceived virtual care. And you could have the same person who would say, oh, in the beginning, you know, it was scary for me, because one of the things we did ask as part of the interview. Use was the first time you were told that you were going to have a virtual encounter as a newcomer. How did that make you feel? What were your thoughts? And what was interesting was people use the words of I was afraid. I was unsure. You know, it was weird to me. I didn’t know if I wanted to go ahead with the call. But later along the line, as they warmed up to being in Canada, how the healthcare system work, figuring out the relationship, settling themselves within their new context, they started having more positive experiences, because then they appreciated that it was convenient, that it saved them time, because they could then use the time. It was like buying back the time that you would take, taking the TTC, to go to the physical clinic. You go that and you’re going to look for work, or you’re working somewhere, you’re working multiple shifts, or you’re just staying at home, if it’s someone who has kids at home and they don’t have childcare. And so it was convenient, and it saved time, it saved cost, but there were also restrictions in where they could access virtual care, right in anecdotal anecdotally, the language is virtual care was universal and ubiquitous, but it wasn’t really ubiquitous for everybody, for refugees and asylum claimants, for example, or people who have a waiting period, although the waiting period was lifted during the pandemic, you are sort of streamlining to where you can go for care if you’re uninsured or if you don’t have the interim federal health coverage. So that had limitations to who they could see. I’ve talked about the temporal effect. So we did see that people who were early migration zero to six months, in some cases, up to a year. Virtual care was more was a more challenging pill to swallow initially, but once people started settling down, warming up, getting a sense of the system, understanding the trade offs and the options, then you know that we’re more open to it. One of the pieces of work we just finished is a comic that we co designed with a group of four newcomers based on the findings of this study, and we translated it to six different languages in addition to English, and I think you can include that in your show notes. Another thing that was interesting that we found was the trickle down effect, and it was actually that strand of findings that led us into the second project that we now call the beyond technology, beyond healthcare effects, which was their initial for most people, the initial overall reaction to virtual care had nothing to do with virtual care per se. So like I mentioned, people will say I was afraid, I was worried, I was unsure. And when we reflected, as a research team, we’re like, okay, like, it’s just a phone call. Why are people, you know, conceptualizing virtual care using that language? And when we dug in deeper, we found that their overall migration and settlement experiences, experiences in the pre arrival and early arrival stages, actually shaped and framed their expectations of healthcare in general. So for those who had very rough journeys, who experienced discrimination, social stigma, being gas lit, not being able to access housing support find a job easily, they translated and extrapolated these negative experiences to their expectations of healthcare. So it was more like you’re going to call me to have a conversation with me about my health. Who are you? You know, for those who are precarious status, is this going to be surveilled by the police? How is it going to affect, you know, my hearing, who is this person? I don’t know them. I can’t see them. So it was all that complexity. So we talked about how, you know, it became beyond technology. So that’s why the second project was beyond technology. Became beyond technology, because these were experiences that were used to describe virtual care that had nothing to do with virtual care, and to use Nancy’s language, we have to go to the more structural macro level determinants that shape these things. And I think the last point I will make regarding clinical findings is mental health was a very important modifier to how people experience compassionate care and virtual care, and there have been similar studies that found what we found, and that was the fact that even though, in general, most of everyone we spoke to did say that having a pre existing relationship with the provider facilitated a better virtual care experience, most people admitted that depending on the provider and The patient, it was possible for them to make the efforts to bridge the gap. However, particularly in those who had mental health challenges, it was very difficult. We did have one particular person who had established a relationship with her provider before the pandemic hit, she was going through severe mental. Challenges, which was actually influenced by social determinants of health. Her refugee claim had been denied multiple times, and her provider, pre pandemic, had been the one helping her navigate these complexities. And then the pandemic hit, and she was told, oh, all of your consultations with your provider is going to happen by the telephone. And she just went downhill. From there, she shared with us how this person who she had known prior became somebody that she didn’t know at all because she said she can’t see me, she can’t feel me. So how does she know exactly what I’m going through? So that that trust that had been established actually became broken because of virtual care? So yeah, I could go on and on about that, but just to give you a bit of the layers of the things that we discovered which then led us down to start this other project called Beyond technology, beyond healthcare. It’s

Marco Campana 30:51
interesting because, as you were speaking before this last example, I was thinking exactly about trust and rapport, because so much of health and even I mean, many social services have become very just transactional, right? And there’s there’s an expectation that you understand that, and you know that we’re going to have a conversation and I will tell you what to do next, or I’ll send you a prescription, or this 10 minutes is up, and you’ve moved on, because it’s and and for someone who doesn’t know that system, and in the context that you’re describing, comes out of a very hard experience, migration experience, and doesn’t have an opportunity to set up trust and rapport with that person, that transactional experience over the phone is fear inducing and anxiety inducing, potentially. But then it’s so fascinating to hear that even after you’ve established that trust and rapport, it can be broken based on the service modality alone. It’s the same person, allegedly, that’s that’s now long, no longer sitting across from you, but you’re having that conversation with that you had established a relationship with. And I wonder what does that mean for our systems of care? If, because that’s that, that’s a that’s a specific nuance, and it’s a specific group of people, but surely that those feelings in that experience must translate into other groups in society, which means it’s a bigger and even if it doesn’t writ large, it’s still a microcosm of an existing problem of some sort. So without delving into massive systems change, what is what does that mean for like as a settlement practitioner, let’s say, or a healthcare practitioner, I kind of already know this stuff, but I’m expected to be transactional in my approach. What can I do? Or what do you recommend people in those settings can do to at least create something a little more humane or or rapport building, or at least slow things down slightly in the process, to make sure that someone is comfortable and feels that compassion.

Ibukun Abejirinde 32:44
Nancy, do you want to Sure

Nancy Clark 32:46
this is my brain’s going all over the place. So Marco, one thing is that it’s not that people are not necessarily not doing anything it but I think, and, and it’s a hard question to answer, I think what I’d like to maybe touch upon is go back to the notion of pre arrival experience. And a lot of the time there’s this discourse that, oh, when people they’ve been granted refugee status, meaning they’re granted some security and safety, as defined by the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees. And so with that, you know, notion of safety, there’s this tendency to forget what happened before people arrived, and it’s something that I think matters in terms of how we deliver care. So sometimes I think more education can be helpful in terms of what were those pre arrival experience? Because most refugees are residing in camps or host countries prior to them, waiting to come to Canada. During those experiences, there’s very little health care access. Sometimes there’s issues of violence, there’s issues of trust, so the disruption of war and the displacement already comes with these pre migration experiences. So you’re right. There are some sort of expectations post migration that I’m going to be cared for, looked after, etc. And then we have this bigger sort of discourse of trauma, and we look at it as a one point in time situation. It is not. It is what we found with research is about one in five people that have been affected by displaced dis. Placement related to violence of war experience, some sort of mental health condition. That does not mean that people go on to develop post traumatic stress disorder and that, you know, they’re going to be living with these conditions. What where it matters is in the resettlement context, is that what we know is that that context, in and of itself, can compound pre existing risk factors for mental health, what we call mental health, when I say mental health, there’s a distinction between a mental health condition or overall health promotion, social determinants, type of things. So one of the things that does compound risk is this notion of sort of how we’re treated, and that’s what you’re talking about, about experiences of discrimination, distrust, and I think I don’t have the answer, but I think that understanding a little bit more about the pre migration experience and context and where people come from, I’ve heard over and over again In different research projects with working with different migrant groups that it matters that the provider knows something about me. So in other words, the burden of responsibility for compassionate care should not be, should be on our health system to actually try to understand, you know, where people are coming from their situation, and there should be more flexibility. So compassionate care and virtual care can be seen as sort of these, one on one, inter interactions, but not necessarily. Sometimes it involves more than this sort of provider care. You know, care seeker person. What we know is that the majority of people experience severe language barriers, severe literate literacy barriers, as you mentioned already, with health system navigation and so one way where technology can be really beneficial is with mitigating some of the language barriers, and when we and this can be very tricky, because mental health is highly stigmatized, so it begs the question, what are our studies showing, and how is Mental Health sort of constructed when this is a highly stigmatized across, you know, cross culturally, globally and also within our own Canadian culture, you will not find people saying, Hi, I’m here because, you know, I have depression, or I Have post trauma, post traumatic stress disorder, what you will find is, I can’t sleep at night. So when we’re talking about compassionate care, it’s the burden of responsibility should be around looking at so what can we do to make to if you’re not sleeping at night. What is the root cause of that? Well, I have to travel two hours to get to work, and then I have to work 14 hours, and then I’m worried about not making enough money because I have to send money back to my family. That’s also what you know. So it becomes this whole really understanding and knowing the context and the situation of the person. And so when we think about developing trust, that’s that’s where I think it lands, is what do? What do I need to know about you, and positioning oneself as somebody that, how can I, how can I learn about what what matters to you, what’s important to you? They may be coming in because, you know, they’re for various reasons. Well, they’re anemic, but they’re anemic because they can’t afford nutritious food. So for me, that’s where I see that trust and that compassion really being operationalized, is if we can try to think about coming at it as you know, what do we need to know about this person and their context of why they’re here? And not to forget that what happened before someone comes doesn’t stop when somebody arrives in Canada, it’s actually it, it gets compounded. It’s a very complex situation. And yes, over time, acculturation, people get used to navigating systems, etc, etc, but, but that doesn’t also necessarily mean. That there, as you were mentioning, there’s more trust or more equitable access. So that’s sort of my response to some of the things that you’ve been talking about, and especially coming back to the notion that Ibukun mentioned that most of the providers in the settlement sector, particularly, have lived experience already, and so really paying attention to some of like that, should, should they take the burden of all of that like, like, really, as a society, we need to support those people and, and, yeah, in terms of looking at the broader, sort of the broader notion of, I always go back to the structure and and how sort of that social justice or distributive justice works In terms of equitable distribution of resources, so that we’re not just talking about virtual care and primary care, or we’re not just focused on the settlement sector, but really, how do we make sure that there’s equitable distribution of health resources and then recognition that there are differences between social identities and groups, but there’s also some similarities and things, and we also know a lot. So how do we implement what we know in terms of promoting equity, trust and better care?

Ibukun Abejirinde 41:33
Nancy, actually, I feel like you were picking my brain and answering that question, because the first thing for me, you know, when Marco asked that question, like, within the sector, what is the one on one thing? Let’s, let’s, let’s not try to make any policy changes or systemic shifts. The settlement sector is doing such a great job. I have to say, like, I have a lot of respect for settlement workers. You know, like I shared earlier, Nancy also acknowledged, now it’s the lived experience puts people in a great position to be able to understand preemptively, just because you’ve gone through it, many settlement sector providers can say, I kind of know what this person is going through. And so there’s a, there’s a great work being done there. But in querying that question of at the expense of what, what, where it’s burnout and it’s fatigue and it’s compassion deficits, there’s actually a term called compassion fatigue that comes out of the moral injury and moral distress when you’ve identified the need and you’re trying to address it, but because of all these other complexities in the system that you’re leaving with, you can’t address that need. And that’s something that we’re seeing happening with care providers all around, both within and outside the settlement sector. And so we, we started querying this idea of the need to advocate and support or engender systemic compassion. Because compassion has, currently, I think the conversation has currently been limited to the one on one interaction, and I think that there’s just so far that one on one interaction can go. We have to start looking at what are the systems and structures that enable and foster people to be able to deliver compassionate care at the individual level. So that’s one to what Nancy was saying about pre arrival work. So I think that one of the things that can be done is to really find a way, and I think this is a way that technology can help to expose newcomers. Again. When I’m using that term, I use it very broadly, immigrants and refugees to Canada, about the healthcare system and the social system, pre arrival, or area arrival. I know that you know, at least for economic immigrants, you will get this sort of blurb from IRCC when you’re coming in that says, here’s a pre arrival list. And there’s all these hyperlinks of, how do you find a job? How do you get a house? But there’s the health issues are usually silenced and not paid attention to. But what our research shows is that the gaps that the social system ends up not being able to meet the social determinants, they end up falling at the bedside of the clinician. So we talked about this concept when we’re looking at it temporarily is from border to bedside, structural determinants of health, social determinants of health, they land at the bedside of the care provider. So how do we handle these at an upstream level? And so I think there’s knowledge and expectations setting that can happen, pre arrival or early arrival, because when people manage their expectations or know what to. Expect. They don’t feel disappointed and let down, and that shapes their overall experience, right? So it’s, for example, you’re going to your doctor or your dentist, and they’re like, oh, you know you’re coming in, and you would just wait about 15 minutes and it should be fine. And then you go there and you wait for three hours. That already tankers your entire experience, even if you get the care eventually that you’re looking for. The third thing I wanted to talk is about data mobility. I feel like migration is about mobility from a policy perspective, you know, you can say what are the different factors that shape why people move, but I think that there’s an opportunity here, from a technological perspective, to look at what is the data, the information and experience that people are coming into Canada with, and how can we receive that information very early in their journey, so that before they have that first conversation with an intake worker or with a physician or with a social worker, somebody already knows the backstory without asking them to rehash it all over again and possibly re traumatizing them. We don’t have very good interoperability of data sharing within the sector. So if I go to one walking clinic and I narrate my entire experience, and then I have to go somewhere else. My data doesn’t move with me as a newcomer, and then I have to rehash it all over again. And I think that that is frustrating and but that’s something that can be fixed. Like that’s a problem that can be fixed. Um, the fourth thing I will say, I’m sorry if I’m just going on, it’s just because this is one of the rich Pandora’s, you know, you open the Pandora box and there’s all this thing in it. Wow. This is great, please. Yeah. Nancy had talked about one of the surprising things that came at us through the dialogs, and we’ve seen continue to manifest afterwards, is the muscle level, which is the sector, the settlement sector, the providers, community organizations. There’s a lot of power activity, energy that is happening there. The one of the challenges is that it seems all of this knowledge and expertise is siloed, because the sector is not speaking to each other. Organizations are not talking to each other enough. Like I appreciate this podcast, because, like you said in the beginning, it’s opening up the conversation more broadly, and when we had the beyond technology, beyond healthcare dialogs, at the very last day, which was a co design event where, which bringing people together to co design, what does the best in class experience look like for newcomers? There was just so much energy in the room and hope that filled the space, because everybody felt there’s something I can learn from you that you’re already doing and I can adopt in my practice. There’s this insight you share during the breakout group that I had, you know, I thought that’s the solution to the problem we’ve had in my organization for five years. And so that event, you know, through it, we’ve built this community of practice. We now have a newsletter. We’re hoping that we can keep that community engaged and energized, but I feel like there’s a lot of power and richness that can come from different organizations coming together to support each other and exchange knowledge, and I think you do that very well with the km hub, where you know you just have all the information so that people can be aware of what others are doing. And I think the last thing I will say is what has become clear through our study is compassion. Compassionate Care is a social justice concept. It’s not just, and that compassionate care cannot just end at the clinical encounter or at the bedside. Compassionate Care, from a provider’s perspective, is advocating for better policies. It’s supporting your patients to have good civic engagement, to understand their rights, to know how to advocate from for themselves, to understand the resources that is accessible to them. I really feel like the second sector is doing quite a good job under challenging circumstances to do that very well. I feel like the rest of society needs to come on board and support that sort of work.

Marco Campana 49:10
Thank you. Thank you both. I want to unpack the last thing, because when you say compassionate care is a social justice issue in theory, so too is virtual care or access to digital inclusion and digital equity is a social justice. If we’re going to be able to do virtual care effectively, we need to look at the question of digital inclusion from both the newcomer in this case, or the client or stakeholder or community side, but also the service provider. And I know that that that conversation came up in your in your in the first project in particular, like, how do we ensure that these people were now layering a second system on in terms of how they provide service. Can do that and do it in a way that that they feel competent, capable, and it’s not on the side of their desk. And and also, how do we ensure if we are moving to new versions of accessing service through virtual care? That the people who want to be able to access it have the skills, technologies, bandwidth, you know, abilities, in order to do that. So I wonder, and I know that came up as a conversation for you, is that part of the conversation that this group has been in the CO design or in the work that you’re doing, in the beyond technology project you’re looking at,

Ibukun Abejirinde 50:21
yeah, great question. Marco, yes, it did come up. I feel like between compassionate care, like you said, compassionate care, virtual care, digital health, AI trust is central to everything, and the the inability of certain groups within population to engage meaningfully, meaningfully and fully to the extent that they want within a very digitally enhanced society, whether it’s healthcare or the banking sector or education or whatever it is, I think that’s a very crippling effect. And some of the things that we talked about that came out from the CO design is lack of access to the hardware, right, lack of or insufficient, let me say, because we are now seeing a demographic shift in the profiles of newcomers, asylum seekers, refugee claimants that are coming in that is that goes beyond the stereotype of, oh, you know, they can’t speak English, or they have this every accent. We’re seeing a rise in highly educated professionals who are coming in so that digital literacy, but also digital comfort, right to be able to demonstrate your skills comfortably in a for lack of a better word, psychologically safe environment, right? So internet bandwidth, one of the one of the exercises that we did at one of our engagement sessions, and we’re talking about trying to walk through, what does a person need to need we need to do to be ready for their virtual care appointment? And a person we lived experience as a refugee was in the room, and everybody was talking of, you know, going through, you know, they have to schedule the appointment, and they click on the Zoom link and blah, blah. And someone said, Well, you have to recognize that we come into the country and we actually have mobile phones, smartphones, but nobody really realizes that some of the smartphones we come with are not compatible in Canada, and that’s one challenge. So we have to solve that compatibility issue right with the same card fitting in and everything. But then the second bit is, you can’t get a mobile line without an identification or a sin. And if I’m a refugee claimant and I don’t have all my documents, or I’m someone with precarious status, I don’t have that so I can have a smartphone, it doesn’t mean I have access, and we’re like, oh, we need to go back, like the journey starts very early on. So we need to really think about the step to step of how we’re designing digitally enabled systems. And we have to design for equity, because if we design for the least group, the most marginalized group as as a professor, Stephanie Nixon, will call it the bottom of the coin, everybody else will be able to have access. But I think there’s this predominant where we are designing and using technology in a very transactional and commercial way, where it’s it has to work for the majority, and once it works for the majority, we don’t care about anybody else, so I feel trust, equity access very key in how we’re supporting populations to be able to access and make the best of the potential of virtual care and other forms of technology.

Marco Campana 53:56
That’s another great example of nuance in digital inclusion. So you’ve got the phone, well, so what if you, if you if it’s not compatible, or you can’t use it, or the system that you’re trying to connect to isn’t mobile friendly, for example, which we find a lot in the settlement sector. I want to ask one question related to because we’re talking about virtual care, and in person care a lot. And in a nuance in our sector, we’ve been talking a lot about hybrid care, the idea that you can access services in person and online, remotely and and move fluidly between those. So it’s a high bar that we’re trying to reach. But do you do is that part of this conversation of virtual care as well, that client that people accessing health can do both. They’re not just an in person client or a virtual client, but they’re a client who will sometimes come into in person and sometimes on the phone or by video call, or what it might be, is that part of this conversation, or is it more of a binary kind of either or?

Ibukun Abejirinde 54:47
No, I think it did come up in the reimagining virtual care study, but it came up with a but so when we finished the study, we did go to the three different community organizations that partnered with us. And supported us, and we’re sharing the findings. And it was interesting that compassionate care was conceptualized as giving the patient the option to choose what is best for me right now, do I want to have a virtual appointment, or do I want to come in person? And one of the feedback we got was for the patient to be able to choose in an empowering way. We have to assume that they’re making an informed decision. And if you don’t understand the Canadian system and how care is delivered, and what circumstances I can make a diagnosis or not, or the information that the clinician has, then the patients may not always know this is the right thing for me right now, it takes a while, and it takes a different kind of patience to be able to say I can make the decision for myself. And this is something we captured in the comic, the Knowledge Translation comic that we released recently, which is you will see in the comic. The comic tells the story of two different newcomers, different genders, and their experience with virtual care, navigating that decision making. And for both of them, there was always this prompt of, would you like your next appointment to be virtual or in person? And you will see in the comic the person thinking and the woman, in one case, who had a toddler at home, was like, I don’t think this is going to work for me, because the only way she had had a virtual encounter and the baby was crying in the background, and she’s like, the only way you work for me is if I can get my friend to come look after the child, or my husband stays at home with me. So it’s all of that. What are the decisions, or what is the information that people are using to make a decision about what is right for right now and for me, and I think it’s going to change from day to day, from circumstance to circumstance. So hybrid definitely needs to be the option. The Interview showed that people felt that virtual was good in this context versus that context, going back to Nancy’s point of, we have to think about what works, what doesn’t work, for whom, under what circumstances, why. But Nancy, I don’t know if you have anything to add on that point.

Nancy Clark 57:10
No, I don’t have too much to add. One thing that strikes me in this conversation is sort of the that question that you just said, but also, what role does virtual, digital health play in the overall healthcare experience of newcomers? And I think that there could be a lot of positive a lot of I think one of the words that was used was empowering, or empowerment. And sometimes we come at this from a deficit base, meaning that, you know, there’s this tendency when we apply intersectionality to look at the marginalization, the the lack of voice, the lack of agency. But there may be, in fact, what newcomer the knowledge that newcomers bring, or newcomers that have been here for a while, that hold particular expertise. And so how can we harness that knowledge to promote change? And so I always think about this notion of belonging and connection. And if we come back to can virtual care in whatever modality is used, if it can promote belonging and connection, I think then we can also address the issue of trust and perhaps even well being. What we want to do is make sure that it doesn’t further what I mentioned earlier, marginalized, stigmatize or re stereotype. So even in the process of CO creating tools, or, you know, there’s a lot of work being done in M health now with promoting these apps that can have better access for mental health, for example. But, but you know, if we’re co creating like, I think the inclusion of people and their knowledge is important for creating these new tools and technologies, but also when we’re creating that, that that we don’t re stereotype in a way that, you know, like I said, force reinforces this marginality versus really thinking about, You know, people already come with knowledge and again, what I know from my research is that for newcomers, it’s important that providers know something about them, but it’s also important that providers don’t box or categorize people in ways that a. Make assumptions that this is going to be a barrier for you or not, and so I think coming back to that notion of empowerment. And you know, it may be that people are already quite used to some technology, but we know that globally, there is a digital divide as well, as well as when we think about gender as well, so meaning people that are more literate, literate tend to have better access. People that have better wealth tend to have better access. And generally, that tends to not be women in general, and making that generalization, so it just comes back to some of the points that we become raised already earlier. And I would sort of leave with, you know, how can we promote compassionate care, but also better connection and belonging for newcomer people in Canada,

Marco Campana 1:01:05
I feel like we could have this conversation for a few more hours, but I want to be respectful of your time, and I mean, maybe we will revisit this in a future conversation. So I just the final question I want to ask then for you, Ibukun, is there’s a lot of places this work has taken you, the Pandora’s boxes, as you mentioned, and there’s a lot of places it could go. So where are you hoping, or where are you taking this work from here in terms of next steps?

Ibukun Abejirinde 1:01:27
Um, good question. So I think one is recognizing the energy, the assets, um, that already exist, and elevating, championing and maintaining that which we’re doing through the community newsletter, and sort of trying to keep a community of practice engaged for sharing, mobilization and moving the work forward. The second is the last day of the dialogs. Was a co design event about designing a best in class experience for newcomers, and what came out very clearly is within the specific context for immigrants and refugees. Technology has a role that it can play in supporting navigation and enhancing that experience, but it has to be human powered. We can’t leave technology to do its thing by itself. There’s what technology is great at doing, and I think we need to champion and ensure it’s doing that, but there’s that human connection that technology is not able to bridge. And so we’re thinking of what would it mean to deliver a best in class experience that is human powered, technology enhanced and is supported by very transparent, accountable and equitable governance framework. So we sort of have straw drug ideas that came out of that CO design event, and now needs to secure some funding to be able to do some interventional work to translate those ideas into a prototype and test it and see how it works to support navigation and to enhance the settlement experience, we’re also still disseminating our work to different audiences. Upcoming webinar that will happen with n4 we’re going to be at the metropolis social determinants of health conference to share some of our findings, disseminating the comic that I shared about which you can put in your show notes. And there’s continued work now in putting together the paper, a paper which is more to an academic audience, but translating that into this idea of intersectionality as acknowledging that they are existing solutions that we can leverage. And what does it mean to get that work going? So I feel like that’s one place we are at now where we’re seeing very clearly that at their mechanisms at the miso level. And when I say that, I’m talking about within the settlement sector and from community organizations that can be activated to get things done despite the limitations within the overall, broader system, and so thinking through and talking through, what does it mean to be able to do that work within pew region? One of the things that is coming up, and I’m sure you’re aware that there’s a crisis of trying to support refugee claimants and asylum seekers who are coming in, are trying to navigate finding shelter, food, settling. There’s workshops that have been, I’ve been co leading with the Region of Peel, Mississauga oht and the local immigration Partnership, which is pure newcomer Strategy Group, to think through, how do we build accessible, equitable and quality pathways for refugee claimants and asylum seekers to be able to navigate the system in a way that is compassionate, that is trustworthy and is responsive to their needs. So just a couple of things that have been coming up. Nancy, I don’t know if there are other things I may have missed that you want to add as well. No,

Nancy Clark 1:04:56
no, I think that’s pretty thorough. We’re pretty I’m pretty. Excited about that conversation, and it’s, it’s sort of like we’re trying to catch up with you know, we’re already live, we already have all these complexities. And as you said, Marco, now we’re adding the digital solution. And so just to be mindful again, that we’re not saying that the digital culture is the solution, however, it can be very a very useful tool when used appropriately, and that really that human experience is at the heart of care for providing the best care, the best equitable care and the best compassionate care.

Marco Campana 1:05:43
I think that comes through really strongly. So fingers crossed for the funding, but it sounds like there’s lots of touch points now and in the future where people can find out and maybe tap into the work as well. So thank you both. Thank you. I’ll just is there anything I haven’t asked you or that you want to make sure people know about before we finish up? This has been a really rich and interesting conversation and lots to think about. But is there anything that you’re dying to say that I haven’t asked you or given you the chance to throw onto the table?

Nancy Clark 1:06:11
Well, I just want to put in another plugin for mental health. I guess I feel compelled, because that’s sort of something I’ve been trying to work on and understand, especially when it comes from different cultural worldviews and perspectives. And I wonder if we make that assumption that the digital that these tools that are, you know, AI, you know, info use, AI, if that is something that would be a natural go to culturally speaking. Because, as I mentioned before, mental health is is a social construct. And yet, globally, we have this dispo, you know, we have these mental health conditions across cultures, such as severe, persistent mental illness, and all the way to, you know, post traumatic stress, stress, schizophrenia, etc, etc. So when we’re thinking about that too, to think about what would be the first thing that people would need or go to for support. And so I guess I’m answering my own question, coming back to this notion of the human experience and that that shouldn’t be disconnected from these tools. I

Marco Campana 1:07:35
think that’s a really important point through all this, some people talk about with AI, for example, the AI sandwich start with the human, use AI as a tool, and then end with the human to make sure that everything is is not hallucinating or is not leading people astray, for example. So Ibukun any final thoughts?

Ibukun Abejirinde 1:07:53
I think this is a conversation starter, and there’ll be many more conversations to have. I think for us, it’s we’re very we think as in a very applied way. So it’s like, Okay, we have the theory, we have the framework, we have the tools. We know all of these things. What? How does that translate into action? And so I’m very curious, and literally having an invitation to say, anyone who has ideas on how to move this work forward and the role that we as applied researchers could play in contributing to that work, we’re happy to support and champion it. Thank you very much for having Marco.

Marco Campana 1:08:30
I love that idea too. I appreciate that because I think there are people who have ideas and questions but have no outlet for them, so that’s a great invitation. I appreciate that. Thank you both conversation and as you said, we’ll continue it, but a lot here for people to reflect on. So thank you for that.

Nancy Clark 1:08:48
Thanks for the opportunity. Marco thanks Ibukun,

Ibukun Abejirinde 1:08:50
thank you.

Marco Campana 1:08:52
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes wherever you listen to your podcasts or also on my site at marcopolis.org I appreciate you listening. And if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed, or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website or [email protected] Thanks again.

Welcome to episode 45 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I chat with Tracey Mollins from AlphaPlus, an organization that provides digital support and solutions from peers in Ontario’s literacy community.

Tracey is a Professional Learning Specialist – Education and Technology at Alphaplus. She has worked in adult education at community programs, school boards, colleges, universities, unions and network organizations. Her work is informed by her experience as an instructor, program worker and researcher as well as project experience developing e-learning strategies, blended or distance curricula and models for online instructional design. She is especially interested in investigations into connectivism ~ diversity, autonomy, interactivity and openness + creativity, collaboration, camaraderie, critical thinking, justice, kindness, freedom and fun ~ in digitally-mediated networks.

I’ve written that I think that the Immigrant and Refugee-serving sector needs an AlphaPlus to help support our hybrid service delivery evolution and work. I wanted to talk to Tracey to find out more about how they do their work and what we can learn from and replicate.

Some of the questions we discussed:

Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.

Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 45 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I chat with Tracy Mullins from alpha plus an organization that provides digital support and solutions from peers and Ontario’s literacy community. Tracy is a professional learning specialist on education and technology at alpha plus, she’s worked in adult education, community programs, school boards, colleges, universities, unions and network organizations. I’ve written before that I think that the immigrant and refugee serving sector needs and alphaplus to help support our hybrid service delivery evolution and work. So I wanted to talk to Tracy to find out more about how they do their work and what we can learn from and replicate. Our sector has seen an increase in awareness about how digital technology can be part of a useful and practical service intervention model bringing along some workers and organizations that were more skeptical before the pandemic alphaplus has done a lot of work during had after the pandemic and before the pandemic, to move these models long to ensure that digital technology is integrated in an inclusive and equitable way. And I think you’ll find this a really useful conversation and of interest to anyone who’s thinking about what their sector any nonprofit or charitable sector might need, when it comes to supports, interventions, and an organization like alpha plus to provide them with some direction, I hope you find it a useful conversation. Welcome, Tracy to the technology and human services podcast. I wonder if you can start maybe by just telling us a little bit about yourself, your background and what brought you to the work that you’re doing now?

Tracey Mollins 1:30
Yeah, so I’m I working at alpha plus. And I work there as the Professional Learning Consultant. So my, my bailiwick at alpha plus is working with cohorts of adult instructors in the literacy and basic skills field, and mostly on on questions around blended learning, and integrating digital technology into teaching and learning. So alphaplus has a much broader

Tracey Mollins 2:02
remit for digital technology. But that’s my my area will probably talk about the other things we do a little bit later. And I started as a volunteer tutor in a literacy program in Toronto here.

Tracey Mollins 2:16
And then I worked as a as a supply instructor, and then as a link instructor at the Toronto District School Board. So that was my first full time paid position as an adult educator was in the Link program and that ESL literacy class, which was fantastic. And then oddly, I got that class closed eventually. And I started teaching in a computer lab at the at the school board, which was quite a weird experience. And, and after the school board, I went back to community based literacy, actually, in the program where I had been a volunteer, I worked there for a couple of years. And after that, a group of literacy, workers from across the country started a journal called literacy. And I became the publisher of literacies, for about six years, was funded through the National Literacy Secretariat, and was part of that movement of sort of research and practice and trying to create a pan Canadian sort of professional learning network for literacy workers, because nothing like that sort of existed. And the the purpose of literacies was to start a conversation between literacy practitioners and literacy, education, researchers create that conversation. So that was part of it that but at that time, and after that, since then, I’ve been working mostly on contracts, and different all kinds of different projects, often projects that include some element of digital technology. And I came on staff at alpha plus about five years ago.

Marco Campana 4:16
I love it. I love hearing people’s meandering kind of paths. But it’s great that you’ve also worked in the settlement sector, which is, which is kind of where this, this podcast is kind of centered. And also, I just came out of a conversation earlier this morning about building communities of practice and collaboration and things like that. And so I wonder how how, how successful was that effort because it’s so important to bring practitioners together with each other, but also with researchers and policymakers and decision makers at a broader level in the sector. And I’m curious how that contributes to the work that you do at alpha plus now just having had that experience of convening and trying to create collaboration.

Tracey Mollins 4:54
Yeah, no, I it has a powerful impact on the way I think about it. It’s, it’s a real shame that work kind of stopped when the National Literacy Secretariat was, I don’t know what you call it defunded changed. But because I first experienced it as a practitioner, I went to some the OISE here at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, they, they had some opportunities for practitioners to come in and work on small research and practice projects with a researcher from Boise. And that it was such a great experience, it was such a interesting way to learn and to understand my role as a, you know, the teacher as researcher role that you’re that you’re really always in. But it made it sort of intentional and, and because of the, because you had to do the reflective practice piece to be part of it, it made that piece of it much more intentional, as well. So I certainly saw the power of it, in terms of advancing my own practice, as an instructor, and then when when I was involved in the OISE, had a thing called the festival literacies, that was part of Ontario’s contribution to that pan Canadian network. And I was involved in a lot of projects there. And it was it, it did, it was a very powerful thing for all the people who participated in it, just in terms of being able to collaborate and to connect with each other, but also that sort of intentional examination of of their practice, always with the idea of, you know, making it more more relevant, more responsive, more engaging for learners who are coming to our program. So,

Marco Campana 6:53
I mean, yeah, that intent that intentional reflection is, it’s such a luxury I find in our sector and in so many others, but it’s so important if you can actually bake it in or build it into your work, because it just has an impact. It can shorten timelines, right? If you have time to reflect, you have time to change and iterate and maybe improve, right? Yeah,

Tracey Mollins 7:11
no, for sure. For sure. And it was a practice that I when I was working in the Link program at the school board, that was full time, or considered full time, you know, nine to three classes every day. And I tried to bake it in there. But, and I actually was fairly I did it. Okay, you know, as as, as you do, then you get busy. Sometimes it falls away. But I did keep records of what I did. And I would look back on it and think about what work. But one of the things about sort of being part of a community when you do it is listening to other people’s reflections and having feedback on what you’re doing as well. Right. So I think that piece is also also really helpful. It’s, you know, we and we don’t get those opportunities. As much as meaningly. We’d like to but yeah, I think that.

Marco Campana 8:06
Yeah, I mean, it’s, I feel like it’s become I mean, it’s always been important, but it’s, I feel like it’s become even more important. In particular, over the last couple of years, right, we’ve seen a huge increase in awareness during the pandemic, because everybody had to pivot to online and remote, but in awareness about how digital technology can be a really useful part, but also a practical part of service interventions. And in our sector, it’s brought along some workers as well as organizations and leadership that were really more skeptical before the pandemic. And I’ve heard this conversation and other sectors as well. I’m wondering if you’ve seen a similar trend in the literacy sector, with with people who are realizing the usefulness and the place, right, the appropriate place of technology in their work?

Tracey Mollins 8:50
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don’t know if I would always characterize them as being skeptical. I think people could see the value of it, but I think it was lower down on their list of priorities in some ways, right? Because people were, they had curricular materials and activities and lessons that worked. They were sort of kitchen tested, they were and learners were engaged and, and learning what they wanted to learn. And so and so because of that, and because of this sort of time issue that always exists. It was something that a lot of people were doing sort of off the side of their desk, in a way, right? Oh, well think about it. And people did tell us they say oh, you know, I’ve been meaning to do this for ages, but it keeps slipping down the to do list because of so many other things that are happening. So I think people sort of had an idea of the value of it but

Tracey Mollins 9:51
not as a priority meeting. Right. So. So definitely with the pivot we were talking about That was, in another meeting, we were talking about a level setting

Tracey Mollins 10:05
activity. And I was thinking about that pandemic, in terms of being a level setting activity or event, right, where everybody sort of had to all the things they already knew, and all the things they didn’t know, yet, they sort of had to put all that into practice and kind of rise to the occasion. You know, so and, you know, it was an awful time, and a lot of people were being hurt in a lot of ways. And one of the outcomes for education, I think, across all jurisdictions of education with that it pushed us sort of rapidly along this road, that we’d been kind of ambling it down quite slowly. Before that, right. So I, you know, I mean, I think in some ways we were ambling we were sort of taking time to explore and evaluate and analyze. And, you know, how can this work, and we were doing it very, very slowly. But certainly, the pivot to remote learning during the pandemic kind of pushed us all into a similar place. So at the same time, which is unusual, right, in these times, right, everybody would be working from a similar place at the same time, so that afforded us a lot of interesting opportunities for professional learning, right, because there, there was a large group of people who wanted to learn the same thing at the same time. So that was kind of we actually worked with the Metro Toronto movement for literacy on something. Somebody who works at the charter school board started it. Her name’s Susan, the FAB, and she called it the Silver Linings cafe. Because it that was sort of the silver lining of it was that it did put us in this place where we could all learn the same thing at the same time.

Marco Campana 11:57
For sure, and the things that you were learning and working on the for alpha plus predated the pandemic predated the silver lining, if you will, because this is kind of the work that are parts of it, at least in terms of some of the services and the the help and the support that alpha plus provides. The literacy sector. Really, my sense is that, or I guess the question is, were you able to kind of hit the ground running with some of this stuff and just scale it up? Because it’s something that you were already working on?

Tracey Mollins 12:24
Yeah, no, we had? Yeah, for sure. We were in that position. Where we were, we had a sort of a bank of knowledge, a bank of resources, a way that we had learned how to work with practitioners. That’s quite that works quite well. So. So yeah, I mean, are first of all, like, everybody, right at the beginning to be at these meetings are like, wow, there’s just so much to do. And, and, and what what is the best thing to do so but as, as per usual, we kind of took our, our guidance was, what people were asking for, and what people were telling us. And, you know, some things really stood out in the beginning, of course, everybody had to learn how to use Zoom, and not just on their own computer, but how to help everybody get on zoom in on all kinds of different devices and in different configuration. So, you know, there were some basic things that really jumped out at us. But But yeah, and and I think also, I mean, I think one of the things is that there was a apple plus over the years had sort of laid some groundwork, right, so that people were in a place where even if they weren’t using digital technology, and all the ways that they ended up using it during that pivot, they they had been exposed to a lot of ideas, and they had sort of been thinking about a lot of things. So implementing it was a challenge, but the thinking behind it was sort of already percolating. And then, and we have obviously, different programs were in different places around that, but yeah,

Marco Campana 14:14
right. I mean, yeah, I’ve always looked to alpha plus as a sort of a role model organization, because you’re unique, at least in our sector, and in a research that we’ve been doing during the pandemic alpha plus kept coming up as something, you know, around digital literacy around digital inclusion, the you know, the research, the advocacy, the creation of resources, but certainly the support services as kind of a model that I see sectors like ours could could learn from sort of this central hub where this is the conversation. This is the expertise and people can come and know that they can learn from this place, but they can also get different kinds of help and support. I wonder if you’ve noticed yourselves as a unique entity in that way and and is it a wrap applicable model, I guess in other places?

Tracey Mollins 15:03
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I mean, we there’s an Oregon like, I don’t really know as much about them as possibly I should there’s an organization in California that’s similar, but on a much larger scale. I mean, California being a much larger place called Oh, 10. And I can’t remember what those initials stand for. But they they do similar work to us in some ways, and they’ve become sort of a hub for that. But I mean, I think so I think it’s, it’s taken a while, I think for alpha plus to get to this place in the field, and it steps slowly, in terms of the leadership role, and, and advancing that piece right around how sort of how that conversation between alpha plus and the field app. And that sort of evolved over the years, I feel when I came on. Five years ago, there was a project that was sort of waiting for me when I arrived, which was working on the paper, our alpha plus his position on blended learning. And I think that was a very interesting piece to do around saying what do we mean by blended learning, and not to say it in a prescriptive way, like everybody should be doing blended learning the way we think it is, but this is, these are the things that we that we think blended learning is, and this is, this is the way we think we can support the field to get to this place. And I think that was a really interesting exercise for us to go through. And, and now we have that paper that kind of grounds, our work and helps us decide what to do and what not to do right around our supporting people.

Marco Campana 16:58
So based on that, I mean, we’ve noticed that I would say, Well, I would say I’ve noticed that in the research that we’ve been doing in the sector is that your your approach, your the way you kind of center, work around digital literacy, digital inclusion, and blended learning was something that we really looked at as a sector as well, because it’s, it aligns really nicely with I think, the core values of our sector. And it was something that we saw as a, as a model to continue to kind of investigate. So not just the sort of the services and the support, but also just the way you approach technology. And thank you for the Oh 10 link, and now I’m on their site, I’m going to try not to look at it while we’re talking because it looks like such a rich, rich site of information, the outreach and Technical Assistance Network, and I’ll add it to the show notes, the Episode notes, so people can check it out as well. But yeah, there’s this there’s, I feel like there’s just such a possibility with things that we could learn from and, and, you know, replicate and scale, basically. So, I mean, let’s talk a little bit about that support model. You know, when I look at your site, I see things like coaching, quick tech help an educator network, a digital toolbox course, a Wayfinders, and community gabfests, as well as you know, offering custom one on one solutions for service providers. So I wonder if you can speak to what that ecosystem of supports? How is it how it’s evolved? And how it’s working?

Tracey Mollins 18:22
Yeah, sure. Um, so for everything we do? Well, maybe not. Yeah, for everything that we do. Our motto is, you know, learning first, technology second. So always behind the things that we do we learning is the first goal. We updated our our motto a little while ago to say, fun first, learning second and talk technology. Third, love it. Because we want to, because it’s important to engage people, right, and when people are engaged, and they can see, and they’re enjoying themselves, they feel like it’s a more pleasant way to go. So and it’s part of a sort of People First approach to the work, where we see ourselves, you know, more in a asset building role. And we we try to always start where people are at and help them get to where they want to go by listening to what what they have to say and and treating people well, knowing that people are the experts in their own context. So we don’t really come in with a lot of our ideas in the beginning, we do a lot of listening. I wasn’t around at alpha plus for all the conversations that evolved the coaching model, but But it’s definitely grounded in that idea that program workers and literacy practices are the experts of their own work. They know the requirements and goals of the learners they work with. And they just have a long and deep experience is supporting learning in their communities. And that there’s no one size fits all solution. And, and in our experience, you know, literacy workers are always trying to meet a lot of immediate, evolving, urgent, sometimes urgent needs in in the, in their programs and in the field. And the field is constantly changing. So coaches can help by taking on some of those change management roles. When people do want to make change in their programs, doing some of the research bringing the experience of other programs that we’ve worked with, who are trying to find similar solutions or dealing with similar challenges, or questions, we can help with planning and designing solutions. And sometimes we’re doing some training and providing some expertise in tools, and resources. And one of the roles that the coaches take on too is sort of to help projects keep moving, and not to slip down the To Do Lists too far. And so then I think you mentioned that quick tap tech help. And that’s the, the basis behind that is that a lot of programs, especially smaller programs don’t really have an IT department or IT support on site. So we’re there for that. So you can, if you’re, and you know, everybody knows what it’s like when you’re trying to do something new with technology, or you’re trying to remember something you did before and can’t remember how you did it, how frustrating it can be and how you can end up sort of scrambling down all these little rabbit holes as you’re trying to research it on the internet. So we have that service. So people can just get in touch with us and say I’m stuck in you helped me figure this piece out, right. And then that’s what we’re there. For. Sometimes people just get in touch with this kind of under that role, but and they’re just looking for a resource or something that they can’t find, or they heard somebody talking about in a webinar or something like that. So. So if either we have those answers at our fingertips, or because of our funding model, we have time to look them up. And maybe we can go down the rabbit holes a bit and find solutions for people and then bring back to them an answer that’s based on our research, right? So we can say we can look into these five things and era that advantages and, and drawbacks and each of those things? Well, and

Marco Campana 22:35
I mean, I can see the additional value, as well as that you’re not just like a tech help desk from Dell or something you actually understand. And you you had subject matter expertise in the sector. So you know, who these folks are their organizational cultures, the how they’re funded, even, which can have an implication on the kind of solutions that you might even recommend, right? And I imagine that’s incredibly valuable, to have that unique kind of approach as a as a as a, as a tech help desk, if you will.

Tracey Mollins 23:04
Yeah, no, we’re, we’re very grounded in the field, we, you know, we don’t know everything, but we do know a lot about what’s happening in the field. And, and, and what the parameters are burns. And sometimes when people are making choices, we know enough about their funding model to know, Well, you gotta go with the free choice, right? So that, again, you know, are the things right, so we don’t, we don’t sort of cloud the issue by bringing in a lot of things that are, you know, unaffordable or unattainable. So, you know, we have enough knowledge to be able to do that to sort of winnow things down. And when programs who are well funded or have maybe some project money and stuff come to us, we can, you know, we can expand the range of things that they can look at.

Marco Campana 23:53
For sure. And I mean, yeah, your connection to the sector, I’m looking at the, the virtual showcase, sessions that you’re running are and have run in the past. And you mentioned earlier that, that idea, kind of of knowledge mobilization, working within the sector, and what they know, because they’re experts in this as well. And the value of this peer to peer learning that you’re creating, where you’re bringing in people to talk about how I use tick tock to engage learners, right? Because, you know, again, people don’t have time to go down that rabbit hole, they hear, oh, you should be on YouTube, you should be on tick tock, you should be on Facebook, but But hearing the practical application in these sessions must be incredibly valuable for the for the other folks in the network as well.

Tracey Mollins 24:32
Yeah, it’s interesting, actually, because we’ve started including something in this showcases that, that field assets for because we were getting people to sort of talk about it. And, and people were saying we want to see more actual examples, right, like, of a, you know, a lesson with tic tock or something rather than just kind of talking about how we’re using it. So in the last session, which was about games and the He’s like Kahoot people used examples. And that was it was really fun. It was really interesting. And I think people really responded well to that. But yeah, for sure, I think when people can see how people are using something in their practice, in effective ways, it even if they don’t go to that particular tool, or that particular resource, it kind of opens your mind to possibilities that you might not have thought of before. And some of them can be very simple ideas. That don’t necessarily mean a lot of change, but small changes, starting around just different ideas about how to do things. And I we do here, and I think other researchers have found this, too, that sometimes people will hear about something this month, and they don’t really do, it’s just kind of in the back of their mind somewhere. And they don’t really do anything about it. And then one day, they’re working with a learner. And they all suddenly think, oh, yeah, I learned about acne. Yeah, that would really help this person, right in this situation. And they’ll go back to that, that resource, or that idea that they they heard about a long time ago. So it’s, it’s sometimes the impact can be immediate, you know, you see people like, the next day going, Oh, I tried this. And now they might write back to us and say, Oh, I tried it, and it was really fun. Or the impact that we probably it’s harder for us to quantify is how people are taking that on, and what it means for their practice in other ways, right? So how does it open up their mind to different possibilities? How does it make them think about digital technology in a more general sense, rather than around that specific tool? Right,

Marco Campana 26:50
so sometimes you can expand them down or narrow it into that tool, but sometimes it can help some expand them up into just that general sense of digital tools can be useful in different ways. And in a more kind of a generic sort of idea.

Tracey Mollins 27:05
Yeah, I think so. And I think when whenever you can get a group of practitioners together and foster conversation among them, I think the IT people really appreciate that. I know I always have, but just that learning from each other. And one thing we we hear sometimes when we when we’re talking to people, but you know, how do you like to engage in professional learning? And people will say, Oh, you know, what I really like is when I’m at a conference, and I have a hallway conversation with somebody, and they tell me something really, you know, I learned a lot there we have, I have lunch with somebody I’ve never met before. And we have a really good conversation about teaching and learning and stuff. And that’s what we tried to do with a gab fest. It’s a bit a bit weird, because we’re trying to create ad hoc conversation in a planned and scheduled manner. But but just those ideas that trying to give people opportunities just to talk to each other about whatever they want to talk about right around around their practice, especially using digital technologies, or teaching and learning.

Marco Campana 28:16
Well, it’s interesting, yeah, because it’s interesting, you say that, because I find it with digital, you’ve got to be intentional about serendipity almost, are intentional about creating those informal spaces, because they do just happen when you’re face to face at a conference or even in a workshop. And after you know, you’re walking away, you go for coffee or something like that. And we’ve heard a lot from folks in the sector that they’ve, they’ve had trouble kind of building that in without, because it doesn’t happen as naturally. Here’s your work. Here’s your webinar, here’s your q&a, and then we’re kind of done. So if they don’t build in some opportunities for breakout, or just like, here’s 20 extra minutes for everyone to stay in the virtual room and kind of, you know, mill about kind of thing. So So it’d be really interesting to see where where you get with the gab fests as potentially a model to kind of have that intentional serendipity.

Tracey Mollins 29:03
Yeah, it’s interesting, because that’s sort of what we talk about is the, in our description of it. Is that intentional serendipity? And what a weird idea that is. But, but yeah, so we Yeah, and we have people go into breakout rooms. And we give them a conversation starter, and we say if you talk about this fine, if you talk end up talking, and we don’t we’ve only done two of them. So we don’t actually even know sometimes what exactly they talk about in there. I mean, people tell us things when they come when they come back to the larger group, but we don’t really know. And I think that’s so yeah, so it’s it’s an evolving thing. We’re still trying to sort of figure it out. But yeah, just to give people some space to have those conversations that are fruitful and, and move their practice forward in unexpected ways, right.

Marco Campana 29:57
Yeah. And I mean, I guess it just creates a certain high are a level of accessibility if you can pull that off without having to require people to come physically together at a conference, which it’s just difficult for time, money, and and other resources, but, but if you can kind of replicate that in small chunks, then people, there’ll be people will continue to continue to continue to build those connections, regardless of where they are in the country. Yeah,

Tracey Mollins 30:22
no, I think so. Yeah, no, it’s true. It is, we don’t have lots of conferences, first of all, and then as you say, it’s the whole logistics and costs of getting there. So and it is something that we’ve thought about in terms of online learning is how do you create those spaces? Right? Because you do have to be more intentional about it. Right? They don’t happen by accident. So, right. So yeah, we’re trying to try to figure out that piece of like think instructors are trying to figure out that piece to write some of the ways. And some people have some interesting ideas. And I thought it was interesting, because when we went during the pivot, what during the Silver Linings cafes, you know, at the beginning, everybody was like, Oh, how do I get in touch with learners? Right? Like that was the main thing is just making contact with all the people who had been participating in programs and figuring that out? Because obviously, with some people, they had email connections and stuff, but not with everybody. And then how do I get everybody on Zoo? And then how can I find them something to learn? Right? Like, how can I get them connected to learning materials in this remote environment, but very quickly after that, people were like, Okay, now that I’ve figured out those pieces, the sort of logistical pieces how now how do I create engagement and space for learners to learn from each other and talk to each other and engage with, you know, the way they would in a classroom? It bricks and mortar classroom? Like how can I replicate those environments online, and I thought that was interesting, right? How quickly people came to around ideas around building community and sharing those kinds of ideas. So it was interesting, people shared lots of really cool, warm up ideas they were doing, and how they were kind of leveraging the fact that people were at home to talk about some different things, right? Like, bring your favorite ornament, and show it on Zoom and talk about that, you know, just doing some activities to sort of engage people differently in the online space. So it felt like a friendly and community space, just the way the bricks and mortar classroom could feel.

Marco Campana 32:46
Yeah, I mean, that creative resilience, we saw that in the settlement sector as well, people, you know, it was a big pivot, but within a week, a lot of organizations were, were just figuring it out and moving forward with their clients. Um, but what a what a difference I felt, I feel like it would have been tip have had an alpha plus to at least sort of gone to make a you know, the help desk and say, I’m freaking out, you know, can you help me at least figure out the logistics of zoom, because after that, that was the first hump. And then the second home was like, Okay, now being creative in using the tool. And because you’ve got sort of a, an ongoing community of practice, and you’re learning and sharing from what you’re hearing from others, you know, and I’m just looking at some of the past the wayfinding sessions, and just, you know, these are topics that are, that are that come up everywhere. And, and your connection to to your your community means that you could address these quickly and tell the story of how people in the sector themselves were addressing it.

Tracey Mollins 33:45
Yeah, for sure. And I think, yeah, it’s interesting, actually, one of those Wayfinders she was talking about, she participated in the Silver Linings cafes, and she was talking about how, when she, at the beginning, when she was just trying to figure out so many things, she was so exhausted, that she was finding it really hard to be creative. And she was spending hours trying to figure out how to connect with learners and doing things on email. And, you know, she said, she was just really, she, she got really tired and, and then and she said, You know, when I’m tired, I can’t be creative. And that’s why the Silver Linings cafes were why she really liked them, because she could figure out a lot of things there. And it made her less tired, so she could be more creative. And she was she was trying to figure out the other pieces of, you know, good learning, good learning environments, right, in an online in an online space. So yeah, yeah, I think it I think, having alpha I think a lot of people were happy to have alpha plus around during those days, and we were certainly busy but very happy to be busy as well. Yeah,

Marco Campana 34:58
no, I mean, that’s such a great story. I mean, it’s actually it feels like a huge success actually, in terms of the model, because for that one person, it’s like you described earlier, you know, they didn’t have to keep going down certain rabbit holes with the technology or the the engagement or the facilitation, because you were available to do that, as were others who came to those sessions. And so her ability to not be tired to be more creative to address things that maybe were more within her scope of interest or ability. She didn’t have to figure out that other stuff, because, you know, she got support from you and from from her peers. That’s a massive success in for an individual as well as the people who they’re serving.

Tracey Mollins 35:42
Yeah, know, for sure. Yeah. And that I mean, that’s our, our role. I mean, when we’d like doing those things, right, like, that’s so, you know, anytime we can do something like that, that, you know, that fulfills us as workers in the field. And, and that, it gives people a space to do the work that they should be doing. Right. Not worrying about how to access the zoom from an Android phone or, you know, yeah, I think so. You know, we heard all kinds of stories or people meeting learners in parking lots during the isolation days seems crazy now, doesn’t it? But you know, so the learner could hold up their device, and they could say, Oh, see, the button is there, right. Like,

Marco Campana 36:26
yeah, but that’s that makes all the difference then, right? Yeah,

Tracey Mollins 36:31
yeah. No, for sure. Yeah. But yeah, trying to describe it over a zoom session to somebody who’s, you know, it’s just, it’s crazy making?

Marco Campana 36:40
Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah, I mean, you, you were speaking a lot about the practitioner. So yeah, the practitioners, the teachers in terms of who you support, but you also at alpha, plus, you support program managers and coordinators, just around sort of broader technology integration. I wonder how the approach or the challenges are different between those groups? Yeah,

Tracey Mollins 37:03
it’s some. I mean, one of the things that’s interesting about it is that in our sector in the smaller part, and we tend to work more with the smaller programs.

Tracey Mollins 37:11
So in literacy in basic skills, there are programs that are in colleges, in school boards, and in community based settings. So often, the colleges in terms of digital technology, they have a support system around them in their college, so we don’t work as much and little bit, but not as much with those programs. And sometimes school boards, it depends, school board programs can be quite different. So the Toronto District School Board is massive. In some school boards, it’s the literacy program is much smaller. So we tend to work with the smaller programs. And a lot of the times in those programs, people are wearing more than one app. So you know, one day we might be talking to somebody as an administrator, and next day, we might be talking to them as an instructor, they might be doing both. And a lot of people who are in administration roles in especially in the smaller programs also have done even if they’re not working as instructors anymore, they still are. They have in the past worked as instructors. So. So the division between those roles isn’t like a big line. Right? It’s, it’s there’s a lot of crossover in terms of that. But you know, that said, Would before I came on staff at at alpha plus, I used to do interviews for apoplast, like I was on contract, and do interviews for potential coaching, programs that wanted to engage in coaching, and I would do the sort of ifs kind of sort of partly needs assessment, partly just a conversation about what the starting place would be for coaching. And I did notice quite a difference in terms of like, when I talked to administrators. And when I talked to instructors, I was mostly talking to administrators. And sometimes I just noticed the difference in those conversations sometimes, especially when they were talking about, you know, what they wished teachers would be doing. And then when you would talk to the teachers, just about the realities and possibilities in their classroom, it could be quite a different conversation. But yeah, I think working in both arenas is important for the field and important for us to get you to understand the the realities of the whole scope of where people are working. And probably this is similar in in the settlement and ESL, but the administration burden can be quite like the load of work that people are, the administrative side can be quite heavy. And there’s a lot of reporting like so there’s a lot of data collect Shouldn’t about learners, for example, and a lot of reporting to the funder about who the learners are, and then what the progress is that learners are making in the program. So, so programs are always looking to streamline those kinds of processes, right. And, and anything we can do to help them do that. And digital technology is, you know, one of the ways that you can streamline some of that stuff. So any thing we can do that lessens that administrative load, can leave people open to that more creative side of creating programming, and working on that side of things. So, so I think it’s, I think it’s important that way to work with administrators, because they’re often the leaders in in programs in terms of what programming is going to happen and, and making sure that their programs are meeting the needs of all the possible learners in the community. So the less time they spend, trying to figure out their drives and where everything is, the more time they have for that kind of that sort of work.

Marco Campana 41:13
Yeah, and I imagine having both sides also helps ground you in the kind of advice and help that you might provide, because you understand some of the limitations or the structural challenges that you know, a practitioner might have, because of the administrators own challenges and, and limitations and things like that. So, like you said earlier, here’s a bunch of different tools, but you’re going to need to choose the free one, because you’re not going to you don’t have the funding infrastructure to continue this over the long term and things like that. So it just makes it so much more practical. So I wonder, I want to wrap it up a little bit, because I know I’ve made you speak for so long. But there’s such a richness in, in what you’ve been able to do. And I again, I keep coming back to Alpha pluses is a model that our sector and others can use. But imagine that there’s things you wish you could be doing. So I wonder with all of the the services, the advocacy, the research, the impact and outcomes you have, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you want to do more of? Or differently or new? Or add to what you’re doing with alpha? Plus?

Tracey Mollins 42:16
Wow, that’s a big question. You

Marco Campana 42:18
have to dream now we’re not allowed to most of the time, but you know, here’s your, here’s your chance,

Tracey Mollins 42:23
do a lot of dreaming it at alpha plus, like we really do, and then we, you know, then we have to face reality. And so and we have great leadership there that, you know, our executive director definitely lets us dream a lot. And those are often some of our more fun sessions where we kind of, you know, pretend we work in a perfect world where we can do anything. And, and one of those dreams, actually, one of those sort of dreamy sessions was led to the educator network that I’ve been working on for a couple of years. And and I’m really enjoying it and the practitioners that participate in seem to really enjoy it. And I have a lot of dreams for that project. But I also it’s around I think it’s it’s partly around what we’re doing, but it’s partly around. How do we, in Canada, let’s say just build a culture of continuous learning, where it’s valued, and it’s built in. And I feel one of our real challenges is in doing our work, is that people don’t have time. And there’s no time built into their work day. Right? Professional Learning, or, or reflection, or, you know, even if they weren’t doing it with us to do it somewhere. Right. So I feel like sometimes when we dream, we dream about system change, right. And we dream about, imagine a place where, where this was just a built in thing that it would be an expectation it would be funded, it would be supported, it would be people would have work time to do it in, they would have a time of day when they could go to things you know, that kind of thing is because I feel like that’s one of our so when we start to dream like, Oh, what if we could offer a program like this? Often the thing that makes us go Yeah, but who could come to it? Right? Like, everybody’s so busy and, you know, that would take that would take an engagement of several weeks or several hours or something. So who could who could participate in it like, and are we building things that, you know, would we be building things that nobody could have access to? You know, what’s the point about really? So I think That’s. Yeah.

Marco Campana 45:05
That’s a huge dream. I share your dream. We haven’t you know, I mean, right now we have to ground ourselves in reality. But I think like you said the importance of earlier, for example, not being too tired to be creative, because if you dream, sometimes you create something like the educator network. So I think that’s so important to continue to do that this is, you’ve just reaffirmed my love for alpha plus, and how will we have to bring you or your model to our sector, so I appreciate that. And now that’s my dream. So we’ll see if we can ground that in some reality eventually. Is there anything I’m curious that I haven’t asked you about that you want to share or you think is important to talk about when it comes to being, you know, that kind of support for, for nonprofits, for community service agencies, in this case, literacy service providers and facilitators that we should know about? Or be thinking about if we’re moving down this path as well?

Tracey Mollins 45:58
Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, when one of the things I was thinking about, when we were talking about doing this, I was thinking about, like approaches. And I was thinking, Oh, it’s interesting, because when I talked to my alpha plus colleagues, I was thinking about the words we use for the people that we work with, for example, right, like, so some people I work with talk about clients. And some people I work with, talk about customers. And my frame is always colleagues, right? Like, I always feel like I’m working with colleagues, but it could be because of this sphere, I’m working in that I work with instructors and on their professional learning, so and I was thinking, does that matter? Like, does it matter? What word we’re using the end? Does it change the way we operate? And I, I don’t really have anything, you know, firm or concrete to say about it. But it’s just a thing I’ve been sort of mulling over in my mind, like, what does it? How does that impact the work? And and do we? Are we working sometimes with people as clients, and sometimes as with people, as colleagues, and and maybe that’s how we, we can be successful, right is knowing when somebody is a client, and so we’re providing a service. And when somebody is a colleague, and we’re, you know, working together, kind of mode, right? So when, when do people just want us just to help them and just provide a service? And when do people want to be in conversation with us and, and help us learn as well, right? So about how to do the things we’re doing better? So I don’t know if that’s really anything, but I just know, I love it. I

Marco Campana 47:46
mean, I think language does matter. And I think the way we exactly I mean, we have that struggle in the sector, even when it comes to service providers to quote clients slash newcomers, slash communities. It’s a huge, it’s a huge topic. I think that keeps coming up. So I think I think that’s a great reflection, for sure to think about, as you’re building out these kinds of services and approaches, how are you? How do they want to be considered in that interaction or intervention? And how do they want to be treated differently? So that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Listen, thank you for this conversation. Really interesting, really rich, and I appreciate it.

Tracey Mollins 48:21
Well, thank you, Marco. It’s been great chatting with you. And I hope we have lots more conversations. Not always on the podcast, but just

Marco Campana 48:32
absolutely, I look forward to it. Thanks again.

Tracey Mollins 48:34
Take care.

Marco Campana 48:39
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes, wherever you listen to your podcasts are also on my site at marcopolis.org I appreciate you listening and if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website, or [email protected] Thanks again.

Welcome to episode 44 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I chat with Lucia Harrison, CEO of the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre about her experiences transitioning to hybrid services and a hybrid workplace that includes a 4-day work week. The effort, and it took a great effort, resulted in a 95% satisfaction rate from staff, particularly when it came to improved work-life balance. All organizations are going through this change, trying to figure it out, trying to find the right mix. Lucia has many lessons to share. Lessons you can implement in your organization.

In OCASI’s January 2023 newsletter a number of sector leaders were asked to share their insights. Lucia’s caught my eye and I knew that we needed to dive in more deeply. At the core, her advice is to talk with your staff. Involve them in this whole process. Trust them. Make it something that you envision that you’re going to be working on probably forever. You’ll be tweaking this. You’ll always be piloting something. You’ll be trying new things. You’ll be learning as you go.

I think you’ll find this an important and useful conversation for you. I hope you enjoy it.

Background

In January Lucia wrote: “Our agency has moved to a 4-day work week, with 2 groups on a rotation so each group gets a 4-day weekend every second week. We increased our workday to 8:45 hours. Everyone still works 35 hours. The centre is still open 5 days a week, and we have actually increased the number of hours our centre is open to serve clients. We implemented this in June and a survey conducted in Oct had a 95% satisfaction rate from staff. The most common comment in the survey was “improved work / life balance”.

We also have most staff working on a hybrid model, except our LSP staff because of the nature of our agreement with the library. Our board approved this as a pilot in June and they have agreed to approve permanent changes to our personnel policy to reflect these changes. The board’s major considerations were 1) that our clients were being served, 2) staff well-being and 3) that we were meeting our funded commitments.

We have seen increased productivity and based on our staff survey, we have boosted morale. It is working for us.”

She expands on this and more in our conversation.

Some of the questions we discussed:

Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has been edited slightly edited (name error fixes). It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.

Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 44 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I chat with Lucia Harrison, CEO of the Kitchener Waterloo multicultural center about her experiences transitioning to hybrid services, and a hybrid workplace that includes a four day workweek. The effort and it took a great effort resulted in a 95% satisfaction rate from staff, particularly when it came to improve work life balance. All organizations are going through this change trying to figure it out trying to find the right mix. Lucia has many lessons to share lessons you can implement in your organization. In their January 2023 newsletter. O’Casey asked a number of sector leaders to share their insights Lucy has caught my eye and I knew we needed to dive in more deeply at the core. Her advice is to talk with your staff involve them in this whole process. Trust them, make it something you envision that you’re going to be working on probably forever. You’ll be tweaking this, you’ll always be piloting something, you’ll be trying new things you’ll be learning as you go. I think you’ll find this an important and useful conversation for you. I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to the technology and human services podcast. Thank you so much for joining me, I’m gonna let you introduce yourself Lucia and tell us a little bit about where you’re coming from today.

Lucia Harrison 1:11
Hi, my name is Lucia Harrison. I’m the CEO of the Kitchener Waterloo Multicultural Center. We are a full service settlement agency. Obviously in Kitchener working throughout Waterloo Region. We have coming into 57 years of history of serving this community and serving immigrants, refugees, and those with no status. So I’m pleased to be here. Thank you, Marco.

Marco Campana 1:38
Awesome. And full disclosure for people listening. Lucia and I go way back. So if we get ridiculously giddy are there inside jokes, you know, just ignore us. I might keep those in anyway. But ya know, it’s so great to talk to you. And the main reason we’re talking today is because I actually have something that Debbie Douglas from O’Casey shared in one of her in last month’s newsletter, I think, where she was talking about how sector organizations are kind of adjusting to the emerging new realities of hybrid service delivery, but also hybrid work models. And she shared what you’ve been able to accomplish at the Multicultural Center. And it just struck me as something that there’s much more but not below the surface of that because it sounds like an amazing outcome. But I know that a lot of work probably had to go into doing it. So. So let’s talk about this interesting and innovative approach to hybrid work. And maybe you can just sort of start with how did that evolve? And where are you now?

Lucia Harrison 2:33
Well, if you want to talk about stars aligning, that that’s what I would say happened with us that despite all the negative impacts of COVID, there was a series of events that happen throughout COVID, that kind of gave us an opportunity. So we had put our building up for sale, Jerry COVID sold, it made a rental agreement on a new premise. That was bare walls. So we got to design from concrete. And we started to envision a space that would be different we had finally successfully pretty well gone paperless. Thank you COVID. We had everything stored in the clouds. Thank you COVID. It’s all secure. And but, you know, two years of working out of the office gave us this clean slate. And as a management team, what we decided is people in our sector can be a little hesitant was changed and you know, can be a little adverse to change that in a way it was kind of like, let’s just do this. Let’s do it all. What do we envision in future. And so we envision a hybrid model, it had worked very well for our organization, we had continued to serve the same or more clients. Our workshops were happening virtually. So that had worked, we knew it worked. But we knew we had a lot of clients who much preferred face to face service. We had clients who preferred virtual service. But we also wanted to be proactive that, you know, the mental impacts of COVID and the stress on staff. So I can’t talk about hybrid without sort of doing the full gamut that what we decided to implement was a hybrid work model. For all of those staff that we could do that with there are some that we could not and going to a four day work week, which the way we’ve arranged that gives every staff person a four day weekend every second week. So we were dealing with If you know this amazing space, how to best use it, how to best serve our clients, and how to deal with the mental health impacts, and they know the stresses on staff. So we implemented all of that, as we came back to work in April and May, when, you know, some of us had started coming back. So there was, there was no history said, we were kind of lucky, there was no history in this building. So, you know, and the hybrid work model does not impact our library settlement workers. That entire agreement is to have settlement workers in the library, I mean, really, to encourage people newcomers to come in to the library. But while working at the library, they’re still providing a mixture of virtual and face to face service, but they are providing a presence in the library. For everybody else, it is a two days in the office two days out of the office, unless needs come up. It’s kind of a minimum of two days. But if we need you in the office and other day, well, that’s, you know, what has to happen this week, we’ve accommodated people who for whatever reason, did not want to work from home at all. And they just come into the office there for days, and that works fine. We have an open table area that people can come. And if they need to just plug in for a little while they can do that. It was a long process. I joked with Marco before we went talked earlier that I’m using a lot of dye on my hair, because it’s gone very, very gray from the process of trying to find the schedule that would work on the four day schedule, as well as implementing the hybrid. But it’s now it’s gone very well. Maybe I’ll stop and see Marco, if you’ve got questions or want to lead in another direction? Yeah,

Marco Campana 7:17
no, I mean, all of that’s really useful. I have so many questions. But one of the things is that, as you wrote in what Debbie shared is that the result is a 95% satisfaction rate from staff. And the most common comment when you surveyed them was improved work life balance. And I think that’s something that had that came that’s come up a lot in conversations convenings, and surveys, during the pandemic, that this whole remote work thing worked for a lot of people. And it surprised a lot of people that they that they enjoyed it, that they were able to accomplish their work goals, you know, meet their outcomes and outputs, but that they, you know, didn’t have to commute that wasn’t stressed, dropping kids off and picking them up and things like that, in fact, some people are saving money, because they don’t have to do that pre and pre school and after school care, for example. So I wonder, as you’re talking about how the how you created the model, and as you mentioned, in our previous conversation kind of took 10 years of your life off. But you clearly worked with your staff to develop, what’s your what’s your you’re doing now? Can you speak? And that’s something that, you know, as a model, or at least I would assume you did, so you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I assume you work together as a team as an organization to kind of figure this whole thing out. And I know that that is a stress for a lot of people in organizations, but that I’ve spoken to is like, do we do a top down? Do we do a more democratic thing? Like how do we approach this? So how did you approach the idea of how the work was going to be actually done? Was that a conversation was that, you know, consultants were brought in, like, how did that go? No, it

Lucia Harrison 8:50
was definitely conversations with staff, a lot of conversations with staff, a lot more conversation with my management team. We initially did a survey with staff on their views of hybrid. And that’s where we started was, you know, how do you feel about the hybrid model? And based on those responses, we knew we could make it work and we knew we could accommodate those people who did not want to work from home, sort of that was we figured that part out the staff that must go to the library, they knew that that’s the nature of the funding, it is the reason we get that funding. So there, you know, there was no, there might be a little bit of jealousy, but they were very aware that they had to be present in the libraries. And then the four day workweek was a topic of conversation that we brought up with a number of staff and not surveyed in the same way but Got enough feedback that there was clearly an appetite for it. And quite honestly, people not believing we could make it work. Which is kind of funny because to be true, right. But that’s as we developed a schedule. And maybe that’s why it was so hard as we’ve got 40 staff, and we tried to make sure that every manager saw every one of their team during the week, and as much as possible, trying to get the team together, and that all the managers would be present in the office, so that we were all crossing paths. And so that scheduling was a little bit hard. And I think it’s the only time that by the time we had a schedule that said, Okay, we’re going to try this. It was at that point presented, this is a pilot, this is what we’re going to go with for three months, then we’re going to serve a you get your feedback if we need to tweak it, but it kind of reached the point of we cannot keep changing this because every piece that we changed, impacted other people that resulting in more changes. So that I would say, if you want to call that top down, it was kind of like, okay, here’s the schedule, we promise we’re going to revisit, but this is what we’re doing for three months. And it was after those three months that we did the survey that we had a 95% satisfaction rate with what we had implemented.

Marco Campana 11:34
So all of that pre work, obviously paid off, I assume, then after June, you’ve made some tweaks, but nothing major if people were that happy.

Lucia Harrison 11:41
Now. Now, we really have not, again, the occasional tweak, someone is taking a course and they need to change their schedule better. No major changes. No, it’s it’s working very well.

Marco Campana 11:57
That’s amazing. So all that pre work. So it’s all about that pre work. And you mentioned as well. Understanding your clients, right, some clients preferred virtual, you said and some clients prefer in person. So how did you figure that out? Because that’s the thing that again, a lot of agencies, I think it’s easy, just ask them. But, you know, what have you implemented to figure that out? And are you actually continuing to have that conversation with new clients with existing clients to just get a sense of what the right service mix is to meet their needs?

Lucia Harrison 12:29
It’s a combination of things in partnership with our immigration partnership, there was a survey done with clients, and we included COVID questions, you know, about, you know, preferences of virtual to face to face. And it was kind of interesting that many of the employment clients were quite happy doing virtual workshops, some of the face to face, but it was pretty clear that the more vulnerable the clients were, the less likely that they liked virtual service. So, you know, we have one person dedicated to working with refugee claimants and folks are coming in here, they don’t have the technology, they don’t have access, that person is in the office all four of their days, because we know that their clients just cannot use technology. Maybe they will in a few weeks, but not when they get here. And I think our settlement workers also, you know, they will offer would you like to meet face to face would you prefer to meet virtually, so there’s sort of an ongoing asking. And then we’ve also done hybrid on our workshops that we have it now set up as a virtual meeting room. So we can have a combination of people who prefer face to face as well as people joining by video. So they can they can choose. So it’s the initial feedback that we got this from the immigration partnership survey, but now it’s an ongoing, what’s your preference?

Marco Campana 14:11
Yeah, which I think is essential replicate, they may change over time, but when you’re talking about those workshops, so you’re delivering a workshop with participants in person as well as online at the same time, so the high the high flex model and and how’s that going? Because that’s a conversation that started that’s been starting in the sector that people feel is it that’s like the most sort of, I guess the highest complexity of service delivery because you can do a virtual workshop like a webinar or you can do an in person workshop. And it’s you know, you attend one or the other kind of thing, but this high flex approach is you know, choose however you want one day maybe you want to come in and on the next workshop, you want to be online, what kind of resourcing and training and facilitation and human resource Horses has it has it required to figure that out to do it? Well.

Lucia Harrison 15:05
I don’t think we’re there yet. To be honest, we’re doing it.

Marco Campana 15:10
It’s an experiment. Yeah.

Lucia Harrison 15:12
And it’s working, I know that there is other technology out there, that would make it a better experience. And I’m not the technical person. So I might have a harder time explaining there, there are ways we could make it better. Probably to the tune of five or $10,000, which what we wanted to do is try this out to see what kind of appetite there was for it, before we sort of make a major investment to make it better. So you know, we’re using a screen, we’re using a speaker, people can hear what is going on. But it’s not, it’s far from the high tech model that you’re talking about. And I think we will entertain it, if we continue to see an appetite of people wanting both.

Marco Campana 16:05
Yeah, I mean, I think that sounds like a really good way to experiment, because you’re not going to be sure about whether it works for your your staff or for your clients until you play with it a little bit. And then once you do, you can make a business case for for investing those 510 $1,000 for creating smart office rooms, right? Because zoom has these. I mean, there’s lots of solutions now, especially because of the pandemic of these sort of smart rooms where you can do these kinds of things. And so that’s interesting. No, it’s an approach or easy, it’s, again, you’re easing into it, and you’ll tweak it and decide what to do as you go. So this sort of constant innovation and experimentation, I think is something that I’m hearing you’re talking about that is more difficult. I find in our sector, especially from a funder perspective, you’re supposed to just this is the way we do it. And then we do it for five years, and then we’ll change it after after that. But but this is a much more kind of, I guess, agile approach to how you’re doing the work. And I wonder how staff are are adjusting to that or adapting?

Lucia Harrison 17:04
I would say pretty well, I mean, after two years of pandemic, I mean, I give credit to our sector, I certainly to our staff that, you know, we transitioned instantly, we, we were ready. We knew it was coming, we made sure everyone had laptops, everyone, we had Voice over IP phones, we had already started Cloud Storage. So it was pretty instant. But how innovative people who literally, you know, beyond turning on their computer had almost no technical know how at all how quickly they did adapt. And I’m finding that that now, making those adaptations is coming easier to people they know what’s possible. So, you know, by themselves with it help, but they make it work?

Marco Campana 17:56
And are you finding I mean, one of the other things people are struggling with is how do we choose the right tools? And then how do we ensure everybody is is a as a power user or an expert on those tools? So as an organization, have you kind of had that conversation where here’s the video conferencing software we’re going to use, here’s the digital messaging we’re going to use and here are the devices you need to be able to use proficiently. And here’s all the security and privacy and confidentiality protocols that go along with all of the different tools. Is that something that you’ve sort of? I mean, maybe standardized is the wrong word, but that you’ve all agreed we’re going to use these these types of tools in our service delivery.

Lucia Harrison 18:33
I would joke that our IT person gave us no choice.

Unknown Speaker 18:39
As they do, right.

Lucia Harrison 18:43
Our chief our person was pretty adamant right from the beginning that he wanted to go ahead with Office 365. And we had a lot of resistance. We had been a Google based organization.

Marco Campana 18:56
But that’s a big shift. Yeah. Okay. That’s interesting.

Lucia Harrison 18:59
Yeah. Yeah, it was. And if I was going to swear in this interview, it would be about that. I honestly still, like the Google environment better, I find it more friendly. But some of the things that, you know, office 365 could offer and quite honestly, it was a system he knew better and for him to provide us support. But we’ve been able to do everything in that environment. And, you know, in maintaining confidential records, we can get a guarantee that Microsoft is storing them in Canada, not, you know, across borders. Every time there was something we wanted to do, we could make it work in office 365. So that was kind of dictated to us nicely. And then that training has been provided as we’ve gone along, so our pre employment team would go through training on pay if you I’m going to do a workshop in this manner, this is how you would do it. I think we all need more. Right? I think, you know, I swear we could have weekly security updates, and still not keep up with the vast amount of scams and information stealing potential that’s out there. But so true. It’s kind of scary. But so to me that is ongoing.

Marco Campana 20:27
Yeah, I mean, it’s a learning curve that it will never end is how it feels like with the technology, because exactly the tools themselves will evolve, I was seeing, there’s a workshop this afternoon to learn about Microsoft 365, that one organization’s offering. And there’s some new tool called loop, which is this interesting social kind of networking, almost kind of thing. And I’d never heard of it before. So I went and looked at it on their website. So they’re evolving their product as well. And so there’s always things to learn about and on how can you use this internally? How can you use it with clients, for example? So it feels like it’s a never ending kind of loop? And so I guess, as part of your organizational professional development, is that something that is? I mean, I know that you’ve always done this kind of stuff. You’ve had staff and they’re learning, but is that become even more of a priority? In terms of stop learning and staying on top of these things?

Lucia Harrison 21:19
It is, but I’ve, a lot of it is now basically being done one on one, which in the end works better. You know, how one person understands compared to another one. That when staff are struggling, that one on one instruction tends to go farther than us pulling them all together and telling them and then forgetting three minutes after they finish their coffee?

Marco Campana 21:47
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. Because everyone learns differently and needs to be supported differently. So I guess, when you’re hiring now, are you looking for people to have certain technical skills? Or is that part of the onboarding process to get them up to speed on Microsoft 365 to get them up to speed on, on how you’re using these these tools, but also, again, the human side of it, right? The privacy, the confidentiality, the facilitation skills, the being engaging in a video session? Is that something you’re looking at, as a job expectation that more people will start to have those skills coming in? Or are you bringing people in and then training them on those things to ensure that you’ve got sort of an organizational baseline across your staff?

Lucia Harrison 22:29
I would say we certainly have a baseline that we’re looking for have, you know, experienced experience using Office 365? or similar? We’ve had a few occasions where I mean, if that’s missing, it’s just too steep of a learning curve. Other but to be fair, I have to say that when we’re doing hiring, it is rare now for people not to have those skills, they come with a certain amount of social media, certainly, you know, savvy with the computer to some extent, they’re coming with those skills, whereas we might not have expected that 10 years ago.

Marco Campana 23:13
Yeah, it’s it doesn’t feel like a long time. But it’s a lot of change in the last few years around the types of practical skills that people need to have. For sure. Awesome. And on the soft side of the skills, I wonder if that’s something that’s been part of the conversation with staff, because I’m hearing a lot from people in the sector that you know what I figured out the tools, I become a zoom power user, or a team’s power user or WhatsApp or whatever it is that they’ve decided as an organization to use. But they’re still struggling with facilitation and engage particularly around engagement, like people engaging people in their online sessions, or you know, those kinds of things. Is that a conversation you’ve been having as well.

Lucia Harrison 23:53
I think for the people that are actively engaged in group workshops and group activities, that facilitation skill is something that we’re looking for, when we’re hiring for staff, the, you know, people who might have been on if you’ve got people on staff who have been settlement workers for 20 years. There certainly was a learning curve in trying to do those kinds of sessions remotely, and certainly now have a real preference to providing them face to face. So I mean, there is a lag of information there. I’m not sure with some of the older stuff, if that’s going to change. And I’m not sure if it’s reasonable for me to ask for that to change at this point. We’ve got a you know, a broad grouping of staff that if one person is not comfortable, we’ve got other ones we’re more than comfortable to help and step in on some of that.

Marco Campana 24:59
So So that’s interesting as well then. So there’s, excuse me, there’s flexibility in that, in that overlap in that approach. So you’re not necessarily expecting everyone to have the same suite of digital skills, especially if they just either aren’t interested or don’t feel like they can build them. But other staff can can support them by being the facilitator in that session by stepping in and having that kind of cross team approach, I guess. Exactly. Now, that’s really interesting, because I know, again, people are struggling with, does everybody need to have the skill set? Do we create a digital team? Or do we kind of go with the flow of everybody’s skills and kind of have a flexible and fluid system like, which is sounds like it’s kind of what you’re describing? Is we you know, everyone has their strengths and contribute, where they where they need and want to, but you’re not going to make onerous expectations on people who, who may not have or want to develop some of those skills?

Lucia Harrison 25:54
In most cases, no, we don’t need to.

Marco Campana 25:57
That’s great. And again, I think that’s, that’s helpful and complex for other people to figure out, right? Because that’s, that requires a lot of oversight, a lot of trust, a lot of communication amongst the staff and a lot of collaboration.

Lucia Harrison 26:11
It really does. And I think, you know, one of the things that I had coming into this, in the implementing of all of this is starting from a point of trusting that my staff were working, and I think that’s a place for a lot of the people in the sector struggle. I can’t see you, are you really working? And I really took it to a level of okay, we have basic deliverables. You’re expected to see this many clients or do this many workshops, and really keeping myself out of the headspace of are you doing this between nine and five? Are you feeding your dog while you’re supposed to be working? I don’t care. Are you getting your job done. And I think that was really helpful in the implementation of this is that it was based on trust that people were doing what they needed to do.

Marco Campana 27:06
Yeah, and you outlined in your piece, again, on the ocassion newsletter, about what was really the sort of the three things that were important, which were clients are being served, which is, again, like you’re describing outputs and outcomes, but also staff wellbeing, and that you were also meeting your funded commitment. So the funded commitments and the clients being served are the are the ones that most people would be focusing on, which is where the whole surveillance mentality comes in. Right? I need to make sure this is happening. But staff wellbeing is something that really doesn’t get spoken about enough in our sector. And I wonder how that became part of the pillar, one of the pillars of your approach.

Lucia Harrison 27:44
Think it always has been, you know, it is pretty clear to me that for my staff, and especially, I would say, the frontline, frontline staff, and I talk about this during COVID, that I feel like our settlement workers took the brunt of trauma, our pre employment workers are others. But our frontline settlement workers, were dealing with people who were dealing with trauma during COVID, dealing with complex issues. But even before COVID, it’s sort of knowing that our settlement workers cannot do their work if if they are not well, if they if we if their mental health is not being taken care of. And as a CEO, I only have so much control over that. I mean, I can encourage people, you know, get counseling, you know, go out, go for walks, I mean, all of those standard things, but of trying to find a way to do what we could as an employer to help with that well being and I think that was even more important coming out of COVID.

Marco Campana 28:54
Absolutely. But and again, I think I mean, I completely agree, and that makes sense. But it’s, it still seems to be something that isn’t isn’t that your mentality, your your approach isn’t something that I’m seeing in a lot of places, people are fixated on the other two kinds of pillars, right at the expense sometimes of worker wellbeing. And even from our funders perspective, sometimes there’s not enough talking about supporting, it’s all about meeting the client meeting the funded deliverables, meeting the client outputs or outcomes, whatever is being defined in those in those moments. And x, everyone’s expected to work in an underpaid overworked environment, regardless of their mental health. Right as sort of the history of our sector. So it’s refreshing to hear that. And I think that’s important for people to hear that that’s a part of your one of your pillars, even if it’s just a natural pillar, because that’s how you’ve always done it, to have it there and make it formal, I also think sends a message to your staff, you’re part of our considerations. You’re part of this, we’re not just here to to, you know, run people through our service mill, but you know, you have to be part of by being okay with how we’re doing,

Lucia Harrison 30:03
no, and that survey that we did the comments of people going, you know, on the four day work, getting a four day weekend, every second week of, you know, by the time I hit Saturday noon, I’ve done all my errands, I’ve done everything I have to do. Now I get Saturday afternoon, all day, Sunday and all day Monday to be with my family take care of myself. You know, when people learned very quickly that, you know, you take a vacation of 10 days, you can actually only use up four of your vacation days, because the rest is in that long weekend. And they figured it out pretty quickly. And they they really noted it in their comments that how much they enjoyed that.

Marco Campana 30:47
Yeah, I mean, four days alone seems like a mini vacation every, every for every every two weeks. And just like again, with the stress of the job and being able to take that time to disconnect a little bit more. And like you said, get all this stuff out of the way. And so you can literally enjoy that weekend, whether it’s by yourself or with family, it just I can see how that would recharge people even on its own, regardless of the fact that they can, you know, piggyback that and use less vacation time, but get more vacation at the same time? It’s a Yeah, it seems like it’s well worth the 10 years of your life and the gray hair.

Unknown Speaker 31:25
In terms of your staff, at least.

Lucia Harrison 31:27
Yeah. Well, that’s great. And I love it. I mean, you know, I mean, as CEO, I sometimes work on the days, I’m not supposed to be working. But I’ve always done that. And it’s the nature of my work. But when I am determined that I need my break for days is fantastic.

Marco Campana 31:43
Yeah, that’s awesome. And how I’m curious, you’ve you’ve alluded to this a little bit in terms of coming back now, how clients have have reacted to your new approach. Obviously, you’re meeting the needs of the clients, because if they want virtual, they can get it if they want in person they can get it. There’s the high flex kind of approach. There’s there’s, it feels like there’s no wrong door for them. They can, as you mentioned, with your settlement counselors, they’ll have a conversation and say, Yeah, I want to do some of this by by texting or some of this in person. Have you been talking or surveying or figuring out in general, how this is working for your clients?

Lucia Harrison 32:19
We have a survey that’s just ready to go out that we are asking those questions. I know one issue that we’ve run into, and we’re trying to figure it out is if we have an urgent situation, and a person comes in on a Thursday of someone’s workweek, and it is urgent, needing multiple actions. And that staff person is now not coming back till Tuesday, because they’re in there long weekend, that can seem like a very long time. So we are looking at, you know how we can have the teams work together that if there is something really urgent, is there someone who can step in? If there’s a language barrier, you know, can we bring an interpreter in but another settlement worker could deal with it. So that is one issue that we’re dealing with. But the reality is that we’re busy. And, you know, we have one to two week wait time in some cases for our clients to get in to see settlement workers. So the issue is bigger than just the four day workweek. But that being said, we are we just dotted the I’s and cross the t’s on a survey that is going to our staff that is asking a lot of those questions. That’s great.

Marco Campana 33:45
I mean, that seems so important. But of all the things I guess it seems like if that’s the and that that sort of outlier scenario, if that’s the one that’s most concerning, other things are clearly flowing well. In general, with the way you’re you’re you’ve sort of laid out the service?

Lucia Harrison 34:03
I think so. I mean, it’s so there is that interruption for staff. And we also I mean, on the flip side of that if there is an issue. Sometimes communication for staff is an issue under this model. You know, if you’re into a four day weekend, and then you’re not crossing pads here, of still remembering that we could use all those tools we learned during COVID to connect to people. But that little bit of loss of connection is is something else that we’re dealing with since then, you know, things like having more frequent potlucks in the office that just brings everybody together to sort of reestablish those team feelings. Having the managers intentionally organize things off site with their entire team. But that disconnect is something we’re still trying to deal With as well,

Marco Campana 35:01
that’s useful. That’s important to know about because you want your team to still feel like they can come together and, and feel like a team, even if they’re passing each other week to week in some cases because of the different schedules. Right. So that’s, yeah, I could see that as being a challenge. But it sounds like you’re trying to figure out ways to kind of create that morale that team cohesion, and amongst 40 staff, the majority of whom are doing this hybrid work model. That’s going to take some, some some learning, I assume.

Lucia Harrison 35:29
Yep. Yeah, I think. And again, I mean, that’s what we’ve assumed all the way through this is that the we will tweak as we need to and as we go along.

Marco Campana 35:41
So in terms of the advice that you might give other sector leaders who are struggling with some of this, obviously, one of them is talk with your staff, involve them in this whole process, make it something that you envision that you’ll it’s you’re going to be working on, probably forever, you’ll be tweaking this, you’ll be piloting you’ll be trying new things, we’ll be learning as you go. What are some other pieces of advice that you might give, that we may not have spoken about from your experience of approaching this and leading an organization through the process? Drugs? Getting

Speaker 3 36:19
fair enough, though, self medication process?

Lucia Harrison 36:24
Yeah. I think you’ve already talked about it is, you know, when I,

Lucia Harrison 36:31
when we talk as a management team, it is a two pronged of keeping the center in the very center of what we’re doing. And not from a funders perspective, but what what do our clients need, and then what the staff need to be able to provide that. So if those are the two pillars, then taking care of staff and client needs are the two pillars that I feel like we need to focus on because our staff cannot do the work if they’re not being taken care of. And I for me, that is very important, because my ultimate is I want to serve the clients, they are the people who need our help who need our services. But to do that, we have to support our staff. So I feel like looking at it from those two lenses, some simultaneously, is what we really need to move these things forward.

Marco Campana 37:31
I love that I mean, all things flow from what you understand and know of your clients and what you understand and know that your staff need. I mean that that makes such logical sense that everything else as complex as it might go, or be, you’ll at least know what you need to be working on. Because you understand them so completely. I agree. Excellent. All right. I love it. There’s so much there’s so many kernels of knowledge I love I love this, this is such an eye and again, I think there’s people who are struggling with this and trying to figure out how do they move forward. In so there’s so many models and ideas out there to hear from a peer to hear from an organization that sort of figuring this out. And and as an as I would say further ahead than a lot of organizations in doing this is super useful. Is there anything I haven’t asked you about with you about your experience that you want to share or let people know to think about as they’re, as they’re working through all of this?

Lucia Harrison 38:26
Now off the top, but other than adding that while we implemented all of this, we also implemented a hotel desking model. So we did it all in one bang at the same time. So if you’re gonna do it, you might as well do it, right.

Marco Campana 38:42
Yeah. So shifting to Microsoft 365, hybrid work model, hybrid service model, new space, completely new way of laying out that office space and using it that’s, that’s a lot all at once, but, but it’s like the ripping the band aid off, I suppose, just get it done, and just

Lucia Harrison 38:58
just do this. And there was, again, we were lucky in that we had a whole new slate to work from, right and that not everyone has that. So it was really good. Nobody came back to an office that had pictures of their grandchildren sitting in the corner, no one, right. All of that was taken care of when we had to move everything out of the old building. And having made the decision that we would use a hotel desking model here. So you know, I don’t have an office, I book an office like everybody else. But I can appreciate that that’s harder for organizations when staff are coming back to an office after two years. And there’s Fifi, you know, picture of the dog in the corner, whatever. So I’m lucky in that way as well. But I do believe implementing all the changes at once was strategically. It was really good, difficult Because, yes, because I know I know people in my sector, I know people in my staff, there is going to be a certain amount of resistance. So let’s just do it all, and then deal with the issues as they come up. Awesome.

Marco Campana 40:15
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share this. I think this is just incredibly valuable for others to hear your experience and to know about what’s possible. And what are some of the ways to go about doing it. So thank you so much for for taking the time to chat about it today.

Lucia Harrison 40:30
Thank you, Marco. And it’s been nice looking at you and chatting with you.

Marco Campana 40:33
I know it’s so great to connect again.

Lucia Harrison 40:35
We miss you here.

Marco Campana 40:37
I miss my early days. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes, wherever you listen to your podcasts are also on my site at marcopolis.org I appreciate you listening and if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website, or [email protected] Thanks again.

Welcome to Episode 43 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I’m speaking with Sampada Kukade from Skills for Change, a Toronto based settlement and employment organization that is no stranger to technology innovation.

However, what you’ll find in this conversation, and what I find infinitely useful is that even organizations who are large and growing such as Skills for Change still need support in their digital transformation. And as part of their support, Skills for Change joined a pilot project called Charity Growth Academy run by CanadaHelps, which has been providing organizations, nonprofits, specifically, and charities with support around their digital transformation.

So I wanted to talk to her about what that looked like how it was useful for Skills for Change, and what the impact has been, and how it’s something that could scale beyond the small group of pilot organizations? Because the reality is, we all know that this is something that all organizations need. Whether you’re in a big, small, growing new, older, legacy organizations, digital transformation is a challenge.

And so one of the things we talked about was how do you shift internally to build this kind of a long term vision and infrastructure for digital transformation? What’s the impact been of getting this kind of support from outside in doing that, and baking that into the organization? What does that look like? And what has the Academy and what have these kinds of supports meant. What can Skills for Change do now that they might not have been able to do on their own?

And then ultimately, what advice she has to share not just with the sector, but with the sector’s major funders around how they can support organizations who are at very different stages of the digital transformation journey. I think this is a really important and interesting conversation, and I hope you find it quite useful in your work.

Some of the questions we discussed:

Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has been edited slightly edited (name error fixes). It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.

Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 43 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I’m speaking with somebody who they have the skills for change, a Toronto based settlement and employment organization that is no stranger to technology innovation. However, what we’ll find in this conversation, and what I find infinitely useful is that even organizations who are large and growing play skills for changes still need support in their digital transformation. And as part of their support, skills for change joined a pilot project called Charity growth Academy run by CanadaHelps, which has been providing organizations nonprofit, specifically, and charities with support around their digital transformation. So I wanted to talk to her about what that looked like how it was useful for skills for change, and what the impact has been, and how it’s something like that could scale beyond the small group of pilot organizations? Because the reality is, we all know that this is something that all organizations need big, small, growing new, older, Legacy organizations. And so one of the things we talked about that was really important was, how do you shift internally to build this kind of a long term vision and infrastructure for digital transformation? What’s the impact been of getting this kind of support from outside in doing that, and baking that into the organization? What does that look like? And what has the academy and what has these, what have these kinds of supports meant that they could do that they might not have been able to do on their own? And then ultimately, what advice she has to share not just with the sector, but with the sectors, major funders around how they can support organizations who are at very different stages of the immigrant at the digital transformation journey, I think this is a really important and interesting conversation, and I hope you find it quite useful in your work.

Marco Campana 1:43
Welcome to the technology and human services podcast, Sampada, thank you so much for joining me, why don’t we start by maybe introducing yourself and tell me a bit about your work at skills for change?

Sampada Kukade 1:53
Yeah, thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here today and talk about this important topic. My name is Sampada Kukade today, and I’m the Vice President of Corporate Communications, and stakeholder engagement at skills for change been here for just over eight years. And it’s been a fantastic journey. For me. My portfolio includes many different facets, including the program marketing of all of our 25 Plus programs, across the agency, all of our communications and communication channels. In addition to that, a huge part of my responsibility is around stakeholder engagement, which really is working with employer partners and corporate partners to see the value in the clients that we serve, which are newcomer clients, of course, and allow employers to have access to a global talent, talent pool. So that’s, that’s what I do. And yeah, really excited to talk about the charity growth Academy and digital transformation today.

Marco Campana 2:57
excellent segue. No, I mean, skills for change has been around for quite a long time, but also has been a tech innovator in the past. I know. I mean, I’ve been in the sector for a while. So I know that you were one of the first organizations to sort of start doing some online community with internationally educated professionals and things like that many, many years ago, very, very ahead of the times kind of experimenting. So but we know, especially in the last three years, that digital transformation, and in our sector, this sort of shift to hybrid services, is it’s kind of an inevitability. So So yeah, you mentioned the charity growth Academy. So I wonder, that’s really why we kind of came together, because I saw that your organization was part of that. And I thought, great. This is a good example of one program that is focused on helping nonprofits and charities to, to become digitally transformed and digitally literate. So can you tell me a little bit about what the charity growth Academy is and how you got involved?

Sampada Kukade 3:48
Yeah, absolutely. So if I can just take a step back, and as you mentioned, yeah, skills for change has, you know, kind of been one organization that has offered, you know, the online supports and things like that. But it really wasn’t until 2020. Of course, everybody had to shift immediately. And it was definitely, you know, a challenge for us from the perspective of, at that time, only offering pretty much online, sorry, in person courses, with some supports online through, you know, various tools, but really shifting that focus to full virtual delivery. And so what we kind of saw and identified, as you know, just the change management process, and how quick everyone had to adapt, which was fantastic. Everyone, of course, did that. But really, how do we now become more prepared for any of those situations in the future, but just also just the evolving world and how digitally connected and digitally, you know, we’re so reliant on digital technology, so to ensure that we’re continuously ahead of the game and so, last year, I had content At Shari Austin, who is sits on a board with our CEO, cerana, Sandy. And she had connected us with CanadaHelps, who then discuss this new pilot project called Charity growth Academy, which is a partnership with MasterCard Chang works and Canada helps to help nonprofit organizations to become more digitally transformative, and really to support that whole process. And so after having some conversations with CanadaHelps, initially, they had wanted to really focus on really small organizations and skills for changes. Now, you know, kind of, we’re at the 9 million mark. So we’re getting to that bigger stage. And so but they did see a lot of value in having an organization like skills for change, participate, from the perspective that you are in this growth stage, you know, we’re growing quite big, we’ve expanded in terms of our program delivery and the number of programs that we have. And so how are we keeping up digitally and with our digital transformation, and it’s been a challenge that’s calls for change. And so we really, you know, identified that, and that was really the precursor to us getting involved with this program. And this particular program, what it was, was brought together a group of nonprofit organizations that could meet with, you know, CanadaHelps, and a few consultants that they had that specialized in digital transformation. And we work together to really understand what does that mean, you know, it’s not just about one aspect of like, do we are we on a CRM or like, what system do we use? But really, it’s that broader picture of like, how were we you know, showcasing our impact? How is our data managed across our organization? Even everything from how are our fundraising efforts? How can we strengthen our fundraising efforts through tools and technology? So we had a bunch of workshops, and then what that led to was a full analysis of, you know, where we are in certain points of our digital transformation. And from that, we were given a huge document with like, number of recommendations on how to get started on certain things. So for example, and this is just one kind of example is like, you know, we’re off if we’re off of the Google Suite, then how does you know, where are we in terms of, you know, streamlining processes with Google Drive. So it gave recommendations as kind of like granular as that and and that was really useful. Yeah, for us to kind of move forward and say, Okay, what do we what are we able to implement?

Marco Campana 7:53
It’s interesting, because you mentioned that they had originally focused on small organizations. But we know and we’ve certainly learned over the last few years that nobody is sort of in digital fully digitally mature in the nonprofit sector. I mean, very few, I would say some probably are but but, but it’s great that they were able to see the potential that that even a larger organization could benefit from something like this. So I was among the things that they worked on for you. You mentioned sort of fundraising and internal systems. So they also did they also look at your, your sort of front facing client service technologies and things like that, like how you’re, how you’re incorporating those into your service delivery?

Sampada Kukade 8:31
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s the critical piece is that how do we, what it got us to start thinking about is that of course, with 25 different programs, were funded by multiple funders, what are the funders asking for insurance and reporting? How are we interfacing with the client as they first enter our organization to really understand what program is suited for them. And so that’s what got us really starting to think about streamlining those processes, and strengthening them so that the technology can do a lot of the work that we’re currently doing in terms of assessing and understanding where our clients, you know, should be situated in terms of the right program for them. So it definitely did help support that. And the client journey. Incredibly,

Marco Campana 9:20
did it look at things like competencies amongst your staff in terms of what their digital strengths and needs might be in terms of kind of almost creating a baseline across the organization?

Sampada Kukade 9:32
Yeah, I think what it did and where we’re kind of at right now, because one of the things that I think a lot of the organizations identified and it’s just natural that you would around the change management process, right. So it’s one thing about adopting technologies and you know, all of that, but it’s another thing around the change management. So what it allowed us to do is exactly that. At the front forefront. It allowed us to look at the leadership team and see who has Is the capabilities, the understanding and maybe some background to really support this project? And then you know, really look at those that are more kind of technologically savvy and are able to, you know, we have some champions just say in our organization that tend to do the trainings and things like that. So, really looking at okay, who can we kind of continue to engage as the champions as we go through this transformation?

Marco Campana 10:27
Yeah, I mean, that’s a really interesting, because digital transformation we know is not like a one and done exercise and change management, you’ve mentioned it a few times is, it’s a huge journey to be on. So I guess the first question I’m curious about you were already on that journey, obviously, in some ways already. And in other ways, no choice because of the pandemic, but but certainly on the pathway. What what did what did a process or a program like this bring in terms of how it impacted? Your journey? did? Did it? You know, were you able to move more quickly? Did you feel more comfortable was it you know, if you felt like you were treading water less through the process,

Sampada Kukade 11:04
I mean, a little, right, because, you know, when you get the document, you’re like, oh, my gosh, like, you know, there’s so much to do, and you want to get it all done. And of course, we know that and like you said, whether you’re a small organization, or a large one in the nonprofit sector, or charitable sector, rarely do we get funds to actually, you know, go towards digital transformation, there are, you know, like more unique grants that are have come up over the last, you know, little while that are really tailored to that digital transformation, which is fantastic. But it does become a challenge, because you don’t have the internal capacity. And as it is, you know, by seeing my title, you can see I own three departments, you know, I’m strapped, right and stretched already. Yeah, and I’m the lead for this digital transformation project. But what it allowed us to do is a through CanadaHelps, and MasterCard change works. And they it didn’t just stop, as you said, like, it doesn’t stop, you know, at that point. And the recommendations was actually this the launch point to so much more, both internally, as well as with the supports we have been getting through CanadaHelps and MasterCard. And so you know, MasterCard, giving us volunteers, to work with us on a continual basis based on our needs. And then CanadaHelps, continuing to give us workshops and building the, you know, the knowledge and expertise and best practices of what the organization’s in the first pilot have been have been doing. But what it allowed us to do internally is, we’ve formed a team of about four of us that we just kind of accidentally got into technology, you know, one of my staff, one of my colleagues, who is just a whiz at Salesforce, and another one who just had a passion for Google Suite. So it brought us together to just talk about at least have the discussion, sit down and have the discussion and reinforced by our CEO who has the vision of digital transformation. So I think that’s really critical in that journey is that even if you don’t have the funds earmarked, or you know, you don’t have the capacity, if the vision is there for that digital transformation from the top, then you know, it’s going to it’s going to, we’re going to figure out a way to do it. And so it started those conversations. And now what it’s done is we’re about eight months later, we’ve hired a Chief Chief Strategy operations. And as in growth officer, who is now going to own our digital transformation and build out, you know, we’ve got this vision now of building out that department and really moving the dial on some of these areas. And that’s what it’s really done is and we’ve been really lucky skills for changes going through a strategic strategic planning refresh right now, our previous strategic plan was from 2018 to 2023. So as we’re going through that process, it also kept the digital transformation top of mind as part of that strategic plan. So everything that we talk about in our strategic planning process really embeds that digital mindset in terms of that, that’s something that we’re going to need to embed as we you know, move forward in our new strategic plan.

Marco Campana 14:25
There’s so much I feel like I want to unpack there something specific because there’s, there’s a lot of really important kind of threads that we are discussing. And one of them is I want to I want to talk about because you came up in another conversation with them with Agnes Thomas, who’s the IDI of Catholic cross cultural services. And she echoed some of what you said, which is there are people who have individuals in the organization who have certain interests and certain strengths and so bringing them together to create sort of committees but also building off of their strengths and giving them that space. And it kind of it kind of goes into that that notion of well are people are some people Jobs kind of changing and shifting. So for those people who so for that, first, that first question that you talked about these, you know, your staff who did the Google Drive expert and someone else who had an interest in something else, does that become kind of part of their permanent position now that they’re, they’re also working in those areas.

Sampada Kukade 15:18
So not necessarily, because, you know, again, you know, my colleague who has that interest in Salesforce, she has a very specific job, She’s the manager of marketing and employer engagement. But what it allows us to do on the senior leadership level on the EN, is to really embed those pieces in the professional development. And I think that’s really important, because if you have a passion for something, you know, we can still tie it back to the work that they’re doing. And so, with this particular individuals portfolio, part of it is working to get our employment, you know, our clients employed. And so, you know, we need that data, and how do we use that data, we need to really expand the use and use Salesforce more meaningfully. So while there, there’s your connection, so it’s really about creating those connections in terms of you know, you still you have this, you know, portfolio you have to manage, but how can you embed those pieces into those portfolios?

Marco Campana 16:22
It’s interesting, so becoming a deeper or a power user of the tools that they might have already been using, but didn’t necessarily have the capacity before to be as as to use it as deeply, I guess.

Sampada Kukade 16:33
Yeah. And I think, again, one thing that I was saying we had a session with some of the folks from the pilot a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things that I was saying was around, when you tie it back to your strategic plan, then you can, you know, embed that into those, those individuals portfolios, right, because now it’s about, you know, we’re really wanting to ensure we have a solid data, it’s about data gathering, every everybody is everybody is talking about data data. And so, yeah, so we tie that back to this is the direction we want to go, this is the vision we see for it, and then that’s going to be embedded into the portfolio. But then you get to utilize those tools that you’re so passionate about.

Marco Campana 17:25
Yeah, that’s another really important point that again, this sort of one and done the strategic is that this is this is not just something that kind of happens over here, but it’s directly tied into your strategic plan. It’s part of how you’re going to be doing business moving forward. I imagine it’s, it impacts sort of the kinds of skills you might look for in in new hires, or how you onboard them differently in the training that you give them and things like that. So, so So yeah, I mean, I’m curious about how it sounds like it has had an impact in terms of impacting your long term vision and the infrastructure, I mean, the hiring of a person in that position, that’s another thing we’ve seen in some of the research is new and emerging roles are somewhat inevitable, to be able to do that, because like you said, you’re already stretched, you know, this was basically the fourth project that you would have been sort of, you know, working on in your portfolio. So to having a staff person come on to be that transformation, that digital operations person, I assume is something that has come out of this process.

Sampada Kukade 18:24
Yeah, absolutely. And again, you know, we can’t really create a rosy picture of it just being so smooth sailing, and, you know, we’re able to implement and everything. It’s exactly that right. Charities are, you know, resource strapped all the time. And, you know, there are, you know, when we have 25 programs, there’s just so much going on every day. And then what ends up happening is you have this like, you know, session, we had this working session, and everybody was ALL Yay, let’s get this moving. And then five weeks go by and you’re like, oh, my gosh, we need to meet again. And, you know, now things are getting busy. And it’s just your day to day routine. And it just, you know, gets in the way of like, these bigger conversations that we need to keep at the forefront. But I think what, what, with this project, because of the ongoing support that enabled us to continuously keep it top of mind, so even if we can’t move the dial on a particular area, at least it’s still continuously top of mine. So I would say like, even if, worst case scenario, we weren’t able to do anything about this, any of our digital transformation for the next two years. It’s continuously embedded into conversations now.

Marco Campana 19:43
And are those external resources those have come through the charity growth Academy pilot, so those are, I guess, are they pro bono consultants, or how does that work?

Sampada Kukade 19:52
Yeah. So the, the recommendations that we got, a lot of them are just, we can and kind of figure out how to like, obviously, the organization would have to figure out how to implement. But through the volunteers that MasterCard provides, they, you know, really are very keen on meeting with us on a regular basis to talk about, Okay, what’s next? What can we help you with? What can we help you and then so they’re able to build out processes or give us ideas in terms of how to, you know, better our CRM system, you know, how to better utilize it. So it’s around that, but a lot of it is it can actually be embedded into the organization. So if there were specific things that we talked about integration of tools, for example, between Salesforce and another, and another tool, that’s something that we can likely do internally with just some of the, you know, the, because the recommendations didn’t only include like us to do this, like it’s it goes far beyond this is how you would do it. These are the resources you could utilize for it. And then there’s ongoing courses as well, that they provide us with both internally where we can meet as a group, but also online courses that they recommend us to take as well.

Marco Campana 21:12
Oh, interesting. I mean, it sounds like there’s sort of, you know, it’s almost like a wraparound services we would call it in the system is that you’ve got these these pro bono these volunteers support. But you also have, and you have the learning pathways. But it sounds like you also have regular meetings with with other recipients or other members of the academy. And I wonder if how impact and it sounds like you’ve mentioned what you’ve been able to share? Has it been valuable to hear other people’s stories and learn from them? Absolutely.

Sampada Kukade 21:36
Yeah, we just had a session a couple of weeks ago, where we talked about, you know, a quick way and we each organization gave a presentation on their quick win. And it was really amazing to hear. Yeah, and I think that there are a lot of takeaways, I think there are some organizations that completely revamped their websites, that, you know, and then also to hear some of the challenges that they faced and and what we faced and be able to share that. So yeah, it’s an ongoing, I feel like there’s, you know, always a learning, there’s always something you can take and bring at the same time.

Marco Campana 22:16
Yeah, I mean, it sounds it sounds like it’s unnecessary level of different kinds of supports, from the assessment to providing you with recommendations, but also then helping you work through those providing you with professional development opportunities, and that community of practice, I guess, as a pilot,

Sampada Kukade 22:31
because I think, yeah, I think overall, you know, eventually, they’re gonna go on to the next pilot, you know, the next group, they’re going to offer this hopefully to another group of individuals. But what it allows, like you said, it allows us to create the community. And so I would assume that a number of us who are part of the first pilot would want to continue to connect, you know, after our pilot is officially done, and just keep those conversations going.

Marco Campana 23:00
Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. And then those new that next cohort could join the community. And it just kind of grows and builds and, and you develop your expertise and sharing. It’s interesting, because it sounds like a really impactful and really well designed approach to helping Nonprofits and Charities on their digital transformation. But I always like to look at how can it scale? Right. So CanadaHelps and MasterCard, are creating, I would say, and we see a lot of experimentation in different different nonprofit sectors, including ours with different ideas that are being tried out. And I’m always looking for the well, what’s the one that are? What are the number of them because there’s gonna be different approaches to different parts of the journey. If something sticks and if something makes sense, how can we make it scale? I mean, so I guess the question is, how do we what advice would we give to an IRCC or a provincial funder to say, you know, this pilot project is like the approach that you should invest in to help the organizations that you’re that you’re providing grants or contribution agreements to in order to move forward effectively?

Sampada Kukade 24:05
Yeah, I think I think it’s, it’s opportunities like this or you know, back in the fall, we got invited to do a panel at the AFP conference, the sociation of Fundraising Professionals conference, where it was myself CanadaHelps, Liz Bryce, and then Jen Sloan, who runs the MasterCard change works and so the three of us coming together and having that conversation, so I think it’s around the note knowledge mobilization, and really having the organization’s having, you know, folks like Canada helps the Canadian Center for Digital Trends, resiliency, resilience. You know, it’s it’s organizations like that really, just continuing to mobilize in the community. Keep it top of mind having conversations like this, you know, you Use talking to me, we’re going to share it out and have our organization share it and just have people really, really keep it top of mind, in terms of this is this is definitely a need that we have to embed into future projects, as you said, you know, IRCC is going to have a call next year again. So really ensuring that we having this voice around how important and critical it is for them to include, you know, in parts of their funding proposals and calls as we move forward.

Marco Campana 25:35
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it feels inevitable. But it also feels like a bit of a black hole at this point, because we’re not sure where their priorities are. So I feel like projects like this and your experiences. And so I’m so grateful that you’re sharing are what funders need to hear about what’s working, and what they could do to scale it up. Because if you can, I mean, you know, a MasterCard Foundation can’t nearly go as wide in terms of the nation or as deeply in terms of the different kinds of organizations as the numbers of organizations that government can. So I’m hoping that, you know, foundations like these, you know, even large foundations like the Trillium Foundation who are funding, or even this huge pot of money, that’s $400 million, that’s going for community efforts in response to COVID, which will certainly include digital transformation projects. Yeah. And we need to feed that sort of, as you say, we need to mobilize that knowledge up to to the levels that can actually scale it in a meaningful way.

Sampada Kukade 26:32
Yeah, I agree. And I’m hopeful that also, you know, due to the pandemic, it, you know, I’m hopeful that a lot of funders really see that it has to happen, right? Like we kind of stumbled upon it as a result of the pandemic. And so I really think that, you know, funders going forward are going to think more innovatively and creatively and, and also, just, in general, how to best serve our clients. So because for example, you know, it’s one thing about skills for changes digital transformation. And it’s another when we talk about our clients access and digital equity, which has now become

Marco Campana 27:14
absolutely,

Sampada Kukade 27:17
yeah, a huge, you know, topic, we just did a Spotlight Series, which is, you know, an event we have once a month, where we call in experts, and we did something around digital transformation and equity. And it’s about that, it’s about the fact that as a result of going to the pandemic, you either had, we either had clients who were benefiting from that, because, you know, they, they had familial responsibilities and other things, you know, their kids were home. So they had no choice, they had to go virtual. And so that helped and supported a lot of our clients. But on the flip side, it was a challenge for a lot of our clients who had don’t have access to digital technologies, who are working off of, you know, one tablet, or one phone, in their entire household. So we did have clients and client examples, like specific client examples where, you know, client would talk to one of our counselors and say, I can’t apply for a job because my kid has to use our one device that we have, from nine to three and during school. And so it limits my time to now try to find a job, Career Centers were all closed, everything was all closed. So it’s about, you know, meeting the middle of that, that gap where, now that we’re back in the office, I’m in the office today, and we’re offering a suite of virtual and in person services. So it’s really being able to support and offer that flexibility, acknowledging that our clients have vast needs, and really being able to support that because at the end of the day, our job is to the best integration of newcomers to Canada. It’s about sustainable employment, it’s about furthering the sustainable development goals on the more blunt, broader global scale. You can’t do that. If you’re not innovating. You can’t do that. If you don’t change with what the you know, the landscape is looking like.

Marco Campana 29:14
Yeah, no, thank you so much for bringing the digital equity piece from the client perspective, because it is, is such an important part of the continuum, if we’re digitizing if we’re building hybrid. Now, hybrid allows for in person, which is great, but what about people who maybe they would like to go digital, but they don’t have the device, the internet, fast internet, or the digital literacies? Or the fluency sufficient to do that, but they would like to do that. So I feel like it’s a question of whose responsibility is it as we and I’m thinking beyond our sector, right? We have digital government, expanding employment, digital banking, I mean, every facet of our lives has increasingly digital components. So whose responsibility is it to help those folks meet that meet that goal and and I know as service providers, that’s a big big weights in some ways,

Sampada Kukade 30:02
it’s a huge way. And I just what I wish and hope is that when you know, policy makers, governments and corporate are meeting that they really take into account what the service providers experiences on the ground with our clients. Because oftentimes, I do find that those conversations happen outside of the service provider. But I think, as you mentioned, like who’s responsible, we’re all responsible, but we all have to have that conversation to look at it from various perspectives. So I don’t think you’re gonna get that client perspective, in terms of, you know, what that client might be facing, for example, unrelated to our organization, but even if the client is going for an employment opportunity lives in, you know, a low income neighborhood where the access to transportation is far less, then you got to think about those things is that person going to be able to take the transit, they need to get to that job? And so how is that employer going to then create a more flexible environment for that person so that they can thrive and their, you know, their work, and they can fulfill that, you know, passion and goal working, while supporting that, that person’s needs so that they don’t have to turn down the job? Or they’re not able to? You know, it take that opportunity?

Marco Campana 31:26
Right? Yeah, no, that’s so important. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it is such a continuum of actors that have to kind of get together and have this conversation and agree, and then scale up the solutions that work. It’s, it feels really complex, but it also feels inevitable.

Sampada Kukade 31:41
Yeah, we

Marco Campana 31:42
have to do this work. Right.

Sampada Kukade 31:44
Yeah, definitely, we have to do it. And, you know, especially with, as we know, in terms of the labor market shortages that we’re facing right now, plus, you know, the 1.5 million new immigrants that are expected, you know, it’s these are the challenges that we foresee happening, right, it’s like we, you know, you can have the funding available for skills, development programs, and all of these kinds of things. But it’s really about looking at it more holistically, as you said, and providing those wraparound supports to ensure that the client, you know, any, any person that comes any person can, you know, fulfill their passion and their dream and get meaningfully employed, and, you know, further their education or whatever they want to do, but, you know, allowing that space to, you know, for those individuals,

Marco Campana 32:36
for sure. I mean, in some ways, I It feels like a conversation. That’s, that that is isn’t a part of what settlement organizations might be working on. But as you described earlier, if if, if the goal is full integration of newcomers, then it becomes part of of not just the responsibility, but the the focal point in the efforts for settlement organizations to actually work on this digital equity and digital inclusion question.

Sampada Kukade 33:02
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, and then bringing it back to the organization and the organization’s digital transformation again, you know, if we’re expecting this large group of individuals coming in, it’s like, how are we going to service them best, and as quickly as possible, you know, many of them are going to need the full settlement supports, but many of them are going to come with the global experience that they have that are there ready to work? And so how do we, how do we ensure that we’re as quickly as possible, you know, getting them to live their best life in Canada, essentially, that’s the, that’s the goal is that, you know, allow them the opportunity to, you know, create community create, you know, space for them to, you know, support their family, and all that kind of stuff. So, it’s really about that we can’t do that we can’t do that work as effectively until we’re able to, you know, move a dial on our digital transformation. And that’s going to require the support of every single player in the field,

Marco Campana 34:08
for sure. And I mean, it raises an interesting question about the self serve kind of newcomer as you’re describing highly motivated, highly skilled, excellent English. What kind of self serve? You know, what, what can technology do to help you serve them? 24/7 Whether it’s chatbots AI tools, I mean, we just this is manic explosion of the conversation of the day. Yes. And what I what I find interesting is people are sharing Well, there’s all these other interesting tools as well. So there’s this incredible explosion of emerging technology that we need to figure out how to use responsibly first of all, which is a challenge in our sector, because, you know, it’s not something we look at, but we but but it is on the agenda. So I’m curious if you’re having that conversation about well, how can we serve people while we’re sleeping? Right, the idea of that 24/7 concierge in some way.

Sampada Kukade 34:58
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think You know, the AI conversation like, we’re just starting to have that as well, you know, as you said, chat GTP GPT has exploded, and it’s like, you know, a lot of technologically savvy folks are just going to be able to, you know, create their resumes on on AI tools like that. So it’s really about for us for skills for change, and where our growth really has been over the last couple of years is around the wraparound supports. And I think that’s where, you know, in terms of what you’re seeing around, like, you know, those red job ready clients, or those individuals who come new into the country that are just ready to go, is really about providing those wraparound supports, at the end of the day, no one can replace mentorship, no one can replace mental health services, right? All of those pieces that we don’t often, you know, you think that a person is ready for employment. But if they are coming from as a refugee from a conflict area, we’re not taking into account some of the trauma that they could be experiencing. And so even though they may have a global expertise in, you know, technology, or data analytics, or whatever it is, and they’re able to get a job the next day, it’s around, you know, how are they part of that sustainability of that job is going to be ensuring that we support them in their family life, and anything that they may be dealing with as a result of a new immigrant, whether it’s isolation, or it’s, you know, again, somebody’s coming from a war torn country where they’re dealing with that trauma that goes hand in hand. So that’s where I see, you know, us changing with the times, it’s about, you know, if the technologies can take care of certain things, where are we going to provide those wraparound supports that you know, that that will then allow them to be their best selves?

Marco Campana 36:53
I love that I think that’s such an important perspective to see that yes, we can we can, we can use technology as a tool to help take the load off of some of our work. And also for those who, you know, for those who are self serve, if you will, but there’s still such a meaningful and important role that agencies can play. And perhaps you can even play more of that role with those kinds of clients who are able to kind of work on their own through those settlement processes. But you can provide those other kinds of support for them that they that they aren’t certainly not going to get from technology at this point.

Sampada Kukade 37:22
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, maybe one day. Yeah, but but

Marco Campana 37:25
I think it’s a really good perspective on on how you’re evaluating where the tools can fit, and where where you are on that continuum, and then communicating that to someone to say, Yeah, you know, maybe you’ll have a job tomorrow, in part because of our AI tool, or our, you know, job search and resume Creator tool. But don’t forget, you may have other questions. You know, maybe you’re going through some issues, maybe, you know, as you’re, as you’re working in that job, things might come up triggers or mental health issues, we’re here, you know, and making sure they understand. Yeah, so access.

Sampada Kukade 37:56
Exactly. And we have a new project that we’re launching, actually, that was just announced this week, we got a million dollars from TD revenue. So I congratulate very exciting, and that’s a climate change project. And, to your point, you know, we’re we have tools, as part of this project, we’re going to have a youth led website and newsletters and a lot of online engagement. But at the end of the day, in terms of creating that sustainable change in your community, specifically low income areas that have are more exposed to the dangers of climate action and climate change, you still have to plant trees, right, like that human touch that human involvement is, it still has to be there, you still have to advocate, you still have to advocate for your communities, you have to part of the project is really going to be having the community understand how they can impact climate change in their areas. And so that still has to happen in person, you still need an organization like skills for change to facilitate those conversations facilitate those activities and initiatives.

Marco Campana 39:01
Absolutely. And I mean, I feel like a lot of what you’re referring to, as well as the the the need and the the essential. Sorry, the essential need to fully understand the people and communities that you’re serving. So that you know when a right an intervention makes sense with technology versus in person and you understand the whole person so that even though that intervention work, and we know employment is one of the key factors leading to settlement. But then there’s below the iceberg, all that stuff that you were talking about earlier. So understanding them, I assume you’re you’ve probably been doing that. But you may be deepening that effort to try to sort of really understand the people you’re serving, as well as the people you’re not serving, right. We know there are people who don’t access services. And once again, technology provides an opportunity to reach them.

Sampada Kukade 39:45
Yes, yeah, definitely. And I think that’s one thing around the pandemic that a lot of organizations I’m sure similar to skills for change really found is that it did allow us to expand our reach in terms of you know, who we’re able to serve and And, you know, a wider audience from that perspective. So I think that that, you know, can never be a bad thing, right? Because if we can serve somebody, even outside of the Greater Toronto area that needs supports, where there may be less supports available or something of that nature than our job is still done.

Marco Campana 40:20
Absolutely. He’s still Yeah, why not? Right? I mean, if it if you can reach someone who can’t be reached, I talked to a number of francophone organizations during the pandemic, and one of the things they talked about was being able to reach into exactly as you describe communities that that had a francophone presence, but not large enough to fund service providers. So they could now reach those people and in ways they never had before or didn’t think they could before. And it’s transformative for some of those folks who are now getting service in their language, as we know is so important and newcomer for newcomers and settlements. So it was really interesting to hear, and to hear UFO that here. So this is this has been such a great share. Thank you so much. I’m curious if there’s any advice that you would share with other immigrant and refugee serving organizations based on your experience, who maybe at very different stages of this of the digital transformation journey? And I mean, I can tease out a number of lessons from everything, you’ve talked about it, but if there are a few sort of points that come top of mind for you, I’m curious.

Sampada Kukade 41:13
Yeah, absolutely, I would say that from the senior management level, just to just start having those conversations and really understand your role in it in terms of your organization’s digital transformation. And that, if you’re not keeping it front of mind that you know that that’s the example you need to set in order for the organization to follow. So I would definitely recommend senior leaders really getting a better understanding, really looking at sources like the Canadian Center, as a potential resource, reading up on it, listening to everything, you know, podcasts and things like that, to really understand it. And then just in general, for organizations, I would say, it know that it’s going to be an ongoing journey, this is never gonna end. It’s just about what are even some of those small things, those small wins that we can make in order to move the dial. Because once you see the impact of that small win, and how you’re able to move the dial, it will allow you to kind of, you know, feel feel excited and know that it’s there’s the possibility that this could happen. I would also say to any organization just continuously look out externally to see what grants are available in the space, because that was one thing we talked about a couple of weeks ago in our cohort is, you know, some folks know about them, and some folks don’t. So really just get an understanding of when those funding opportunities, try to be abreast of all of that get on newsletters and everything you can, because there are always opportunities that are coming up and more so nowadays, around that digital technology and digital transformation space. So really keep abreast of that so that you can apply and actually have some, you know, funds to be able to do that and make those you know, changes.

Marco Campana 43:07
No, that’s great. It reminds me of sorry, I have a final question, which is that community of practice with those other organizations seems really valuable. Yeah. And I’m curious if you’re seeing any emergence of that in our sector, in the immigrant refugee serving sector, where we’re having these conversations with each other in a meaningful way, and if you’re part of that,

Sampada Kukade 43:24
yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think just, you know, due to employment transformation, and all of those big pieces that have been, you know, already implemented and are being implemented in in Toronto soon, I think those conversations are just naturally happening, I think groups are coming together and really talking about it and, and seeing how we can coordinate services better and how we can learn from each other. So I think that again, in terms of best practices for other organizations, you know, get yourself involved in all of those sector groups, right? All of those thought leader groups, really get yourself involved in them become a member of those groups, because that’s your opportunity to really exchange those ideas. And, you know, talk about how we can serve the community more holistically. And and have kind of similar messaging, you know, you know, whether it’s advocacy through an organization like O’Casey or whatever, having that consistent voice on these issues, because we know that we’re, you know, no matter how we deliver the service, at the end of the day, the challenges that we’re facing with newcomers are all the same. And so what we want to advocate for, you know, whether it’s digital equity or technologies and things like that, that’s not going to change across the board. So those are the conversations that we could be can, you know, ensure we have a common voice for? Yeah, that

Marco Campana 44:51
makes sense. Yeah, common voice a common position that makes a lot of sense. Is there anything I haven’t asked you about that you want to share or advice you’d like to leave with?

Sampada Kukade 44:59
Oh, I think I think, yeah, we

Marco Campana 45:02
covered a lot.

Sampada Kukade 45:03
We did cover a lot. And I know when it comes to like digital equity and all of those things we could probably have like, even, you know, a second podcast absolutely around that. So, no, I just appreciate that you also, you know, have this vehicle that you’re using to really talk about these issues and bring it to the forefront. It is, again, as I said, podcasts, and you know, that knowledge mobilization, that’s all part of it in terms of just getting the word out and how critical this piece of work is in ensuring the growth and sustainability of organizations, but also to be able to best serve our clients. So I really appreciate that you asked me to come today and speak on this.

Marco Campana 45:48
Well, and I really appreciate you joining me. So yeah, gratitude fest. But thank you so much for taking the time to come and share your experience. There’s so much value and insight in an experience in what you’ve been doing that I think it’d be great for people to hear about it. And for again, funders who might listen to this, to hear what needs to scale up what what is working on the ground, that they could actually help continue to support widely and deeply in the sector. So exactly very much for your time. I appreciate it.

Sampada Kukade 46:14
Thank you so much.

Marco Campana 46:16
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes, wherever you listen to your podcasts are also on my [email protected] I appreciate you listening and if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website, or [email protected] Thanks again

Welcome to episode 42 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode, I chat with Lisa DeGara, Manager, Small Centres at Action for Healthy Communities in Alberta.

I came across Lisa’s work in rural Alberta in a conference presentation and wanted to chat with her about the challenges and opportunities of digital in and between rural small centres, with a focus on how to provide services in that challenge/opportunity context. She’s able to effectively put a face to what we know about stats and information about rural internet access, what the acceleration of hybrid/digital service delivery means in that context, and the additional nuances of Newcomer-related digital literacy, digital divide challenges.

We explore what she learned from her Summer 2021 Digital Literacy training, including how she was able to replicate another nonprofit’s curriculum for Newcomers, and how important the device (Chromebook) was in that process. We also explore that post-COVID context, and how we can harness what we learned during a time of purely remote service delivery and what means for how Immigrant and Refugee-serving organizations serve Newcomers in rural small centres.

The work she and her colleagues are doing in rural communities and how our sector’s shift to hybrid services is important for us to discuss and ensure is taken into account in digital inclusion work in our sector. As you’ll hear, those that rural perspective is not heard or included often enough in our national conversation. And it needs to be. Hybrid means very different things, has many nuances, and is approached very differently in different settings.

Lisa says that technology is merely a means of enhancing the in-person experience. You can do a lot online. But it’s best if you use technology to enhance that in-person interaction. And she outlines how dangerous an urban, bureaucratized, middle class, Southern Ontario perspective that permeates our sector’s thinking can be when it comes to digital inclusion. As she describes, many people can’t just walk down to their local library to access devices, high speed internet, and support. We also talk a bit about the cult of efficiency. It’s OK to be less efficient if your impact is high. That’s a strong balance and tension that needs to be addressed.

Lest you think she might be a Luddite, Lisa recently completed a Master of Science in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I really enjoyed our conversation, the needed perspective she brings that I found myself realizing I don’t have enough of, and what it means for our sector.

Some of the questions we discussed:

Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has not been edited. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.

Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 42 of the technology and human services podcast. And this episode I chat with Lisa DeGara manager small centers that Action for Healthy Communities in Alberta. I came across Lisa’s work in rural Alberta in a conference presentation and wanted to chat with her about the challenges and opportunities of digital in in between rural small centers. With a focus on how to provide services in that challenge and opportunity context, she’s able to effectively put a face to what we know about stats and information about rural internet access, what the acceleration of hybrid and digital service delivery means in that context, and the additional nuances of newcomer related digital literacy and digital divide challenges. We explore what she learned from her summer 2021 digital literacy training, including how she was able to replicate and other nonprofits curriculum for newcomers, and how important the device was in that process. We also explore that post COVID context and how we can harness what we learned during a time of purely remote service delivery. And what that means for how immigrants and refugees serving organizations serve newcomers in rural centers. The work she and her colleagues are doing in rural communities and how our sector shift to hybrid services is important for us to discuss and ensure is taken into account in digital inclusion work in our sector, as you’ll hear that that rural perspective is not heard or included often enough international conversations and it needs to be hybrid means very different things has many nuances and is approached very differently in different settings. Lisa says the technology is merely a means of enhancing the in person experience. You can do a lot online, but it’s best if you use technology to enhance that in person interaction. And she outlines how dangerous in urban bureaucratized middle class southwestern Ontario perspective that permeates our sectors thinking can be when it comes to digital inclusion. As she describes many people can’t just walk down to their local library to access devices high speed internet and support. We also need to talk a bit about the cost of efficiency. It’s okay to be less efficient if your impact is high. She says that’s a strong balance and tension that needs to be addressed in our conversation. Lest you think that she might be a bit of a Luddite Lisa is currently pursuing a Master of Science in digital education at the University of Edinburgh. I really enjoyed our conversation that needed perspective she brings that I found myself realizing I don’t have enough of and what it means for our sector. I think you’ll enjoy this conversation. Welcome, Lisa to the technology and human services podcast. Thanks so much for joining me. Um, can you tell me a little bit about yourself, your background and some of the digital transformation work that you’re doing at Action for Healthy Communities?

Lisa DeGara 2:24
Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the chance to be invited. I appreciate that you’re doing deep dives of prior presentations, I give a lot of presentations. And one of the great things is that I give it and then I immediately forget. So it’s nice to be reminded of something I’d done previously. So my name is Lisa Chang Gaara. I am a manager at Action for Healthy Communities. We are an IRCC funded settlement organization. We’re headquartered here in Edmonton, Alberta. But as a manager of the small Centers program, I do the support of all of the rural communities that we support immigrants and refugees. And so my team works in LaDuke and Beaumont, just south of Edmonton near the airport. We work in Camrose, which is a community of about 15 to 20,000 people, about 90 minutes south east of the city of Edmonton. We do work in cold lake and Bonnyville, which our communities bought. Bonnyville is about three hours northeast of Edmonton and cold lake is about three and a half hours just at the border with Saskatchewan.

Lisa DeGara 3:19
And in addition, we do lots of work with lots of other surrounding communities obviously doesn’t translate podcast but I felt like back over my shoulder. We do support I think in schools in I want to say 17 Different communities across Alberta. So we’re in Glendon population 500, home of the giant pierogi which is not that giant, it’s only about seven feet tall. Lack of rubbish we are in Bashaw we are involved. We’re in Riley, we’re in tofield Forsberg, all these things every day, I feel like I’m learning a new small part of town. So background, my background. Originally I studied political science at McGill University. Then I returned to the prairies from Edmonton originally returned prairie study at the University of Saskatchewan, Master of Public Administration program. Johnson Triana, I teach there sometimes so big fan, we love JSPs great school. And then at the moment academically, I’m also studying Master of Science in digital education online with the University of Edinburgh. So digital things are a big passion of mine. And I’ll jump to that in a second. I had the opportunity to work with the Government of Alberta for a number of years, I worked for an economic development organization for a while and then in March of 2021, I was able to come into this role with action and healthy communities. It’s interesting to think about like digital transformation in the immigrant refugee sector, because I think from my perspective, digital transformation was not it was not really a priority. It was something that was pandemic mediated, and I think we’ll have a chat talk more detail about it. But even as somebody who like I really think of myself as being kind of like a technology evangelist, again, I’m doing digital education. I’m working on a dissertation research work about access to digital education in Yukon Territory. So that’s like another thing that’s going on, but I also have some real concerns and some real challenges that we’ve noticed in digital work with new car populations for a whole host of different reasons that we’ll jump into. But yeah, here, we’re in rural Alberta love policy, love intranet and love digital things. And I guess we’ll go for the rest of questions from there.

Marco Campana 5:16
That’s awesome. That’s fantastic. Yeah, and I mean, so many, so many questions, just starts the maze of following following through on some of those threads will be really interesting. So I mean, let’s talk about rural and small center internet access, you know, what we know about it is that it’s typically less stable, it’s slower, it’s more expensive than in a lot of urban centers, this is well documented, you know, in some, in some ways that’s been dealt with slightly over the pandemic, in terms of the realization and some, some funding in theory from the federal government, but it feels like we’re a bit slower than other jurisdictions, I’m thinking of the United States, for example, which has its own challenges, but they have huge broadband infrastructure funds, through through and also through through state and local resources and things like that. So um, but you know, as you pointed out in your presentation, and as we know, especially because of the pandemic, that the internet is, you know, a necessity, it’s not a luxury. So, what does that meant in terms of the challenges, and sort of some of what you’ve learned in, you know, internet connectivity as a service platform in rural and small centers?

Lisa DeGara 6:19
Yeah, so it’s really interesting. Like I said, I started this work in March of 2021. And by that point, the pandemic had been going on for a full year. But as we began, began to engage in settlement workers in schools in Swiss programming with immigrants and refugees in these small communities, there were like dozens and dozens of children who didn’t have a computer. So like, there was no computer in their home, meaning that the pandemic had been going on for a full year, and they had never had access to like a functional digital device. Similarly, we have clients who continue to really grapple with the elements of digital literacy. And I think like digital literacy always has been emphasized in the context of our people able to do things. But if you don’t have the literacy, you also can’t acquire the literacy and the need for the devices not relevant to you. In the rural communities where we work, I think, talking about this sort of like necessity, luxury component, which I really do believe like, I think the finished position that broadband is human right, is critical, especially when we look at, you can’t access most Canadian government programs by a computer, schools have an even harder time I spent a lot of my time talking to school divisions about like, you can’t just send emails, you actually have to do people things in paper, and they are violently opposed to this, It like makes them incredibly angry, to have to print things out and give them to people. But I what what strikes me is in this in the rural communities where we work, a lot of newcomers, if not actually, a majority of newcomers are living in poverty. There’s a lot of kind of unspoken implications about rural immigration, namely that people are typically working in minimum wage positions. They’re typically working in more tenuous employment. These are not communities of first choice, which is not something that we’d like to acknowledge very often with our rural partners, but it’s true. And so as a consequence, you have people who are already sort of tenuously at the edge of of economic functioning, can they afford their rent? Can they afford to feed their children can they afford, you know, cheat, and then you add this element of in order to access essential things you need to pay for internet, which is expensive, which is inconsistent. My team members that I have pleasure working with live in the rural communities. And often we have issues with internet connectivity, people dropping off, people not able to engage, there are sections on our travels that have very limited, even just basic cell reception well on 3g and 4g Internet. And so where I think it becomes the biggest issue is in kind of our expectation and how we structure how we structure the need for internet and what it’s intended to do. So if you think about, oh, we’re going to do something like this, we’re gonna do a synchronous Zoom meeting, and we’re going to do online English class. That’s a wonderful idea in theory, and in terms of access to people in many communities all at once. What a great idea. But if you’re in a community where access to 3g is limited, or access to broadband is very expensive. Suddenly, you’re asking people well, is doing an online enough class worth spending the $25, it costs for one gigabyte of Internet, and then these questions become a lot more like their their cost benefit analyses that families are having to do every single day, which is an even tougher proposition if you don’t have that digital literacy to begin with. So there’s like layers and layers and layers of challenges that are all coming together. Yeah, it’s tough, tough stuff, for sure.

Marco Campana 9:23
Yeah, no, I mean, and it’s those layers. And I think I mean, we can jump to the the other part of one of the threads you were talking about, which is we’re moving forward in theory as a sector with a hybrid service delivery model, which should incorporate the realities of people who don’t have access or simply don’t want to access online services, but also a scaling and a deepening of the opportunities to access services 24/7, you know, through through various automation techniques and things like that for people who do want to access them. But I feel and I wonder if we if we understand enough of the challenges for those who do Who can’t access? And so, you know, you kind of alluded to it. But if we’re moving forward as a sector with this kind of a model, what are some of those challenges that you are those? Those are those caveats that you kind of were alluding to earlier?

Lisa DeGara 10:11
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think so in our case, the way that we use hybrid models is largely for language. So anytime we’re engaging with a client, ideally speaking, we do have a staff member who’s physically there with them. With a small team in a distributed service area, like we have a huge geographical service area. Realistically, the use of hybridization is that we have one staff member who’s in the community, and another staff member who’s joining virtually because they speak the same first language as the client. So as an example, from earlier this week, we have a family that is from Eritrea, they’re living in Camrose, Alberta, my staff member who’s in Camrose, Alberta speaks only English, but we have a staff member here in the Edmonton office who speaks to grandma, and she can join via zoom, so that the family can speak into green Yeah, and then there’s like a conversation that’s happening in person. And then the conversation is happening digitally as well, that they’re both happening at the same time. When I think about hybridized service delivery, I think that’s really one of our biggest focuses. One of the things that the pandemic has really revealed and and it’s disquieting, it’s something that that upsets me a lot, especially again, as somebody who really believes in in the benefits of this intranet model is people living in poverty, people who have limited formal education, especially if they have no or limited post secondary people who have executive dysfunction challenges. Digital Services are essentially inaccessible to them. We are kind of debt, we’re very often kind of dancing around how we can engage these families. And very often it is like we have done all the legwork. I need you to show up at the school at this time, we will have a laptop open, we will have something available for you. There was recently a thing that was put out, it was in one of our I want to say one of our Alberta association of immigrant serving agencies calls and immigration refugees and citizenship, Canada had asked how can we get newcomers engaged in these digital work from home jobs like they’re, they’re such an expanding sector, they’re growing so much. And I said, like, you can’t, because people don’t have that skills base like we are seeing in my view, almost have a much accelerated much increased bifurcation of society into you have higher education, you have high literacy, you have high digital literacy. So you can access these really very plum work from home positions, or you have no post secondary education, you have very limited due to literacy or technology access, you are kind of condemned is maybe too strong of a word, but you’ve been sectioned off into these less desirable working roles. When I put that to IRCC. In the conversation, like you could hear a pin drop, they were so upset to hear that. But I like we have a client just as an example, we have a client, lovely lady, she, you know, she’s done a huge amount for herself. She’s she’s working on her own, she was able to leave on an abusive relationship. She’s looking after a one year old son. And she would come into our office once a week to check her email, because she could not work out how to do it on her own. And like with all the sessions with all the teaching, so you know, all these forms, all these government benefits, all of these things are coming in via email, and what were you able to provide in terms of digital services come on in Thursday at two o’clock, you know, the address, and we’ll go through all your emails with you. And for me like it’s, it’s been a really, it’s been an upsetting thing to see that level of severity, because it makes me worried like, what were people to be able to access over this period of lockdown. One of our big priorities actually, I think we started in September of 2021, was having as many staff in the office as often as possible, because unfortunately, we came to realize that most of our clients or many of our clients that are very vulnerable, were not able to access these badly needed things over months and months and months. And so it’s it’s a tough, it’s a tough spot that we find ourselves in, we want to be able to hybridize and I think having professionals in community and professionals online, and the professionals are connecting for the benefit of the client, that’s been the triangulation that has worked best for us. But it’s been it’s been a it’s been a stressful thing to witness. I think a lot of people just don’t like we haven’t had that growth and development of digital literacy. And, and so as a consequence, we have to plan using the digital part as a benefit to us as providers, but with the acknowledgement that our clients continue to struggle in the ways that they have historically.

Marco Campana 14:10
It’s interesting, there’s so many layers to that. But one of them is that this idea that a hybrid model is not one set thing. And the way you’re describing it is, you know, is is a good way to use the technology efficiently, and still provide service to your clients, even though they’re not the ones who are necessarily the users of the technology users. And I think that’s it sounds to me, like that’s an important model that we have to kind of understand is a legitimate service model and a hybrid service delivery approach while we’re trying to work on getting them perhaps up to that technology, that digital literacy, access to devices, better bandwidth, those kinds of things at the same time is recognizing that maybe that was in a choice environment that they may not want to do that necessarily. They may they may like this, this sort of different hybrid model. And I wonder when you have that conversation when you have That conversation with IRCC. And with your colleagues, you know, is your sense that the way we’re talking about this is still kind of an either or, and not like a multitude of nuance within the way we’re approaching the model?

Lisa DeGara 15:13
It’s a good question. I think that as we look at a lot of the service models, there is, well, there’s kind of two big challenges that I noticed. And one of them I think, should be familiar. This is this is across Canada, right. As a nationwide, the nation’s podcast. One of the challenges that I noticed a lot is there’s a ton of Southern Ontario thinking, and I hate to come across as an angry Albertan. Because I’m really not. But there’s a ton of Southern Ontario thinking that’s built into everything, which is, well, if they haven’t got a computer at home, they can make a short, you know, three minute walk down to the local public library. And it’s like, Nah, like, it doesn’t, it’s not like that. So that’s the first component is I think that there’s very often a dense urbanist thinking associated with everything, which is that if you haven’t got internet, maybe it’s cuz you can’t afford it in your apartment. But you can go to a place it’ll be readily available. You can walk to Starbucks, you go to the library, you go to your kids school, the kids school has loaner laptops like that kind of, there’s an assumption about, maybe you’re not able to access but there’s an assumption about the secondary sources that are available for you to access. I think that is very much coloring the perception. I think there’s a sort of a wider question. And I think it’s kind of beyond the scope of this. But there is a broader challenge that we have of like a kind of of democratized middle class thinking that I think permeates a lot of service delivery about, well, we don’t, we can’t know what’s going on in the community unless they fill out the Community Survey. And what you need to do is you need to go on Survey Monkey www.surveymonkey.com/g, two q x 272834, dash three, seven, and then you need to fill out the 28 question survey. And so like, we end up in this weird context where if you have the skills, you are engaging in this digitized format, and if you don’t, then you’re really not able to. So in terms of the hybridized format, I don’t know very often when I sit in the centralised meetings, I think that people are gonna be like, I’m speaking a whole nother language. Because I think that we’re, we’re always trying to make things client focused, it’s not about what’s convenient for us as providers is about what’s convenient for the client. So as an example, the hybridize model that we’ve done recently, which I think again, speaks to it, like my staff member who lives in Bonnyville, Alberta speaks Ukrainian and Russia. I had a family who had arrived from Ukraine, who were having a lot of struggles. And they were in Lamont, Alberta, which is about 45 minutes east of Edmonton, but several hours west of Bonneville. So it was like, Okay, I’m going to drive to the school. And then when I get to the school, I will open my laptop, the family will be there. And then the mike, my staff member will be able to connect digitally. But one of the things that was so interesting, like it all worked out my staff ever talked to was great. There’s actually another family that showed up. So that was that really well. But one of the things that was really interesting is as we left, I spoke to the principal of the school, and he said, You don’t know how much it means to us that you came here in person. And I said, you know, like, we do know how much that means. That’s why we make the effort. These digital services, I think, and again, especially in my in my master’s program, there’s a lot of emphasis on like, digital shouldn’t be seen as lesser than, and I agree on some level. But when we’re dealing with rural communities, often the biggest tip of fire of engagement of demonstrating willingness to engage is that you made the effort you got in your car, and you drove on these terrible secondary highways to see people in person. And so then the benefit of language is being connected in or benefit of programming and so on. But often it’s that relationship development of Yes, I am willing to make the effort. Yes, I am willing to drive Yes, I am willing to go to these places. That’s often the thing that makes the biggest difference. So the technology becomes a means of enhancing the in person experience, that’s probably the best way to put it. Because then I don’t have to just have like a crackly you know, phone on speaker that I’m connecting with my line interpreter. But it’s that in person, the technology enhances the in person experience. And I think that’s one of the biggest things that we’ve learned in our hybrid model. You can do a lot online, but it’s best if you have the online enhancing the in person.

Marco Campana 18:51
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I wonder if you’re given that you’re the there’s an idea that digital can be lesser than, is there a sense that in some ways, because people are pushing so hard toward digital service delivery, that in person is almost kind of perceived as something lesser than in too resource intensive? And, and not as not as efficient? Perhaps?

Lisa DeGara 19:11
Um, yeah, I think that’s a that’s an important point, I think absolutely. Like, in person service is less efficient. It’s absolutely less efficient. But it’s more impactful, like low low efficiency, high impact, I think is a big part of our work. And I think from the from the resources perspective, this has become a very tough conversation, especially with IRCC. We sent them our travel budget, and they were like, That’s outrageous, your drive too much. And I said, we drive. Not enough, I would contend but there’s this vision. I think, again, it’s very centralized. It’s very open thinking, well, I you know, I can do any meeting that I need to do for my kitchen. So I don’t see any reason why anybody should need to go anywhere and you’re like, this is actually not and I think it comes with a kind of a cohorting of prospective clients like we continue to do virtual meetings. But again, I don’t know how other people’s virtual meetings are going. But very often if we have a triangulation virtual meeting, so we have a client who’s who’s coming in from somewhere digital, we have an interpreter, we have a third person, like, the client is always on a phone. Like they’re never operating from a fully functional digital device, you’re always getting like, like this. Like, it’s the worst angle you’ve ever seen in your life. There’s always a child screaming, there’s always birds, like, it’s everything. And so I think there is perhaps the beginnings of perception. And I see it most often in the LinkedIn context, actually, especially like corporatized work. There’s this perception I think of in person as kind of wheat for lack of a better word, like kind of Rubby, like it is seen as this kind of like, oh, like, you have to be in person with people, how irritating how kind of slovenly all those. Whereas I started seeing those those messages from this United States, especially like kind of June, July of this year of like, Americans are going back to the office. And I was like, Honey, we have been in the office like, I don’t know what people were doing. But that’s been such an interesting thing to observe. And I think there’s also and this is another kind of interesting layer to add, the Alberta of it all is quite different. Like I, in my previous employment, we were back in the office in July of 2020. Like this idea of being it feels to me, a being cloistered in your home, because you can’t cross the threshold of your home and be out in the world. We noticed that tension a lot in the way that programs are planned. And this implication, well, everybody can do everything online, they can’t. But we do also like I don’t want to diminish it. Because we do also offer a lot of programs online, especially for connecting people from many centers at once. So we have our kids club programming, where the the instructors are here in Edmonton, and the children are joining us from 20 separate communities like that’s a really impressive thing that we do. But when the stakes are high, I think to have that in person connection is a means of demonstrating to someone I cared enough to make the effort to come here. And so that’s a really interesting again, like it, these are such difficult kind of concepts to see intersecting, especially at this juncture. But realistically, especially over 2022, especially as we’ve been out and about, it has become evident to me like remote work is upper class and in person is perceived as like a working class thing. And I think we’ve seen that throughout. But it’s becoming even more crisp and more evident at this stage of the pandemic, when people tell me that they’re like, they’re my friends why like, oh, like we went home four days a week, I’m like, I can’t I can’t understand like, I’m in the schools every day rolls every day. So anyway, that’s that’s sort of how it feels around a lot of these these challenges that there is class stratification that’s happening, there is education stratification that’s happening. And it feels insidious, I guess it feels like it’s not discussed, which I guess is why great opportunity to discuss it now. So who knows?

Marco Campana 22:47
No, I love that you’re bringing this up. Because I think it’s there as an undercurrent in some of the conversations in particular, when we, you know, we’ve come to kind of a deeper understanding of digital inclusion in the way that we’ve realized that it’s, it’s connected to social inclusion and economic inclusion, which as you’ve eloquently described, is a huge challenge, not just in, in work for rural newcomers, or newcomers in rural settings, but But in, you know, Southern Ontario, I’m in Toronto, so, you know, me a cool, but I know, right, but But you know, it’s fine. But even in the in, even in the nuances of understanding, you know, both preferences as well as abilities to connect, there’s, there’s huge digital divide issues within within, within the city like Toronto, that people are only just sort of kind of really realizing because again, of the of the of that perception, or that attitude of well just go online, and even the idea, like you described earlier have secondary places where you can get, you know, free Wi Fi and things like that, or even, you know, device loans or things like that start to fall apart, when you start to put in a service context where someone needs some privacy where they need a space, you know, beyond just the the Wi Fi itself, they need something more permanent in order to be able to access services in particular, if it’s outside of hours, where you know, a library or a Starbucks or McDonald’s or whatever it might be able to provide free Wi Fi and things like that. And so it really rapidly does fall apart, even in a in an urban context, where the perception is that there’s significant, you know, connectivity, at least, but there are still Digital Divide issues. And one of the one of the most important ones is around like you said, the device, most newcomers have phones, and they’re willing to, to, to pay for that and the you know, the the the insane prices of for bandwidth that they’re not used to from their own countries of origin. And for NGO other things because they recognize the importance of that, but we’re not providing services that are mobile friendly. And that’s that’s, that’s that’s not their challenge. That’s a challenge that is more systemic in some ways. So I think that there is sort of that realization, but it sounds like in the conversations, for example, and and even just in an IRCCs perspective, so I don’t know if you’ve seen some of their language around the vision for digital settlement services coming up. They came up with a couple of things a couple of years ago, and I find the language is really interesting. I’m just gonna read it to you. So one of them is the vision for clients, his clients are able to access high quality settlement services online and can opt to complement these within person offering, oh, well, I know the red flags, the red flags in a line like that are pretty significant, right? But it gives you a sense of exactly what you were kind of describing of that kind of, you know, urban bureaucratized, more middle class kind of perspective on you know, we are going to focus on digital, and in person will be a complement to that. And all what we’re hearing, including from people in urban centers is there are not, there are nuances to all of that. Some things, newcomers who if you kind of put all the caveats in place who have the digital literacy who have the English language skills, if necessary, you have the devices who have the bandwidth, they’ll have the private spaces will have the time will have the inclination in the interest, the star certain services that they stay prefer to access online, from conversations I’ve had in surveys, the transactional kinds of services, the ones that are less personal, because you want to tell me how to write a resume, I don’t need to be in front of you to do that, I can watch a webinar and send me the template and I’ll work on it, then I’ll send it back to you. And at the point, when we need to, we’ll have an in person meeting versus the pieces that they want to have in person, which tends to be around intake and assessment because they actually want to make a connection, and social recreational kinds of pieces. And then the nuances of things like you’re describing where if you take away all of those caveats, well, then you need even more in person things to do kind of what you’re you’re talking about those interventions where you have the technology, you have the bandwidth, and you come and you sit down with them to do it. So I think that while we’re realizing all of this, there is this sense of a vision that’s a bit disconnected from what we’re learning in our own sector. And I wonder if you see leadership needed or evolving in our sector to have that conversation and push back a little bit. I don’t want to go down this road. So we’re going

Lisa DeGara 26:58
to you’re about pushback. And I’m like I got I suppose

Marco Campana 27:00
automates advocacy. No, that’s a bad word. I’m

Lisa DeGara 27:03
not advocating pushback is pushback. And like, I had not heard that statement about like, we’re going to be digital first. And to me like to be frank that reads is completely delusional. And I’m in trouble all the time. So it doesn’t matter. I’m like, what I think is so weird in that context. So like, an example is like we’ve done digitally, it has been really effective is in Alberta. We have a ton of Ukrainian evacuees, not refugees with a policy. We have a ton of Ukrainian evacuees who are coming in. And we’ve had staff so I had here in Edmonton, we have an employment specialist team. And then I operate in small centers team. So the employment one of the employment specialists work with one of my small centers, Ukrainian speakers, to produce a presentation about labor rights. And so that was able to be conducted as like a synchronous presentation that was then recorded that was delivered to communities throughout Alberta. So like, it was in Alberta it was it was in Edmonton, it was in Calgary, it was in the rural communities like that ended up being really impactful, really positive thing that we can say, Okay, this is information that is not available in a digestible way in the client’s first language. So let’s make that happen. That’s a really great example of where digital digital first programming can be done. I would contend that accepting very limited circumstances pretty much any one to one interaction is best done. I mean, like over the phone, I guess, is also finding online offline, but in many cases, is best done in person. And part of the reason why we continue to see this challenge is because I think there’s a vision of the services that newcomers require that is sort of promoted in the sector, which is certainly in our case, not what not what I see our newcomers requiring, one of the services that we provide the most often, and this is like I’ve worked my my program is primary Swiss. So like we do a lot of work with K to 12 students, one of the most common services that we are asked to provide by schools is, we’ve got a child here, child has newcomer child is six years old. It’s very obvious to us as the school that the child has autism. The parents won’t answer our emails, the parents won’t speak to us, they won’t acknowledge us. Could you please mediate the meeting where the school tells the parents that the child has autism, like that’s a meeting that I have minimum three times a month, like I’m not exaggerating. And so the idea that this is like, you know, most easily done from like, I’m sitting here in my office on my computer, and the parents presumably are also sitting at a computer and the teacher is sitting at a computer, like it is so sort of far beyond the scale of what we certainly see even newcomers, which is a lot of newcomers working multiple jobs, again, limited device access all these sorts of, like, truly challenges of crises of poverty. And I think one of the really interesting tensions that’s not necessarily related to the the digital element, but certainly the sector in general, is, I think what we see in community and especially in rural communities, is not what is understood as the services required at settlement. So service is required of someone I always have this idea of like the ideal person is like their permanent resident. They have a CLB six, at least six in English, your master’s degree from their home country, and they’re coming along Excuse me, wanted to have a better understanding of how I might conduct upgrading so that I may become a Chartered Professional Accountant. Could you help me with that, and then we’re working to give them a brochure. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming in. Here’s your brochure. And in reality, what we’re seeing is a lot of clients who come in through sort of unconventional methods, we have a lot of temporary foreign workers who’ve either been able to obtain permanent residency or maybe haven’t, and they’re in this sort of like Limbo space. And so when we acknowledge that newcomers are this cohort, then these bureaucratized notions become less and less viable. If we’re looking at a lot of newcomer children with disabilities. We’re looking at a lot of families with very, very limited official language skills. We’re looking at a lot of families where people are working multiple jobs, we’re looking like when we start to put all of those factors in together, it becomes evident that a digital model works for a cohort of people. I mean, I do, because of the nature of my work, I do digital meetings, probably 30 hours a week, like is a huge part of what I do with direct client service, as much as we can to think of it as it’s not that the digital is, is irrelevant, because it is extremely relevant. But the idea of like, these big, heavy, important conversations are best are often best done in person, we hear about cultural relevancy. And people say, well, make sure that you’re, you know, if you have to have a tough conversation, make sure you’re inviting people into a space or the round table, that there’s food, there’s tea offered, you can serve Bill, thank you so much for coming. And so to take all this cultural knowledge that we have, and they’re like, Yeah, out the window, we’re gonna do this. I think it’s a really interesting part of the challenges that we see. And I think, you know, I feel unvalued there I was there somebody else was saying, not to say it now. Oh, I have to say it now, when they talk about, okay, when I talk about the cloistering of of certain cohorts of people, it’s not service providers who are clustered, it’s a lot of public sector officials. You can’t you can’t see them in community. We have of course, like activity monitors. And I said to to one of our IRC offs where you have to come out July 2022, we can’t we can’t come to communities in July 2022, the danger, the danger with COVID. Like, excuse me, like, We’re here every day. So even those tensions, like it’s so interesting to notice how those filter down and filter out into community and you’re like, what, what do you mean, it’s too dangerous for you to come here. We work here every day. And the clients are here every day. We’re all here every day. And so I think it’s actually gotten a little bit better in the last couple of months, again, very Ontario centric country as Ontario and is sort of in like, okay, like we’re out in the community do now. But it’s been really interesting to notice that how long it’s taken to have that acknowledgement of like, well, our communities tend to be low income people who’ve been working in public facing jobs the whole time. So for an official to say, it’s actually too dangerous for me to look you in the face. But for you to be out working every day, that’s fine. Like that’s, that’s where I feel that this this digital element becomes part of a class stratification that I just don’t see acknowledge widely enough, even though again, i i So to give it a bit another piece of context that I teach University, in addition to this work, I’ve taught at the University of Saskatchewan. So I’ve been in Edmonton teaching to Saskatoon phenomenal. And I’ve also had the opportunity to teach at the Yukon University. So I have students who I’m teaching in Edmonton, they’re joining me from old crow, which is like north of the Arctic Circle, it’s phenomenal. It’s incredible. So those kinds of opportunities to connect are amazing. But I fear that technology is used as a shield in much the same way that like, actually consent forms are used as a shield of like, I’m so terribly sorry, you do have to do with this one very, very specific way for me to help you. And then it becomes like, well, then I guess like the the most difficult 40% of clients, you’re never going to have to help, because they can’t, they can’t get there. And so I worry that it’s used as like another layer to keep clients as separate as possible from public sector officials, because they don’t have to, because the clients can’t figure out how to jump over all hoops, because they don’t have that skill set, then public sector officials ultimately don’t worry about it. And this is not beauty to newcomers, I had an opportunity to talk one of our municipal communities, they had done a community survey. And they were like, Well, we did the Community Survey. And this is what we learned. And I was like, well, you only deliver it in English. And it’s a survey. So like, not my clients filled it out. And you could see that they were like, she wasn’t supposed to bring that up. Like why did you say that? But now that’s on the record? Well, so anyway, there’s lots of there’s lots of lots of challenges that we’re continuing to see to experience. But yeah, if it were to be like a single kind of pinpoint to it, that cloistering really troubles me and I want to see I want to see representatives of the sector, representatives of the government in community. And to me the fact that like that it’s not consistently done that way is is a challenge. It’s a conceptual challenge to see.

Marco Campana 34:39
I wonder, has it ever really been done? Like what you’re describing, for example of community surveys and public officials coming out into those smaller communities? I mean, my sense is that that that’s not really necessarily new. So So I have a big question one that’s probably quite unfair, but is essentially so what do we we’re moving ahead with this notion of a hybrid model the language around it from some places like IRC See is, you know, yeah, it’s, it’s problematic. But it’s but it’s happening. And it can be quite positive, as you’ve you yourself have acknowledged and describe where it’s appropriate. It can, it can be a game changer, you have these kids coming in from different places that they’ve accessing a service they may not have been able to access otherwise. But of course, they have to have all of those below the iceberg things in place in order to do that. We know that. So moving forward, we’re, you know, I see us like a seven year vision, because the next big call for proposals is 2425. And then the one after that will be in like, 2029, where we as a sector are defining because it’s five year grants, right, yeah, contribution agreements, we as a sector are evolving towards something that is somewhat inevitable because society is moving that way business and work and government. And with all the struggles that are part of it, how do we make sure we do it in a way that is newcomer centric, that is community centric, that is that we don’t drop people off? Who, once again, it’s not something we do well, right? Because we drop people off constantly. That’s just part of how we, we do things in our society, people are constantly, you know, left behind, whether it’s a class stratification, whether it’s racism, whether it’s gender, whatever you want to talk about, we do that really effectively. Right? But you know, we have this moment some people talk about of the, you know, we’ve realized digital inclusion, but to do that, we have to solve all of these other problems, which excetera, etc. So, I’m long winded, I apologize. I did poli sci as well. So it is fine. Don’t worry about it. So I guess one of the questions is like moving forward, a lot of the stuff you’re bringing up is kind of under the radar of the conversation, and we need to bring it above to make sure it’s at every table. And in every conversation. What is a what is an appropriate kind of model moving forward for us as a sector to be thinking about when we’re talking about hybrid and digitization? In? And I know, you’ve talked about a bunch of things, I’m not gonna be able to tease out, but I’m just curious. I’m sure you’ve thought about this. Yeah. What do we need to be doing as a sector moving forward?

Lisa DeGara 36:58
So I think it’s a real I think it’s a really, really good question. And my my sense is, there are like, and again, I know, I’m coming off a little bit like a Luddite. Like, I’m anti tech. I’m really

Marco Campana 37:07
Oh, like, I know, I want to that’s why I said like you’re you constantly pepper your examples with. And I do this for 30 hours a week online. And I think it’s club noise. I think that what you’re talking about is you’re an advocate for the people who are potentially going to be left behind. Yes. Right. And so how do we do digital inclusion by design?

Lisa DeGara 37:23
Absolutely. And I think there’s sort of two elements to this, the first one I’d like, again, I appreciate you flagging that bit of language, because I would completely reverse it is the first thing, in my view. So much of the really critical work of settlement is relationship based. We have I understand that they’re supposed to be like, I guess on paper, it’s like you conduct you know, we did the seven iron nose. And then we released the President’s community. In reality, we have some clients as well, we’ve been working two and a half years, like, certainly, as long as I’ve been here, and I’m sure there are some clients we’ll work with, you know, forever, like, my vision is like, we work with people until they don’t work with us anymore. And guess what, we’re supposed to be charming, they never will stop. So that’s fine. But then the big challenge that I see on that end is if it’s about relationship building, there’s a role for digital things, because in the same way that there’s a role of telephone, we can speak to people we can connect with people. But in person, I believe it has to be an in person service that is digitally enhanced. So because we have people who are scattered throughout the province, that there are tremendous distances from each other one of the families we support in Glendon, Alberta population 400. He’s the only newcomer youth at his high school. So when we have one of our youth groups that connects online, it’s an opportunity for him to you know, without having to drive 90 minutes to the nearest gathering of people who speak the same language as him, you can connect online, you can have that. So that vision of digital inclusion as how can we enhance relationships, using the technologies that our fingertips bad, I think is a tremendous benefit. If there is a real and genuine desire to have things be digital focused, then I think it has to be okay, so who’s given them laptops? Okay, so who’s paying for the internet? Okay, so who’s doing the training? Because I noticed very often and like in digital education, there’s a lot of discussion about the myth of the digital natives, which I think is a fantastic piece of stuff. You hear a lot of times like, oh, well, kids under the age of 12, like there was on that iPad, there was on that Nintendo Switch, they must be really, really good at technology. And one of the things that’s been observed in academic studies is that’s not the case actually, being really good at using one of these. Something that has a touch interface, the user experience is intended for ease. It’s also intended for stickiness, so that like you remain on the platform as long as possible. There’s a really significant difference between a kid like watching YouTube videos for nine hours straight, and being able to fill out a government form and I think that it’s been mushed together in the thinking people like oh, no, it’s easy. Once you know how to do the phone, if anything, once you know how to do you know easy things or like things for pleasure, you can do all these difficult things. And when I think about meaningful digital inclusion that I wanted, okay, so how are we actually budgeting for this teasing this out making this part of the work? When I had the application to do digital literacy training like online, in the summer of 2021, it was really interesting to note and to speak with people about what they were struggling with how they were having difficulties that like they could want to, for example, one of our clients like she could send an email, but she could never reply, like the idea of having threaded replies was kind of beyond her, which I thought was really interesting, because my grandfather, who was also a refugee refugee from Ukraine, and Ukraine, Hungary, everything about Ukraine uses refugee from Hungary, when he used the internet at the age of 80. Plus, he also had the same problem. He could write emails, but he couldn’t do threaded replies. And it made me think about like, the kind of cognitive scaffolding the cognitive structuring we really need to do in order to build people up on these digital skills. So if the vision is, and well, in one second, if the vision is we have to have digitally modulated everything that I will say, okay, so how much money are you going to put towards this? Are you going to give somebody with your PR card, you’re going to give them a Chromebook, like, because otherwise this is not going to work? I think similarly to this, we noticed that there are a lot of challenges in our rural communities for overbuilt communities. And a lot of it is because the vision of settlement just doesn’t align with the population demographics that we serve in reality. So like the classic one that I use, and I bring this up all the time. And I can see people get uncomfortable with this what it is, like in Swiss in K to 12, we’re supposed to serve children who are permanent residents, like they have PR numbers they’ve come with their parents or parents or PR. In reality, probably one in three of the children that we serve, are on an under 18 student visa while their parent is on work visa. And so technically, those children are ineligible to receive services, spoiler warning, we serve them every single day. And often those children are the highest need to have the highest things. But like if we can’t even acknowledge, oh, yeah, there’s a huge newcomer cohort, including children, including people with disabilities, including very, very vulnerable people that are not even intentionally captured by settlement services. Like we can do this, you know, laptops only digital only, you know, scan this QR code to talk to your settlement worker, we can do all that. But the reality is that the pool of people who will ultimately be served by the services will will shrink, it will continue to shrink. I am lay awake at night thinking about the you know, this idea of having 500,000 permanent residents by 2025. I’m number one, because the cu ea T issue I just I’m just gonna take I’m gonna hop on board for one second, since I have people in Riyadh, then we’re gonna get this, I get this message out. So I went to Pathways to Prosperity conference in Ottawa, Ontario, just couple weeks ago in November, wonderful conference really enjoyed myself. The keynote speaker was minister Fraser, Mr. Fraser said something I said to get about third row I was late. So I had to sit at the front desk sitting in the third row. And I was like making direct eye contact with him. And so she said in his speech, you know, the Ukrainian situation is very different than the Afghan. When I speak to Afghans, they say, you know, the country’s lost to the Taliban, there’s no way I can ever return. When I speak to the Ukrainians. All of them have told me Oh, we all want to go home. And so I was sitting in the third row like, no, no, no, no, no, that’s not sure. So what we currently have on the table is 700,000 People who’ve come into Canada, we’ve applied to come into Canada 150,000 More, you have 700,000 people. The only criteria is can you demonstrate Ukrainian nationality. That’s it. And as people are coming in, we’re already seeing some of these issues. We have again, a bifurcation people who are living in large cities key Vanessa, etc. Who can like they’ve applied for everything online already. They know how to do it, they’re doing great. And then we notice, interestingly, rural people, people living in eastern Ukraine, Donetsk, etc. Really see the theater of war, for whom the phone is really hard. Getting a SIM card is really hard. Getting healthcare is really hard. All these things are a really big challenge. And so when I think about this idea of this many permanent residents and on the other question is the third question they asked after work can I live is we had called permanent resident, I’d like to be primitivism. When can I become a permanent resident? Please, please, please Canada, I’ve come from the war in Ukraine. I really like to be a permanent resident. And I’ve put a lot of questions through and like, obviously, no answer. This is not a question that people want to deal with at the moment. It’s a real shame for me and for them, especially. But what I think about that is like, there is a pathway that’s already been pre designed, even if it hasn’t been acknowledged yet of like, fantastic, you speak. You speak Ukrainian speak German, you’ve got pretty good English CLB four or five, we can get you into work, we can get you going. You already know how to use a computer, we can already get you into a white collar job like pretty easily. And so that cohort of people is gonna go shooting upstream Canada and will will confirm and this will be fine. What I worry about a lot, interestingly, is the same cohort of people where we continuously challenge people who have come from rural environments who are less likely to have higher education were less likely to be fluent in their second language, and don’t have digital literacy skills overwhelmingly. So where do they go what happens to them they’re the people who are the least mobile least able to advocate on their own behalf and at least able to enter into these higher paid and higher compensated jobs. What happens then? So um, you know, when I think about these shoes like the 50,000 foot view the plan for 2025 this u EA T again, my hair is so great under the black die like this is the most stressful thing. We’re also charged in settlement hotel for Edmonton. Every day, every day of crisis every single day, we had a lady who showed up yesterday, she doesn’t have health care yet she got kidney stones, what are we supposed to do with that? You know, so these are, these are big crises. So when I think about these huge scale crises, and then under the under the surface, we have all of these people who are really, really grappling on the edges of function in Canada. And it all clusters together, lack of digital literacy skills, low income, limited education, they all kind of enter a cyclone together. And so if we digitize everything, if we make it digital, first, we will continue to shove those people see the edges. And I will continue to be irritating to senior officials in meetings and being like, what are we doing about this? And they’ll be like, please stop inviting Lisa Jane to meetings. So it’s something it’s something that worries me a lot. And I think that subtext to bring that subtext into the text, I think, has been the mission of our small centers group. We’re always talking to different municipalities, provincial government, federal government about these things. But where do we go from here? How do we support these people, if the model is going to continue to be easiest for people for whom things are easiest, and that can give us that stagnant? Good.

Marco Campana 46:10
I see it as the title of the podcast episode.

Lisa DeGara 46:13
So that’s, that’s a really tough thing. And I wish I had, I wish I had a good working solution. And I wished truly, that this was a context for which more technology would improve the situation I have for almost all my life in such a believer in that I wouldn’t be a functional human being without the Internet. Like if I had to choose, you know, giving up anything internet would be the last thing I would give up. So how do we like, if there were a technology solution, I would love to begin to implement it. And maybe I don’t know, maybe it’s Starlink. We don’t really want to endorse Elon Musk these days. But maybe a starling, I don’t know. But like to use to, to jump off the Elon Musk example. It’s kind of the Twitter paradox. Like people who are on Twitter, think Twitter is the most important thing in the world. People who are not on Twitter have literally no idea what you’re talking about. And that bifurcation and division, I see it all the time. And I think it kind of neatly ties a lot of these issues into a bow. If you’re hyper literate, if you like to read and write for fun. You are in such a different strata than so many of the people that I work with every day. So if you are at this level, then you’re like, oh my god, did you hear what he said about ha? Like, no, because people have to work 18 hours like this is this. So how do we how do we overcome that paradox of like, this is very easy for government, this is very easy. For professionals, it’s very easy for people who are in white collar jobs, how do we make sure that those people break through from that and see what’s happening for everyone who hasn’t been able to enter that circle? Who hasn’t been able to eat at that table? And if you come up with a solution that please let me know, because I would love to implement it immediately.

Marco Campana 47:47
Yeah, no, I mean, the importance of you saying that is is kind of is grounded in the recognition that we’ve never been able to do that for any other issue related to inclusion. So why would we suddenly expect to do it for digital, that that requires all of those other, those other realizations to actually be realized and be be be be, be dealt with in some meaningful way? Right. And I think that for me, you know, there is the broader issue of digital inclusion, which must be connected to other other, other to inclusion, so you know, period. And then there’s the reality of, you know, what you’re describing, which I think is really important is to many people see hybrid as digital first, instead of either or right instinct of meeting the client, where they’re on and providing the service that they need, and where you can realize efficiencies that might reach a scalable population of people, including people who we’ve never served before, because they don’t feel they need settlement services, or they, you know, they could never come, they never were interested in coming in person, there’s a whole opportunity structure there. But then there’s also the opportunity of with those efficiencies, you can actually take the time to serve people who require more time. So you have more more vulnerabilities who have more, more, you know, for lack of a better word, multitudes of challenges, right? That, that you need to spend that time to deal with not just the ins and your out kind of thing, but the case management, the actual supports, and the things that as you’re describing, I hear this from every Swiss program, you know, you don’t just provide settlement when you’re a Swiss worker, you doing all of those things that you’re describing, you’re suddenly the intermediary for a conversation about autism, because you’re the one that the client trusts, and then we’ll come to the meeting because of you. That’s a very different expectation than is a funded expectation, for example, and it’s like you described these are all the things that you know, other duties as assigned kind of thing right, as required. And that that, that funders don’t necessarily even realize are happening in a lot of cases. So this has been just, you know, I we could go on for hours, and maybe we’ll come back and do a version two, but this is Oh, it’s such an importantly rich conversation. I think that we constantly need to be grounding ourselves in the realities of of the work that we’re doing, the people we’re working with. So so that the people who are kind of creating the policy and divisions are not running away with something that that, you know, that seems like a dream, but is not reality based whatsoever.

Lisa DeGara 50:10
Absolutely. I think, you know, from the policy perspective, from the political science perspective, it’s clear when a decision is being made on a on an expense basis, and when a decision is being made on an efficacy basis. And I think that there are things that worked beautifully online, and thank goodness, we’re gonna continue to do them. And like I, if I, if it weren’t, for the time that things happen with the pandemic, I wouldn’t be able to connect with my team as I do, because they live in communities throughout the province, we’re able to have this provincial model, because we live in a digitally enabled world. And that’s terrific. But I think it’s that idea of as things accelerate, we need to make sure that the people who are most in need of service because there’s no real, there’s really no other way to put it, the people who are most in need of service are able to access that service. And the reality is like, let’s suppose that everything goes the way that it’s intended to, and I’m sure that it will, because that’s how things work. We have in my office here. So like we’re in act fairly community, like a large building, we’re in like, sort of the the downtown core of Edmonton. And we have a room in our building called the resource room, which had, I think, seven or eight desktop computers, that obviously was closed for a lot of COVID, because we had like skeleton staff in person, but now it’s open again, if all the services have to be done digitally, because this is what IRCC has deemed to be appropriate, what’s gonna happen is those people are going to be in that computer lab. And we’re gonna have a waiting list on the room. But there’s going to be somebody who’s like, here’s how you guide the mouse and click the thing and get so like, I just always want that to be kind of front and center acknowledged, because like, they can make proclamations that this is, you know, we tested, tested this with everybody at our auto sales office, and they all loved it. And you’re like, I’m so happy for you. Because that’s what that’s ultimately what will happen is that we will expand the resource library into another room, we’ll have you know, eight or nine more desktop computers, hydrobiologia desktop computers, because nobody can use a computer at their house. And so I flagged that because I when you can feel that an idea has been sort of developed, developed by a focus group of white collar professionals, then you have to say that hold on, like flag on the play. I don’t, I don’t think that this is going to land. And I would, I would also, maybe, and this is maybe like an another unrelated thing, but like with this myth of the digital native, like maybe if this is how we’re going to be delivering all government services, like let’s bring back computers class, like we used to have computers class. Now they don’t even bother because they’re like, oh, all children know how to use iPads. So therefore they can, I don’t even know what like there’s, there’s this weird lack of a jump between like child uses iPad, and like all children will become coders question. Like, there’s this this middle, this middle ground, which is overwhelmingly developed by internet as leisure internet as, like fun. And then you’re like, so how do we bridge that gap? When people haven’t been doing that? How do we how do we develop on it and bridge that gap? I would love to, to, you know, I would love for that to be part of the thinking because I think it is really critically important. And if people don’t have digital skills, it’s very hard for them to function. But I think to assume that people have digital skills, and then to deliver the services accordingly is not the solution. If if if the vision is everything has to be digital, as much as possible, then like let’s put the funding it I want to have digital literacy training provided by the government of Canada in 172 different languages, and if they can provide that, then they will have a conversation.

Marco Campana 53:20
Yeah, and I mean, every agency needs a digital navigator, that person who helps staff but also the clients to you know, access those 16 new computers that you’ve got, onboarding people into onto online courses, you know, and supporting them and being that sort of first triage of tech support. We need your you know, it requires it requires a significant kind of investment and not just one and done, but long term. Right? This this whole, the shift to digital may have efficiencies, but but it’s not, you know, you know, cost agnostic, its age requires a ton of, it’s expensive, and it’s long term expensive. It’s constantly expensive, but you know, yeah, and to do it right, at least and to be

Lisa DeGara 53:55
honest, sorry, I could feel I could feel you were winding down. And then it was like,

Marco Campana 53:59
No, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s this is, you know, I want to keep this to a reasonable listen for people in terms of time. But this is really, really useful. So I am going to wind it down. And to say that, you know, there’s, there’s so much here, I want to continue to explore, I’m so glad we were able to connect, because I think this is a conversation and you know, your perspective is one that is there in the sector consultations and the resources, but not significantly enough. And I think the way you’re articulating it is something that everybody and I know frontline workers are articulating, but they’re not always listened to, you know, within the organization, let alone by policymakers. And I think that there’s something like the realities of that those stark realities, including in urban centers, where there are just people who, who are not going to be able to do this, or have so many challenges or needs that they you know, the person is really the only approach and for me, I’ve always thought of that as that’s perfectly acceptable as part of a hybrid model. But increasingly I’m seeing that kind of language that suggest digital first at the expense of in person and that’s not the right way to go you know, it’s it’s simply can’t be in I think we have to have this conversation to get sort of back on track. And to make sure that we’re we’re focusing on actual newcomer centric models which require that both and approach, and both of those to be invested in significantly, which is another conversational challenge we’ll have as the CO post COVID, belt tightening starts to happen.

Lisa DeGara 55:20
100% 100%, it’s, I’m gonna say, I’ll just put it, put it on the record, it’s gonna be more expensive to do all this digital stuff. So please don’t like, it will be more expensive. And I think if we say that, then maybe he’ll be like, Oh, I’ll have another thing. But, ya know,

Marco Campana 55:37
my take is that if it’s more expensive, that’s fine. And we should invest in because everywhere else that’s happening, and we can’t allow ourselves to fall behind in particular, you know, we’re working with people who are going to be going into those spaces. So I think it’s money, it’s money well spent. It’s an investment that needs to happen, but it needs to be done well, and with with, you know, in an inclusive way, that doesn’t negate the other side of the non technical

Lisa DeGara 55:57
100% 100%. And again, you know, thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate the chance to chat about all of this. And I think I’m always I’m always truly happy to upset the applecart which of course, in this case is a double metaphor, because you could do that as Macronix. Always happy to to discuss these things. Because I think the more we, the more explicit we can be, the more we can say things, then the more effective we can be in really beginning to address these issues. So yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the chance to shop digital.

Marco Campana 56:29
Oh, no, no, thank you for what a great conversation. I appreciate it. And we will we will circle back and version 2.0 of this will come I’m sure. Absolutely. Thanks so much.

Lisa DeGara 56:38
Thank you so much.

Marco Campana 56:40
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes, wherever you listen to your podcasts are also on my [email protected] I appreciate you listening and if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website, or [email protected] Thanks again

Welcome to episode 41 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode, I speak about Knowledge Mobilization with David Phipps, Assistant Vice President of Research Strategy & Impact at York University and director of Research Impact Canada (RIC).

David has been a Knowledge Mobilization pioneer in Canada and I was excited to chat with him about how KM has evolved and continues to evolve in Canada and beyond. As a past alum of MobilizeU, a course designed by York University for folks interested in learning more about Knowledge Mobilization, I’ve long been a fan of the work York U, through David, has done, including in the Immigrant and Refugee-serving sector.

You know that Knowledge Mobilization is near and dear to my heart, and is really the point of the work that I do. In our conversation, we talk about some of the foundations of Knowledge Mobilization, how community organizations can connect and work with academics, as well as what KM can mean in our community work. I think you’ll find it an educational and interesting conversation.

Some questions we discussed:

Resources:

Here are links to documents David mentioned during our conversation:

Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has not been edited. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.

Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 41 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I speak about knowledge mobilization with David Phipps, the Assistant Vice President of Research, strategy and impact at York University and director of research impact Canada. David has been a knowledge mobilization pioneer in Canada. And I was excited to chat with him about how knowledge mobilization has evolved and continues to evolve in Canada and beyond. As a past alum of mobilize you, of course, designed by York University for folks interested in learning more about knowledge mobilization, I’ve long been a fan of the work your cue does through David, including in the immigrant and refugee serving sector. You know, that knowledge mobilization is near and dear to my heart. And it really is the point of the work that I do. In our conversation, we talk about some of the foundations of knowledge mobilization, how community organizations can connect and work with academics, as well as what knowledge mobilization can mean, in our community work, I think you’ll find it an educational and interesting conversation.

Marco Campana 0:56
Welcome, David, to the technology and human services podcast. Thank you so much for joining me in this conversation. And why don’t we just get started if you could introduce yourself the work that you do, and and what is knowledge mobilization?

David Phipps 1:09
Oh, well, good question. Thanks, Marco for the opportunity. My name is David Phipps. I am a settler born to white parents in England. And we emigrated to this land that some people call Canada when I was two, I live with my husband in Toronto, which is on the traditional territories of the Anishinabek nation, the hood, nashoni Confederacy, the Huron Wendat and the maytee. And the current treaty holders are the Mississauga the credit. So that’s my journey, where I am now is as the Assistant Vice President for Research strategy and impact at York University. That means I get had the pleasure of working with all of our researchers on running the grants office and helping the researchers get their money. But the fun stuff that I get to do is work on what we call knowledge mobilization. And we’ll talk about that in a little bit. But as part of my fun, I am the network director of a network called research impact Canada, a network of 23 research, performing organizations, all interested in building institutional capacity to support knowledge mobilization. So what is what is known as mobilization, I like to say in an uncomplicated fashion, that knowledge mobilization helps make research useful to society. And so it gets research outside of the academic walls and into the hands of people from the public, the private or the nonprofit sectors who are looking to use that research in, in non commercial forms. I’ll talk a bit about that in a minute. But to help inform decisions about public policy or professional practice or social services, this is particularly important for research that’s not served by commercialization that’s not partnered with industry. It’s not the focus of startup companies. So and it’s research centers in all disciplines. shirk was one of the first organizations surfshark, the social sciences, and Humanities Research Council was one of the first organizations to use the term knowledge mobilization in Canada. But it’s not just limited to shirk disciplines, any any social sciences, human sciences, creative arts, or STEM disciplines that can have an impact on public policy, professional practices, social services, these can all be served by knowledge mobilization, and they very much fits a lot of federal priorities. Things like homelessness and housing, public health, immigration and settlement, environment, policy, emergency preparedness, these are all disciplines that are never going to be served by commercialization, but nonetheless are of interest to Canadians, and for which academic research can help provide evidence for these decisions. And I like to conceptualize it or not conceptualize, but sum it up by saying, We’re never going to patent our way to reconciliation. Right, we’re never going to patent our way to reconciliation. So it’s, it’s really connecting university research from the University and connecting it with organizations from outside of the university so that research can leave the academy and get taken up in in places that will provide societal benefit. So I’m curious if because York is one of the pioneers in knowledge mobilization. And in fact, I think you’re the the hub for research impact Canada, right. And in a lot of ways, a lot of other universities are kind of following your lead around doing this work. And I wonder if in your experience, those academics who have committed to knowledge mobilization if their work actually even starts with the question of how can this be useful instead of kind of just, you know, hey, this is an interesting question. But even out of the gate, is there a sort of a preconceived idea that I want to do something that will have an impact on the communities that I’m working with? Because, like you said, it’s multidisciplinary, you know, you and I talked earlier about the immigrant and refugee serving sector, which is where I come out of, and and we’ve done a lot of work with a lot of academics. And you can see the difference when someone has kind of, you know, out of the gate committed to knowledge mobilization versus someone who’s just kind of doing an academic exercise, and the difference of what that that research can have an impact on in turn.

Marco Campana 5:00
to the community, do you have a sense of those who’ve committed to Cam? If it actually matters and has an impact in the way that their research gets rolled out or even, you know, accepted or acted on?

David Phipps 5:11
Yeah, I think I’ll comment first by saying that not all research must have societal impacts, right, that we must create space for basic science for fundamental inquiry for research. That is, for knowledges sake only, and for whom the next user might not be a social service agency. But it might be another academic might take up that research evidence and use it to further the realm of thinking and critical inquiry. But in those areas, where there are opportunities for research to inform decisions by the public, private nonprofit sectors, we see researchers really taking, making meaningful efforts in knowledge mobilization, most grant applications that are outside in the renewal, applied sciences or in the social sciences. And many of the human sciences, they start out with a problem statement, they’ve identified what the challenge is that they’re expecting to address through their research. And that challenge usually sits outside of the academy. It sits in society somewhere local, or global communities. And and so researchers are really passionate about wanting to be change agents in the their fields. Some of it some some researchers take it as a personal mission. And some researchers do it because funders ask them to, but then they realize how amazing it is to be able to see the results of their research being taken up and having an impact on broader society. So I do think there is there is when it’s right for the researcher, and it’s right for the institution, like at your university, and it’s right for the funder, that’s when those three come together. And you’ve got a nice opportunity, oh, and also I should say, right for the potential partner or beneficiaries, then that’s that those are the correct conditions for knowledge mobilization and research impact.

Marco Campana 7:01
And you mentioned funders in shirk, for example, I’ve see and I think you’ve noted this in your in your work as well. There’s increasingly fond funders of research are looking for knowledge mobilization, or the the empathy ability to show research impact in social studies work is that is that a trend that comes out of kind of knowledge mobilization,

David Phipps 7:21
I would say, the trend for funders, if we look at funders, like the health charities, they have always invested their funds from their donors into research in order to make a difference into the lives of people who are living with or, you know, patients and public involvement with with the subject area of the charity. So I would say that health charities really have led the way by investing in research that is intensely focused on making on improving the lives of of patients and families. The federal funders have come along in different ways. So the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, when they had the CHR act of 2000, the year 2000. The CHR Act says that CHR will undertake research and translate that research into improved health for Canadians, specifically, the word translate. So CHR has this word in their legislative mandate that they will not just do research, but they’ll translate that into improved health for Canadians. Sure, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council released a revised program architecture, they did a big review, certainly the last part of the first decade of the 2000s and the 2009 relaunched their revised program architecture, and every grant application now must have a knowledge mobilization strategy, and must also have an outcome statement. So the outcome statement is what’s the difference we want this research to make. And the knowledge mobilization strategy is how you’re going to get there, what are you got to do to achieve it? So one is the the, the impact you want to have and the other the knowledge mobilization is how you’re going to get there. And those are two very important concepts that link knowledge mobilization is the doing of something. And research impact is the thing that arises out of that. And answer has similarly always wanted to have an impact mostly on the economy by working through university industry partnerships, but they’re, they’re expanding, they’ve never they’ve never not had an interest in public policy or in social services. But they’re expanding their language now to encompass knowledge mobilization and broader impacts on society, with advice to grant applicants and reviewers to really be looking where feasible to have to describe an impact on broader society. And I say where feasible because, you know, things like fundamental mathematics and space science research, you know, those are things that are not ever going to inform public policy, but are really important fundamental areas of inquiry.

Marco Campana 9:57
Right? Yeah, no, I mean, I guess being In the immigrant and refugee serving sector, it’s always about the, in general is how will this impact policy? How will this impact service delivery or frontline settlement? And I’m wondering, with that increase in in funders, having people create knowledge mobilization strategies and impact statements and things like that. Is there a sense of consistency around that? Or is it is it sort of a bit of a wild west in the km community? Like when when you say, a knowledge mobilization strategy? What are the core components of what that should look like?

David Phipps 10:30
Right. Okay, I’ve got answers to both of those, you might have to remind me of the second one, which is, what are the core components? will I tell you about the first one? So is there is it the Wild West is there come some consistency, so there is a program in the United Kingdom called the Research Excellence Framework, and universities get block grants of funding totaling 2 billion British pounds a year, based on the university’s ability to describe the excellence of its research, the research environment, that’s the infrastructure in the environment that it hasn’t also in 2014, or the exercise, it runs every six to seven years, they introduced societal impact. So all of a sudden, you had overnight universities and professors rushing to describe the impact of their sciences, their research has had, they’ve never had this before. And in the 2014, exercisers research done by Jonathan grant, and I know that you’ll be hyperlinking this into the into the text. But Jonathan grant, he was at King’s College, London, at the policy institute of kings, and he analyzed the 6679 impact case studies submitted from all of the UK institutions, he did word analysis, and he found out of those 6679 impact case studies, there were 3709 unique pathways to impact.

Marco Campana 11:55
That’s a lot. A lot,

David Phipps 11:57
right. And so there is no cookie cutter approach, there’s no templated approaches to impact because the research is different. The geography is different, the partners are different, the potential impacts are different, which is why every time I work with a researcher to help craft an impact strategy and a Grants application, we go back to first principles, we start now how I plan how I help them plan is the same each time because this is the second part of your question. There are common elements to an impact strategy, whether it’s a knowledge mobilization strategy for knowledge for Sherk, or a knowledge translation strategy for CIHR, or a health charity application. And I work my researchers with a tool that says, first off, who are your partners? Who are the people you want to listen to, you want to work with? And you want to disseminate to? So who are the people that you’re going to be engaging with? figure those out? And they figure them now with those people? What are your goals that you want to accomplish? And I say with those people, because the goal should be meaningful, both for the academic researcher and the potential partner, right. And so in the immigration and settlement space, there should likely be a frontline service agency, possibly Ministry of Immigration, refugees, and citizenship Canada, right? So so craft the goals of your knowledge mobilization strategy with those people that you identified in number one. So people, number one, goals. Number two, the activities is number three, what are you going to do to help meet the goals that you’ve identified with the people you want to work with. And those goals in my experience are often focused on dissemination, we’re going to write a policy brief, we’re going to put out an infographic we’re going to send out, we’ve got a social media strategy, and that’s all good, that’s necessary. But it’s not sufficient to be able to inform change. We know that when you when in CO production, when you collaborate with your end users or with the people with lived or living experiences, that’s when you start to get some research into the hands of users. So one is your goal to it. And sorry, one is your partner’s two is your goals. Three is your activities. Four is your evaluation, we suck at evaluating this stuff. Now we’ll talk a little bit about sure we’ll get to talk about that a little bit more. So what is your what’s your valuation? How are you going to know you’ve reached your goals by doing your activities with the people you’ve identified? And we’re not really good at that and critical in there is what’s the data the qualitative and quantitative data you’re going to have access to and not just wait till the end, please don’t wait to the end of your project to evaluate, be collecting these data along the way. So that you you’ve got access to the data when you need to do if you are going to wait till the end to do your evaluation. So and then the fifth element of a knowledge mobilization strategies, the budget, right this this, these are real costed activities that in many grant applications and depends funded by funder. Many grant applications have these as well. Trouble expenses. And I always say that this is not a 10 hour a week undergrad student role. I mean, we want undergrads to be involved in research and we want to fund them. But these are real roles that that have the potential to be to engage professional knowledge, mobilization of knowledge, mobilizers, and that the budget should reflect the activities that you want to do.

Marco Campana 15:21
That’s a really important point, I think, as well, in terms of not leaving the the the actual role, too, as an afterthought in the same way that evaluation shouldn’t be an afterthought. And I’m curious if that’s, I mean, I’ve seen an uptick probably in the last 1015 years in the professionalization of that role, right? So you’ve got sick kids doing training, you yourselves are doing training at York University through mobilize you. There’s a number of other folks who do training and again, some of its more specialized into health or into other places. What is that role looking like from, from a professional perspective? What What should someone be trained in? Is it subject matter expertise, plus the knowledge mobilization and communication and you know, all of those things, or is it something? What’s the profile look like for someone who should be a professional knowledge mobilizer?

David Phipps 16:11
Yeah, it’s a good question. We there are some resources, which I know I’ll send to you. And you’ll put into the links of these. I did a paper a number of years ago with Melinda Barwick from SickKids. And, and we, we unpack the difference between knowledge mobilization and communications. Right. And it was partly and that was from a sense of the profession, partly from the sense of skills, also did a paper with Julie Bailey from Lincoln University in the UK, around competency frameworks for knowledge mobilization. So we’re starting to really get an evidence base on Who are these people and as you said, mobilize you and the knowledge translation professional certificate to SickKids. Guelph has a knowledge mobilization certificate program. So there are increasing li some practice based courses that that are being informed by scholarship, the scholarship in the space, what does the person look like? We know that a good is on the commercialization side of the house, we know that a good commercialization manager is someone who’s got experience in academic research, but maybe has also worked in industry or started up a company or something like that. I find that people who excel in this are people have had a bit of experience in the academic side. But it’s also worked somewhere in potential partner or beneficiary organization. I’ll give the example of the manager of knowledge mobilization at York University, Michael Gianni, he’s my first hire in knowledge mobilization in 2006. And bless his heart. He’s still with me, which is amazing. He has his master’s in native and Canadian Studies from Trent University, but he also worked in adult literacy and adult literacy and indigenous settings. And so he’s, he’s had came to our knowledge mobilization unit at York University with both he’s written a thesis, he’s done research, but he’s also had that community social service aspect, professional in his in his in his job history. So to me, it’s having an understanding both the community side and the academic side makes for a really, really rich knowledge mobilizer. But increasingly, we’re seeing people coming out of their grad programs or PhD programs, with, with experience that both academic research and also engaging more broadly beyond the Academy. And there’s a wonderful program at the University of British Columbia called the public scholars initiative, and we’ll send you that link will get that link up. It’s a program where they hold an open call for PhD students whose research has a public face to it, whether that’s to industry or community or to government. And they select I think they they get, I don’t know, 8090 applications, they select 30 ish, I’m making these numbers up, but I think I think they’re close. And they these students get specialized training and outreach and engagement. And they also get some additional funding to fund their engagement and outreach activities. So it’s a wonderful program. I had the pleasure a number of years ago at going to public scholars initiative conference, and they’re just brilliant young scholars, you know, in a mature phase of their PhD Career, so there is increasingly going to be capacity building for knowledge mobilization, even within a PhD program.

Marco Campana 19:39
That’s great. So so at the at the core, the researcher themselves doesn’t need to be a cam expert, but they need to have someone who can straddle both worlds whether it’s industry or community, as well as academia in order to help kind of translate that information into the communities and the stakeholders, like you mentioned earlier.

David Phipps 19:56
Yeah. And I’ll say it’s, it’s a relationship you use the right risk relationship between the researcher and the knowledge mobilization professional, what? Unlike transfer, so technology transfer is I’m a researcher, and I’ve developed something that might have commercial potential in my research. So I hand that off to the bank transfer office who arranges to have a patent file, and then they market that out and they try and find a licensed company licensee for that. That’s very much a handoff from one one set of expertise to the other set of expertise. In Knowledge Translation, we can’t, we don’t usually do a handoff like that, it’s usually an ongoing collaboration, because, you know, I was the Knowledge Translation lead for a network called kid’s brain health network, which was a network of centers of excellence based on childhood neurodevelopmental disorders. And there’s no way that a researcher could give me their research in whatever, you know, community support system might be, and they say, Get David, go do it. Right, I am really what I prefer to do is work with that researcher from the beginning of the research project, to support them all the way along, because the i You can’t separate the research from the knowledge mobilization, you know, I can’t a researcher can’t give me say, David, can you write me an ultra mobilization strategy, I can’t do that without reading what the research is. Right? So So I do think that it’s there’s, it’s not a handoff like there isn’t commercialization. It’s much more a partnership between academic researchers and knowledge mobilization professionals. And let’s not forget the some of these, some of these are academic researchers don’t need me, right there. They’ve just been doing this their whole career. And sometimes they want help with, you know, more contemporary collaboration platforms or something like that. But we’ve all got researchers who are long standing in their careers, you’ve got long standing relationships with community or policy partners. And they’re just doing this as part of their scholarship that you do not need me to help.

Marco Campana 21:56
Interesting. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk less about academic researchers and more. Because there’s, there’s been an explosion over the last few years in community based research, where organizations frontline organizations, in our case, local immigration partnerships, umbrella organizations, are increasingly doing research sometimes with academic partners, but not always. And, and so they, they, they then don’t necessarily have access to that same kind of infrastructure, or even the idea of knowledge mobilization, I think they’re very focused on impact, because generally, the point of their research is to try to either get some funding or meet an identify a need in the community. But I know that they struggle, because communications and knowledge translation isn’t something that’s heavily funded at the community level. And I wonder, through research impact, or through your own work at York, because you’re connected with a lot of those organizations, what what can they do to figure out how to how to bridge that role, if you will, to ensure that their research is actually which again, typically has an impact outcome focus can actually have that outcome instead of just sort of, you know, being thrown on the pile and set out nice research, but you know, there’s nothing that’s going to happen with it.

David Phipps 23:05
Yeah, yeah. It’s a good question. My, my world is focused. Well, it’s not focused internally to the university, my lenses on the university, but it’s also supporting, opening up creating a permeable university that is more open to working in collaboration with public policy and social service organizations. So how can a social service organization frontline organization gets supports for knowledge mobilization? Well, first off, I think they could look at the members page at the research impact Canada website, and they could see if there’s a local research organization in their community, and they we’ve got contact information on all of our members organizations, if they if they are not in a research community where there’s a research impact Canada, member university, they can always see an email or generic line info at research impact.ca and say, Hey, I’m looking for I’m looking for some help in this right they can try it try and describe what that is. All of our resources on the resource page of the research impact Canada website are free and free to use. We’ve got some standalone self directed resources, one on making infographics, one on holding accessible knowledge mobilization meetings, and I think we’ve got one on working in partnership. So these are all standalone items. But then, depending on where they are, certainly at York University, we welcome local organizations to attend to mobilize You of course, it is designed, it is not designed specifically for academics. It is always designed specifically for researchers. And there’s no reason that a community based researcher could not also focus or take that course. That may not be true certainly is not true of all knowledge mobilization courses in Canada, but they could certainly join mobilize to you if they’re local to York University, and there’s another organization in Canada called community based research Canada or CBR, Canada, and they have a lot of resources as well. And there is a focus there specifically on community based researchers, those are both researchers in the academy. They’re working in and with community, as well as community based researchers. This concept is getting growing roots, beyond research organizations, I had a really interesting time I was invited to speak on this work to the Continuing Care Association of Alberta. It may not be exactly that, but there’s a two season two A’s and it’s continuing care, and it’s Alberta Association, so and they said, Could you come and talk about knowledge mobilization, I said, oh, so are there researchers in the room, they went Nope. I said, who’s in the room, and they said, long term care institutions, managers, unions, nurses, evaluators, policymakers, everyone associated with continuing care in Alberta. And so I had to work hard actually, to remove the word students from my language to remove with the words, research. And first I started out by saying, raise your hand, this is in person, raise your hand if you work in an organization that wants to make a difference. And of course, everyone’s hands went up, right? And I said, raise your hand, if you if you use evidence, or some opinions or some surveys, in order to inform the business that you do in order to form improvements. They all put their hands up. I said, you know, so that’s knowledge mobilization, we take an input into something, whether it’s an evaluation report, it’s data, it’s, it’s a testimonial from from interested parties, and then that goes into some decision making machine and outcomes a result, right. And that’s using this knowledge mobilization. So even in a non core research, space, knowledge mobilization is really just helping evidence or helping evidence in, translate into, into impact.

Marco Campana 27:06
I think that’s really great to be able to democratize and demystify it a little bit as well, because I think it also, as you’re describing that I can think of people in the room who are thinking about communication, which is more outputs oriented, here’s what we did, and then shifting it to outcomes, which is the impact, which is the knowledge mobilization, and instead of just talking about what you did, like, figure out how it could be the be implemented or, you know, who could take that knowledge for what kind of thing and it’s a great, it’s a great frame, the way you’re putting it, I think, because people should understand that they are in this it’s not a role that is divorced from their reality, if they just have to shift the thinking a little bit, right.

David Phipps 27:43
Yeah, I will encourage the communicators who are listening to this to look at that paper that I did with Melanie Barwick, Compaq, and communications and knowledge mobilization. Because communications as I said before, communications is communicator communications is a skill that I practice. But I don’t call myself a communicator, right. And there are some important differences between communications and knowledge mobilization, and communications is is a critical role in knowledge mobilization. You can’t do knowledge mobilization without communications, but you can communicate without necessarily doing knowledge mobilization.

Marco Campana 28:22
That’s a great point. And speaking of that, it’s a nice segue in some ways from from my brain anyway, to some of the tools that people use around knowledge mobilization. Now, you and I spoke about this a little bit that it’s something you’re moving away from. But research snapshots is something that says for example, you mentioned earlier, the Center for Excellence in Research and immigration and settlement, which doesn’t exist anymore. That’s where I was introduced to these and I found them incredibly useful. So research snapshots, a two, three page summary, asking a template of asking you some very specific questions and giving some very concise answers about who did this why it was done? What are the outcomes? You know, how can it be used by people in the field, when I worked in the field was really useful to really help me understand well, should I read this 100 page report? The two to three pager at least told me that yes or no, or which sections of it maybe I should read, for example. And, and I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about how that template came about, and perhaps even why it’s not used as widely now?

David Phipps 29:18
Yeah, um, so the template, we applied for a very small shirt grant, and it was early days in grant 2007, I think in our knowledge, mobilization history. And we wanted to be able to do exactly what she said ticket, take a published academic paper, and one of the challenges in knowledge mobilization is the people who are frontline service providers, policymakers, they may not have the skills to read academic scholarship, right? Or they may not have the time to crank to figure out if this 10 or 200 page paper is something I should I shouldn’t look at. So we created this tool called research snapshot, which is as you say, it’s two pages. You It asked the questions. What is this about? What did they do? How can you use this and then there’s a little box of about two or three bullets. It says what you need to know. So the idea is, you know, you look at the title, which is going to be the title again, it’s not the title of the paper. It’s, it’s a more like a headline, a journal headline. And you read the headline, Oh, that’s interesting. You read the textbook. So that’s three or four bullets, I can read that. And then you go, Okay, well, now I can read the two pages. And if I want, then I can get the reference. And I can read the whole paper. So we were using it as a way to try and make the outputs of research. So journal articles more accessible to non academics. It was a standard two page layout. Interestingly, we hired them a summer student out of a PhD program in English as an English, this guy was a poet. That was his PhD. He’s a published poet. And so he was the first one to draft the clear language, right? So he’s was not a scientist. He was he was a poet, and his name is Jason Gurriel. And and I think that’s really important to conceptualize what we mean by clear language. We didn’t call it plain language called a clear language. And, and and we then drafted we drafted I think they’re still available on the York University Library site. And they’re publicly available. I’ve got a few 100 in there.

Marco Campana 31:22
Yeah, it’s a great repository. Absolutely.

David Phipps 31:25
Getting steel now, I would say, right, so we haven’t written any probably since about 2018 2017 2018. But it did inspire McMaster University, a research impact candidate member, they adopted a program called research snaps. And so the research snaps are actually even snappier than the snapshot. I in very, they lend themselves very much to social media. And they actually won an award for science communications, the snapshots, which is really cool. So they took the research snapshot, we inspired them, for them to adapt it into their own research snap, which is a which they’re still going it’s still going on those. You know, one of the other reasons we stopped is we didn’t really know how they were being used, like you can you don’t we had a social media strategy around them. We knew that they were being downloaded. But we didn’t know who what was really doing with them. We didn’t know who was reading them. Yeah, we considered embedding a very simple evaluation, if you open one of these things, and you know, two questions pop off, which pisses everyone off. So we never did that. You know, so there was a bit of lack of evidence about, you know, what, what, who was using these. But we really also remember I said that communications is necessary, but not sufficient to inform change. And our practice and knowledge mobilization has become much more about supporting research collaborations, rather than pushing knowledge out, which is what a research snapshot does, as important as that is, I don’t want to say it’s not, we’re much more focused at York University in creating those collaborations so that end users partners can actually pull the research out of the university than us having to push it up. And so and again, we, if we’re going to do good knowledge mobilization, we need to be doing that, according to what not just the academics feel is important. But what the community partners or the agency partners think is important as well. And the research snapshots were really only just communicating what the university had done, there wasn’t that reciprocal engagement, that that I feel is very important.

Marco Campana 33:39
So can you speak a little bit to that, because a collaboration obviously makes sense. But it also is more time consuming more resource intensive, but theoretically, likely more likely to have that impact that researchers may even be looking for. Right?

David Phipps 33:53
Yeah, it’s and so it does have more impact. Because if a researcher is working on their own in the academy, and then they’re trying to push it out to try and get it taken up, you don’t actually know whether you’re working on something that’s needed. And so when you actually go out and talk to potentially interested parties in this area, you’re going to understand what their needs are. And then that can inform the work that you wanted to do. It doesn’t mean that you should only do work that is meaningful for partners. But if you want your research to be taken up by partners, you better know what they think is important. And so that’s one of the things that we help researchers do is, is when we’re brokering relationships in the knowledge mobilization unit, we we basically hung up a shingle and said to partners, if you ever want to talk to your researcher, give us a call. Please don’t cold call my researchers because you’re going to get someone who’s never done to call you back number one, because they don’t know who you are. And number two, you might get someone who is it should never do this work right. They should be best left to their good academic scholarship. And we know We will help you have a good first experience. In looking at our numbers, we know that we get about 30 to 40 calls a year 75% Are those from the outside looking to partner in. And of those most are community organizations. Again, this is knowledge mobilization, that York’s in numbers. And we’ve got a paper which we published with United Way of York region at the time, when that’s what they were called. And we’ll put that as a link into the notes. And it was describes our process for knowledge brokering with partners, with community organizations, and we are successful, I think the number is 92% of the time successful to at least host the first conversation, we don’t necessarily guarantee you’re going to get your needs met in that first conversation. But we’re good at getting someone to call you back. And and and it’s because we created this, this door into the university, that community and governments and industry can call to say, Hey, I’m looking, I’m looking for help in this.

Marco Campana 36:06
Yeah, no, I mean, that’s safe, that would save so much time and frustration on both ends, I imagine to be able to sort of go with someone who understands the internal system, and can, as you say, find the right person. Is that is that for community groups, for example? And I know you’ve written it up, so we’ll certainly look at that. But is that for community groups who already have a research, a funded research plan and are looking for an academic to depart to bring into it? Or someone who’s just looking to explore a piece of research and they need someone with the research credentials? Yeah, it’s

David Phipps 36:36
usually someone who who’s who already knows that they have a question. And one thing we’re not here to do is to broker consulting agreements for our faculty members, they consult they’re allowed to do that, but that’s not our thing. We’re looking for people who have an actual research question. So for example, many in 2007, it might have been early on. The Ontario collaborative response to family violence was a colocation of a number of agencies that were providing services to families emerging out of situations of domestic violence, and they co located and the each agency had its own funding, and they they knew what they needed to evaluate to get their own funding, but they didn’t know how to evaluate the collaborative, what you brought together. And so they phoned up Michael Jonnie, and the manager of knowledge mobilization said, Hey, Michael, you know, we need some help, understanding how can we evaluate this difference that we make, we know what we do individually, but what does the collaborative do? So they were able to Michael was able to hook them up with Mina Singh from the School of Nursing. And she was an evaluator in working in community based settings. And she worked with these agencies to develop a unique evaluation tool and method to be able to help these agencies tell the story of what sort of what they’re doing as a collaborative. So they each know what they do, but now they can know what they’re doing together collectively. And so that was because Michael was able to hook them up with the right researcher. So they had a specific question. And we were able to provide, find the specific research and help them with that.

Marco Campana 38:12
And then obviously apply for a grant to be able to actually do the work. And well, then yeah,

David Phipps 38:17
the agencies themselves were funded evaluation was part of their funding. So they they took, they took that work and interesting is an important point. Sometimes, this work does require funding, you can do a little bit of work with, with grad students who are looking to do some, some interesting work. But sometimes you need to this, this does lead itself to really well funded opportunities. In fact, I’ll say the very first knowledge mobilization event that we held was on youth mental health. And through that one of our researchers have met someone from the mental health, Canadian Mental Health Association of your region. And they put together they started chatting about what their shared interests were. And ultimately, that became a $1.5 million funded CIHR grant that had researchers from five or six universities, working with a dozen community service agencies. And importantly, there were 10 young adults with lived experience of mental health challenges that were part of the whole project. So it was the recruiting the academics in the community, community agencies would idea and the youth would identify what the needs were academics would go in and find out what the literature says and synthesize that into actionable messages. And then the youth would take those and turn them into tools, by Youth for Youth, you know, and then the agencies disseminated those tools out to their their clients. So created this wonderful feedback of starting with the need identified and community and by young by youth, youth leaders, and then academics, searching into the literature to get the evidence in the actionable messages. And then the youth develop developing tools and the tool they developed was a backpack. And every part it was an online backpack and you’d open up different compartments. And there’ll be different types of mental service mental health services that will be taught to it. And then it went back to the agencies who disseminated that into their populations.

Marco Campana 40:17
Very creative, Hans really interesting. Okay, so yeah, so if someone’s got an interesting question, and you’re not sure where to start contacting your in your office is a starting point to help me connect to a prof to some students to just some infrastructure to help kind of flesh that out a bit even.

David Phipps 40:32
Yeah, and we will we work at York, we work local first. So if you’re a local agency into the in the GTA, absolutely give us a call. But if you’re not local, email info at and research impact.ca. And then the research impact network will pick that up, and we’ll try and do that same work, we’ll try and find someone at one of our member institutions to be able to pick up the phone and give you a call back.

Marco Campana 40:56
So those member institutions, I think you said there’s 20 or so they’re also doing a similar kind of approach.

David Phipps 41:02
Yeah, it will be similar ish, you know, we all respond to our local opportunities. And, you know, some like Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC, they’re an exclusively undergraduate, university. So their knowledge mobilization is connecting to undergraduate classes, right and doing work like that. So it’ll look differently than in a program like York, where a lot of our work is connected with grad students and researchers. So it’s kind of it’s a little bit different on each campus. But ultimately, each campus member institution is interested in creating these connections between science and society. And science. They say science, writ broad social human sciences, and science, technology, engineering and maths.

Marco Campana 41:46
Amazing. So I feel like as we’re talking, I’m hearing about how knowledge mobilization has evolved. It’s, it’s still as much an art as a science, where do you see the next few years? I mean, so for example, moving from outputs, like not research snapshots to outcomes, like the collaboration and doing more intensive work and being a support to local agencies to say, you can contact us, we’ll help connect you. Where do you see the work evolving?

David Phipps 42:11
Right? I really think most of the literature, there is evidence in this space, most of the literature is focused on the research project and the researcher in the partner what are the enablers and barriers to researchers working externally to the University working with partners, and that’s really, really important work, the space that there is less evolved is what is at the institution level? What does the institution need to do to be able to support its researchers doing this work? So what are the right institutional policies that what is it? What do job descriptions look like for knowledge? mobilizers for professional knowledge, mobilizers? How do you form a community of practice on your campus? You know, these are all these are all questions that are at the institutional level. And I feel that knowledge mobilization now is like the institutional supports for knowledge mobilization now are like, institutional supports were for commercialization in the 1990s, you know that some people are doing it, not everyone’s doing it, there’s no, there’s little consistency of, of service and practice built up. And in the that, in the 90s, the federal government, through the trial councils, made funds available to Vice Presidents research to build capacity in tech transfer. And now every university has a tech transfer office. We’ve got we’ve got courses and accreditation for for the practice of technology transfer. And I feel that’s where we’re, you know, 2030 years behind commercialization. And that’s where institutions are starting to look at is, how do we then do this to similar efforts for our support the engagement of non commercial research with with end users, so I think the future of knowledge mobilization is going to continue to have a focus on the project and the researcher and the partners, but will increasingly look at what are the conditions, the institutional conditions for success.

Marco Campana 44:10
Interesting. And ideally, some of that sort of consistency across institutions, then, like you said, job descriptions and just the approaches and those core components that you talked about earlier.

David Phipps 44:21
Yeah. And we’re starting that work. I’ll just give you some other links to fill up in the in the notes. My colleague, Julie Bailey at Lincoln in the UK, and I have done some work comparing Canada and the UK systems. And we’ve developed some tools one and we’ve developed the concept of impact to literacy. So if we under the state of knowing how to create research impact, what impacts have occurred and the skills you need to to do this work, if you imagine what who and how has being a Venn diagram, the intersection of those three is impact literacy. Our research impacts literacy, so we developed a tool for individuals called the Impact literacy workbook. I’ll give you that link. And we’ve also developed a tool for institutions called the institutional health check. So how institutions can assess their readiness to support this work?

Marco Campana 45:09
That sounds great. I feel like this is going to be the richest set of episode notes I’ve ever had. And I can’t wait to link to all of those. Because I think there’s a lot of great Further reading and foundational reading, it sounds like as well for people who are interested in this to kind of get started. So yeah, I’m really looking forward to the, to the links, because I think this is going to be a rich set of episode notes. And just really useful for people who are thinking about this interested to get some of the foundational stuff, but also some of the future thinking on it. So thank you, in advance for sharing all of those. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about? In particular, when it comes to knowledge mobilization on on the social side, not that not the commercialization side, that that folks in the immigrant and refugee serving sector should be thinking about? Around around the topic around the idea around the challenge of knowledge mobilization?

David Phipps 45:55
I’m glad you use it, you ended up with the word challenge. So let’s go back to what I said, we all suck at which is evaluation. All suck at this, I do hope you use the word suck. And you’re absolutely. The challenge with with this is, in contrast to commercialization, that we’ve got quantitative metrics and commercialization, to say how many patents have been filed, how many deals with industry, what’s your licensing revenue, we don’t, we don’t have that on the social side, on the on the social side of the scale, our value, our data, our stories, our data, our data are qualitative. Now, I always say no stories without numbers, and no numbers were those stories. So the numbers give, like the breadth of how many citizens served, that sort of thing. The stories give the depth, the qualitative meaningfulness of those numbers. And again, going back to Jonathan grants work on the research excellence framework in the UK, for one of his conclusions was that the case study, ie the narrative is the correct unit of assessment for impact. So we will never Metro size, our our ability to tell the story of impact, it’ll always be stories and develop and narratives and qualitative data partnered with quantitative data. That so that being said, it’s really hard to, you know, to, it’s not hard to tell the story, but it’s hard to compare one story against another. And that’s, that’s part of the challenge with you, within one project, I can easily you know, I can, I can within a research project, you know, we you can, you can create data at the beginning, you can do your project, you can collect data at the end, quantitative and qualitative data, and you can show the journey of change over the course of your research project or your research career more likely. But you can’t compare your research study to somebody your research impact to somebody else’s research impact. So comparative data are really, really hard. The UK does that by peer review by having panels review these case studies. But we don’t have that in Canada. So in the UK, they use the term impact assessment. And it is assessment because they assessed one university against another, and they make funding decisions based on that. In Canada, we don’t have an impact assessment program. And and I’m delighted at that, by the way, and so is that we’ll come to that. So, so in Canada, we don’t, I don’t use the words impact assessment, because my faculty members don’t want to be assessed. I specifically use the term collecting and communicating the evidence of impact. And we’ve got a tool again, I’ve always got a tool on everything. And we’ve recently published a book chapter on this tool. And it’s a tool that builds off the case study framework from the research excellence framework in the UK. But we’ve importantly added a semi structured interview guide that is drawn from the literature in contribution analysis. And contribution analysis says How does research contribute to a decision or contribute to change. So the tool is composed of three parts is set of directions, the semi structured interview guide, and then the case study framework. And the idea is you collect and communicate the evidence of impact, you use the case study. So you use the semi structured interview guide to collect the evidence of impact through interviews with people who are involved, both as researchers and as partners and as beneficiaries. And then also then there’s a case study framework that is reflects the voices of not just academics but of partners as well. And so so we do have a tool to collect and communicate, the evidence has been packed and that’s getting quite a lot of play right now. In both in the network but also in other organizations that are quite interested in in reporting on the day for instant their research has made

Marco Campana 50:00
excellent sounds like a really interesting and perhaps more positive approach than the idea of impact assessment where you’re pitting. It sounds like universities against each other, which is why I can imagine your faculty might not like it.

David Phipps 50:13
There. So you said, Why am I delighted the candidate doesn’t have impact assessment, on the experience in the UK, and I’m quite close to a lot of it is not secret. I am one of the internet, I’m on the international advisory group that is advising UK research and innovation on its assessment of the ref and the future of research assessment programs, the prep, and there are reports and they’re publicly reports, both scholarly and blog reports of crazy incentive, unintended consequences that have happened when institutions are starting to chase the money, the big money, 2 billion pounds, that is liberated from the ref, and things like switching faculty members from research to teaching contracts, because then they’re not admissible to the ref. Right? We can’t get that in Canada. Right? If you’re a faculty, if you’re a unionized faculty member, we can’t just change it because you’re the contract that conditions of your work from research to teaching. And those are some of the things that were happening in the UK as they start to game the system. Interesting.

Marco Campana 51:21
Well, on that note, so it sounds like a more of a more positive system in Canada.

David Phipps 51:26
But you know, yeah, let’s let’s just end on this my collaboration with Julie Bailey, we started, we started this comparison. And yes, I will say a more positive approach. and Canada. In the UK, the Research Excellence Framework is an assessment of what research has happened there, the white bubble in that Venn diagram, we don’t have assessment in Canada. So our bubble as to how bubble is and then we’re focused on how to create impact, and less so on why the impact has occurred. And so we say, in systems like the UK, but it’s also in Australia, in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Hong Kong all have impact assessment for their, for their systems, there assessment driven systems there, the academic system is driven by the assessment of impact. And in Canada, and in all other, you know, the US and other jurisdictions that don’t have impact assessment. We call ourselves mission focused. So we’re, if it’s the right mission for the researcher, the right mission for the funder, the right mission for the institution, then go and fill your boots and do great impact. But you know, if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to, if you’re studying black holes, well go study black holes. But if you’re studying black holes in the UK, you’ve got to, you’ve got to express how that has changed the world.

Marco Campana 52:42
Right? A very different approach. Yeah, but

David Phipps 52:47
I do think and when I, I do a lot of conversations in the UK, and there’s a lot of researchers are now there’s a lot of challenges that have arisen because of the ref, as I mentioned. And, you know, I say that we don’t we do impact because it’s right for us, not because the government tells us we have to.

Marco Campana 53:09
Got it. Well, listen, thank you for this very rich and informative conversation. And I will send you all of the the reports that you mentioned, to get those links. Thank you in advance for that. And have a great holiday season. Thanks so much for this conversation. I can’t wait to share it with folks. It’s a really great sort of summary and overview and foundation on knowledge mobilization that I think will be really interesting for folks to hear about. Great. Thanks, Marco. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes, wherever you listen to your podcasts are also on my [email protected] I appreciate you listening and if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website, or [email protected] Thanks again

Welcome to episode 40 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode, I speak with Agnes Thomas, Executive Director of Catholic Crosscultural Services. Agnes has led Catholic Crosscultural through a digital transformation that started before, but certainly accelerated during the pandemic. 

That isn’t a new story. But her democratic approach as a leader and insights about how the Immigrant and Refugee-serving sector can and should be working collaboratively to serve all Newcomers are refreshing. 

And for some, it will seem new. It shouldn’t be that way. We should be following Agnes’ lead to move our sector towards an ecosystem mindset and approach that puts the humans we’re serving first in our minds. And to be fearless and intentional in our community work. In our advocacy work. In the work we do to ensure that our sector has the resources and leadership needed to move forward.

As I start this year with a bit of cautious optimism, this is a great conversation to reflect on and energize me, to be boldly, but not blindly optimistic, about what we can do and achieve as a sector. Hybrid service delivery is here. That doesn’t mean making a choice of either digital or in-person, but as Agnes so eloquently puts it, looking at how to build tech capacity to serve people while recognizing the equal need to serve Newcomers in person. It’s all about making service accessible for all, whether their preference is to be served remotely or if they want to walk in through your doors, or both.

I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope it sparks some optimism and energy in you as well.

Some questions we discussed:

Additional resources:

Agnes presented at an event last year that you might find of interest: Digital Literacy in the Immigrant Refugee Serving Sector – Increasing Collaboration

Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has not been edited. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.

Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 40 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I speak with Agnes Thomas, Executive Director of Catholic cross cultural services. Agnes is led Catholic cross cultural through a digital transformation that started before but certainly accelerated during the pandemic. That isn’t a new story. But her democratic approach is a leader and insights about how the immigrant and refugee serving sector can and should be working collaboratively to serve all newcomers are refreshing. And for some, it will seem new. It shouldn’t be that way. Though. We should be following agonises lead to move our sector towards an ecosystem mindset and approach that puts the humans we’re serving first in our minds, and to be fearless and intentional in our community work in our advocacy work in the work we do to ensure that our sector has the resources and leadership to move forward. As I start this year, with a bit of cautious optimism, this is a great conversation to reflect on and energize me to be boldly but not blindly optimistic about what we can do and achieve as a sector. Hybrid service delivery is here. That doesn’t mean making a choice of either digital or in person. But as Agnes so eloquently puts it, looking at how to build tech capacity to serve people, while recognizing the equal need to serve newcomers in person. It’s all about making service accessible for all, whether their preference is to be served remotely. Or if they want to walk in through your doors, or both. I really enjoyed this conversation. And I hope it sparks some optimism and energy in you as well.

Agnes Thomas 1:39
Good morning, Marco, how wonderful to see you again. And I am so excited to have this discussion with you today. As you mentioned, my name is Agnes Thomas. And I lead the Catholic cross cultural services. We are an organization that has been in existence since 1954, serving newcomers and refugees in the GTA, and we do have staff presence across the country, providing refugee sponsorship training. So good to be with you today. Thank you. Yeah, no, of course, I forgot that you’re actually a national organization in that respect. So that time, and that’s a great example of where digital can play a really important role, obviously, so very true. And you know, that is what we are seeing like how the whole pandemic really helped us to pivot into that space of what is possible. And what is possible when we imagine possibilities, or when we are imagining possibilities. In terms of technology and tools, I would say that we are in an exciting space as a result of a problem.

Marco Campana 1:25
Welcome to the technology and human services podcast. Agnes, thank you so much for joining me, I’m gonna let you start by introducing yourself, your background, and start talking about some of the digital transformation work that you’re doing at Catholic cross cultural services.

Agnes Thomas 2:45
Because it is making us to think new ways of engaging new ways of delivering services, new ways of thinking about security and privacy and data. Yeah, yeah,

Marco Campana 2:57
I’m sorry. So for you go ahead.

Agnes Thomas 2:59
No, for me, I was thinking that this is the next step. You know, like how, when people start talking about AI, how much there was fear. But then slowly, I think this is opening a new door for us to look into the future.

Marco Campana 3:14
That’s so interesting. And I mean, you brought up kind of your foundational stuff in last year, we had a digital literacy in the sector collaboration events. And you spoke about your approach to digital transformation at Catholic cross cultural. And so today, I really want to talk a bit about kind of that grounding and what you’ve been doing, but also where you’re looking. And it sounds like overcoming fear and anxiety is a big part of doing that work.

Agnes Thomas 3:39
Yes, I think so. Because we as you know, we all kind of got into that space. I still remember March 2020. That scary space and scary conversation, you know, people should believe right now, what are we going to do? What are we going to do about the clients? What struck me? Was that that question, what are we going to do about our community members? Who is going to walk through our door? How do we ensure that they receive the service they need? And I think for us, that was the conversation that led us to what we have in place. It is like that all biblical story of files of five loaves of bread and two piece of fish. Like, you know, we looked into, but we have, so how we approached from that conversation of like we saw the need, we saw the need in the community. And yes, there was here. But we also wanted to look at what we had and where we needed to go. And that was quick. One thing that helped us I think that this may be an important piece for me to mention. Our culture was agile. Our culture was open and transparent and everyone came together regardless of so this is something I think of when I look back so proudly that regardless of the roles and titles people gathered, and so we gathered a group of people who were well versed in the technological space, and then we made our blueprint out of those conversations. And I think I would put that into three steps. When I look back into what we have done. One was that we had to look at our technology capacity, equipment wise, as well as user, like the consumer versus, you know, what we had in place, hardware software, as well as skill set. And so we did a resource assessment, then we went to the staff to kind of learn a staff baseline. So that would allow us to look into what kind of training we needed to get on board and the capacity. Then we looked at the gathering of the whole resources together into one space, our ID team, which was actually one person, and we had like an external person watching either our cloud space and our internal team, that IT team came together, or the committee came together to propose number of trainings based on the data. So those were the three immediate steps that we did. And the question of privacy, confidentiality, all that also got addressed in the process of developing that roadmap. So it was actually we were building the plane as we were going, right, like

Marco Campana 6:31
everybody else at the time, I guess, too, but it sounds like you were already sort of in a in a different place because of that agile approach. And, and, and again, I think I’ve had some interesting conversations with organizations where they didn’t all come together in at that moment. And it was kind of more of a top down. So one of my favorite examples is talking to people who do pre arrival services, who weren’t part of a conversation about moving to hybrid. And that kind of shocked me, because they’ve been doing online services for many years. But maybe the culture of the organization was that they just didn’t think that they needed to reach into the teams, they had to do it from the top down. There’s even that fear of getting it wrong from a management perspective. But it sounds like having that Democritus sort of more democratized approach is made all the difference.

Agnes Thomas 7:15
I think so I think for for us, maybe that was also another factor. There was nobody afraid in the sense of if I’m going to say this, how is this going to be taken, in fact, everybody was looking for those, okay, this person knows how to run zoom. Well, and this person knows how to do things or WhatsApp. And so everybody maximize their capacity, like I would say, our staff, frontline staff and our leadership team, they were true champions. Like, it was such a thing to watch, you know, when people come together for a, with a unified friend to serve. And that’s why we are here. Right, and, and while dealing with their personal fears and challenges that came with a global pandemic. And, I mean, that is why maybe I mentioned that cultural, organizational cultural piece. That’s a big, yes, we were actually, you know, you mentioned, yes, we were prepared for it, maybe because it was a blessing in disguise, where we were looking into how can we improve our technological presence and our tools and our capacities to serve people beyond? Because there are people who need you know, we all know, and probably you are seeing that in the sector, there are people who need to be served in person, and they do require a lot more time than maybe some others. And so how do we serve both population? And how do we make our current so before the pandemic, one of the conversation here was, how do we make our services accessible for people who want it to just digitally served and people who wanted to walk through our door, and so maybe we were actually just, you know, like, pushed into that maybe if it was not for the pandemic, maybe this journey was going to be slower, at three to five years, probably what we were we were going to be three years from now, where we reached into data and D. So now where we are right where we should be in the next five years to 10 years, because that is the roadmap we are making, which I will discuss a little bit. So you asked about the cybersecurity.

Marco Campana 9:28
Yeah, cuz I mean, one of the things I noticed in your presentation, and you talked about it here as well around privacy and security that and we’re hearing a lot about cybersecurity is so important as we move forward in digital and hybrid service delivery. But not a lot of organizations feel like they can figure it out. And it sounds like you’ve done a lot of work in that area. So I’m curious what that looks like from a settlement perspective.

Agnes Thomas 9:50
Yeah. So one thing that we are so acutely aware was when we are so much in online like how many hackers and fishers and all kinds of have, you know, like, I get at least, I’ve been $10 million on a minimum regular basis. And also, like all kinds of banks and people are contacting, and so we wanted to send out, or an idea of where we are at in terms of a threat, if somebody tried to hack into your system, how well established we are because we are doing so much on the other space of being delivering services virtual and this is something I will recommend our process to anybody who would care to go that route. So our ID teams and our they survey. And what they did was they did a cybersecurity assessment, doing simulated phishing, emails, as well as other stuff to see if people would respond to and I am, you know, I’m happy to admit, we failed, we failed the test. And we knew, if we were going on that route, and also being so active in the virtual space, this was going to be a huge risk for us. And so we introduce this cybersecurity training group called no before. And so they started with a very basic, and so people and we are continuing that which also, I must say, it did in the end, after the one year of slaughter one time exercise right now, in order to also we are doing it continuing as the space is evolving. For example, I took a training last week, interestingly enough how much these people change the way they hack, just like the way we are, we have enhanced zoom features. Now we have enhanced WebEx features. Now, these people have also enhanced features in how do we how do they break into a two way security system etc. So, we are seeing that ongoing need, because new people are arriving and sometimes we kind of Oh, I know this, I have done this training. And we cannot because one is the data that we are carrying. And second is really the cost if something like that happens, there is a personal there is a human resources, there is an organization as well as the taxpayers dollars being invested. So we are so mindful of that.

Marco Campana 12:20
pressures coming from different places. Exactly. And not

Agnes Thomas 12:23
only that, like we wanted to protect, right, like, you know, we wanted to protect not only the data and the systems, because that is the best way to move forward. So I recommend cybersecurity training to anyone and everyone who is in that space serving clients.

Marco Campana 12:41
I’m curious if you’ve had this conversation with your funders, because there’s there feels like there’s sort of an information vacuum, from the big funders about what is expected of organizations when it comes to things like cybersecurity. And I know that that’s where some of the anxiety comes from from organizations because they don’t want to invest in a solution or a program, that might not be considered adequate. And there are many there are so many out there. So I I’m curious if you’ve had this conversation with your project or other officers about, hey, we’re using no before, we’re making sure everyone who we hire gets trained and we’re doing it, you know, not just one time, but we’re continuously learning. Is that something that they’re aware of? And what’s their feedback?

Agnes Thomas 13:22
This is part of our ongoing conversation with our office as well. And so far with our major funders, this has been a very positive response, right? And we put that in our report, but like, maybe this is just me approaching, we need to be proactive, I think all the time. Again, maybe we gotta be careful saying this. I would say when you have, this is the best bet, let us go for it without if we are waiting for permission, sometimes it is a little too late. And so and I’m not spending hundreds of 1000s of dollars. And we’re talking about less than $5,000 for a training, right. And so before it’s actually quite affordable isn’t to correct. Exactly. And so we are not doing like I’m not going and buying property for 50 million and putting another 50 million, that’s a different scenario. But somebody like this, these are small, well versed risk, I would say and from what I have seen from my interaction with I FCC or major funder is they have been very open to it. Yes. The onus is on us to explain why and what and how this is going to change the game. And I would say we have been in such a privileged position in that. Thankfully, these things worked out and and even if it is I think it was good that we tried.

Marco Campana 14:48
Absolutely, yeah, no, I think and I’m curious how you because I know that that’s a question that will come up from other people who might be listening is how did you decide to use no before was that something that was recommended? To you, you did some research on? How did you come to that as, as the solution or the initial step at least. So

Agnes Thomas 15:06
our I, our IT staff and their leadership team looked into number of cybersecurity training that is available. And this came up as a top top recommendation in terms of how accessible and simple the training was also how it’s cheaper, like I’m there to like it was more affordable. So that we looked at, you know, anytime when you go out for those kinds of things, we looked at different codes, and what is the best use of our money and what adds value. And so no before was elected, but after a bit of market research, and so that also, again, one of the thing that we have been doing quite well, doing market research on any product, even if nobody is telling us to do, we would still do the and so our IT team has done an amazing job.

Marco Campana 15:55
That sounds like yeah, having that internal due diligence and being proactive instead of waiting to to get permission or even be told what to do is really important, because things are so and like you said, because the the threat actors are evolving their their approaches as well constantly. That’s something that’s that’s really important, too, is that when new hires Come on, even if they say, Oh, I’ve have cybersecurity training, you bring them into your system. And so that’s a big conversation that that is happening in the sector about well, what are the kinds of skills and attitudes and knowledge that that workers need to have, as they’re coming in? But what’s the responsibility of the agency to get them to the point that they want them to get out? So you you can ensure in this case, you can say all of our staff are, you know, no, before certified, basically. And that’s, that’s a baseline in cybersecurity. Are there other things going back to some of your technology capacity, and staff digital capacity that you started to look at? Whether it was choices about technology? Because again, some organizations are like, Oh, is it zoom? or GoToMeeting? Or WebEx? Or what should we use? And then, you know, some of them say, well use whatever you want, and others say, Okay, we will all be using Zoom. And now you will get trained in zoom, and we will all become, you know, adequately baseline, if you will, in those skills. What’s the approach that you’ve taken, when it comes to the digital kind of capacity,

Agnes Thomas 17:17
I think we’ve customized it. And we are continuing to customize what we do and how we do some of the things for example, a team’s became like a big part of our internal conversations and sharing of data and sometimes meetings. And so and then, so what we have done, we looked at individual programs and the leaders and they keep them with like, Go survey your client, see what works best for them, right, like, for example, our link staff. So their need is very different from somebody who is just a basic conversation circle or settlement work. And so we customized according to the need, and then look at what can be the best technology within that, for example, one of our program that’s violent second is woman, like that program adopted soft phones, so that there was ways that it was more accessible for people who were going away from that violence situations. And so and I know, some part of the language, people who were working with people with low digital literacy, they looked at WhatsApp because some people didn’t have any other access. And so then we also worked and partnered with libraries and other organizations and small businesses, to a cube people with the right type of tools. So it’s one thing for us to say here is our some lingo. And like, you know, how do I know if you have a tablet or a computer or a high speed internet, right. And so that is, I think, something we need to be always mindful of. And so, so I think this was also again, a three way process. I’m an I’m a teacher, so that’s great. So a three way process in which one was really looking at our staff comfort and where they are at and providing that training. And it was more of a train the trainer model. People who were good at, let’s say, in a team, if there was somebody good at zooms somebody’s good at WhatsApp, managing a group, they all taught each other. So there were organizational wide training, there were program based trainings. So that was one and second was that training for the clients. So there were programs according to their need, and the nature of the program they’re delivering, they started training the clients and so then we started investing a little bit money for digital literacy person and the digital navigator. And we also started collecting as well as receiving donations. or making sure people who had a whether it is internet or the system need. So like a digital lawn? What do you call it like a technology lawn? Establish it correct? Yeah, yeah. And so one thing that we continue to do, is that an ongoing survey with the clients in terms of what are the changing needs, then something else we did. So we looked at our car, like we revamped our website in 28. And we were 2018. And we were so proud how we were doing really well. Now, right now, as we speak, we are actually revamping that, again, from a client centered approach. So from a marketing perspective, when you look at our website, it’s working fine. And like you still know how to, but then during the last few years, we know how it can be inaccessible for people who are not well versed in technology gostream. So we are changing the whole thing again. And I bet in three years from now, if you bought that rocking, I’m sure we will be again revamping it. So we wanted our website to also serve as a what we call it a shopping mall, or, or for lack of a better term, like a virtual mall where you can walk in and you can look at what are the different pieces. So that’s the current work that is happening. Right.

Marco Campana 21:23
But it’s all centered from what you’re so whether it’s technology, their digital literacy, or understanding the devices and the access that they have, it sounds like that’s really key to help guide your decisions.

Agnes Thomas 21:37
Absolutely, I think that is an ongoing thing. I don’t think none of us should ever take that for granted. Okay, now, we have done we have arrived here, because it is an evolving space. And I guess like the way our life works, you know, things are changing, and therefore we respond in order for us to be not reactive. I think we needed to be proactive.

Marco Campana 22:03
Right, looking right.

Agnes Thomas 22:05
And also looking at what are the trends that is coming up? I think one thing I know I personally do is I look at the international market space, what is changing in terms of technology, whether the banking sector or the you know, like the finance sector in general, because they usually go for this kind of things before anybody else. And sometimes it’s not only only reading the headline, and if it is interesting to that you look in look into it further, and also making it I think this is also a very key key thing. Accessibility is an important thing. It is a right, and I don’t think we should ever forget that. So are we accessible? Are we efficient? You know, are we maximizing the resources we have this is not to say that we have to be always in that austerity sense. But that is the truth, we have seen that during pandemic, who is being left behind. And so that is the other side of the picture, when we are looking at digital transformation and data. Because for me, again, those two things goes hand in hand.

Marco Campana 23:13
And I mentioned that, like you said, that’s kind of connected to the values of the sector, and also your mission as an organization, right. People so that they are not vulnerable? And potentially has to reflect that as well, I guess.

Agnes Thomas 23:25
Yeah, correct. And, you know, one of the big highlight for me, I think that probably encouraged me and inspired me quite a bit was our school settlement team did a art project with us in mannitol, in Ireland. And so they did a little gallery. And there was an exhibition, like it was such a great, wonderful project involving newcomer youth and the indigenous youth. And so here is an example or a testament of how digital technology can bring two worlds two separate worlds otherwise, you know, wouldn’t talk to together and create stories that has a virtual presence, because you definitely know that is where they wanted to play in. And so things like that, that became such a ray of hope in seeing where we are going. It’s such

Marco Campana 24:24
a great example because you see the possibilities and the connections that can be made. Because I again, I think that’s something that a lot of organizations still struggle struggle with is they get the tech and they’ve got the mechanics of it. But there’s that, that that community feeling that community development, that’s that sort of sense of engagement. And that’s a really great example of where you can you can do that across geographic boundaries and across different cultures to kind of do exactly that. So where are you looking when you think about your journey now, and I mean, you’ve been you were already on it before the pandemic as you said it accelerated like it did for everybody else, but it feels like you because you were on that journey, because you have a certain culture in the organization, you were able to harness it as not a threat but an opportunity to move forward and to do that acceleration, but to do it in a meaningful way. How has it changed your organization moving forward, when you think of your digital journey, and you think about where you’re moving to as an organization, you know, we’ve come out of sort of the purely digital part of the pandemic, and we’re now you know, seeing people in person and things like that, what impact is it having on the way you provide services now.

Agnes Thomas 25:31
So some of our programs are hybrid, and some are maybe more virtual than in person, but we are also so at least now, because again, as I said, like the space is changing so much, but we do know for sure, there are people who need to be in preferring to be in person, but then there are certain areas or pockets of the service delivery, people may prefer to be virtual. And so we are still collecting data on that. And I think, for us, maybe the baseline in that space is being open. And also in that being in that listening space. So that we Acube internal capacities in a way that can meet those needs, because it may be different, I would think, from three years from now. So I always think of times not as today. But it can be tomorrow as well. Right. And so I would think that is going to be our approach now until we see a new emerging pathway comes as a result of this, because right now, this is what is working and I know certain levels of the link classes, for example, the language instruction, they can probably do virtual, but then there are others who are due to whatever reasons because again, this is depending on the demographic, that is like you know, a woman with small children, if they are trying to manage this virtually one thing that we are already seeing is that you know, there are kids running around, and how are you going to do that. And so there are so many other factors that is in the ecosystem that we needed to consider, like, you know, if somebody is having a space to attend their classes, even if they have the equipment that is different from somebody who is sharing, like a 10 member household, sharing two bedrooms, trying to attend a virtual online platform is difficult, you can I don’t know what kind of learning can be possible. Yes, when we could in like, let’s say we’re talking about the big box stores, they all closed down during the pandemic. And we all did online. That is not because we didn’t want to drive up and go or go and look at the stuff because that was a necessity. So but that also provided us with the opportunity. So some things we don’t have to go on, stand in a call to go and buy, like, you know, this can be done, but at some other things, we want it to go and touch and feel. So those, it is two different things. And we need to be mindful of it. And so that’s how I am seeing that.

Marco Campana 28:17
Yeah, I mean, race is a really interesting conversation that I’ve been having with a few people about and because again, you’re an agile organization, because you’re you’re doing this ongoing listening with your with your clients and communities, the ability to pivot and be flexible in the way you provide services in the future. So for example, you’re describing, maybe there’s a program that’s 80%, digital 20% in person now, because that works for the cohort of clients that are going through that. But let’s say the next cohort comes, are you prepared as an organization to flip it so that maybe that cohort wants 80% in person? And 20% of virtual? And what is it like to plan around that and to have the staff have their mind shift and their skill set to be able to be responsive that way? Is that is that an opportunity? Is that a challenge? Is it both?

Agnes Thomas 29:03
I think it is both? Because like it is it is changes? One thing to say that you know, I’m someone who get so excited about change. But there are people oh my gosh, this is scary. But once how do we make it exciting? How does it make an opportunity? It is fun. It is like I think what changes the conversation and approach to is that when I tell you Marco this is how you’re going to be behaving from tomorrow onwards you may have a hard time accepting that. And but like if you’re looking at look at this Marco if you do it this way, we may be able to do this. So it changes the way that you and I having that conversation and our understanding of as a result of your behavior this way is going to happen something in a certain way, you know like so. I’m so mindful of that ongoing conversations. I would call that conversations because I was also going to say Yes, we looked into policy, we looked at process, we looked at system, and we looked at the baseline and the capacity. So all that matters, but then how you put that forward make a difference.

Marco Campana 30:15
Yeah, cuz I mean, how you manage that. And I wonder if that means you’re managing differently, not just you, but your, your, your management, your directors, sorry, your managers and directors, because to have those conversations, was that an approach that you already had in place those kinds of conversational management? Or is that something again, that accelerated because of the pandemic, and you realized, we’re in constant flux, now, change is the new normal. So we have to, we have to manage this situation differently.

Agnes Thomas 30:42
I think maybe one of our again, as I said, like we were culturally ready for it, how that happened. So I remember when I came on board in 2018, one of the biggest conversation here, for assessors, as well as our structure, and the process was looking at leadership as a collective effort, and beyond titles. And so in that collective approach to leadership, what we have created was small committees for areas like you know, whether it is now right now we have a digital transformation committee, we have a communication committee, we have a fundraising committee, we have a Innovation and Research Committee, we have a social wellness committee. So we have I think, 11 or 12 different committees, and I tell you a little bit of how that committees work. So let us say you are interested in digital literacy, digital transformation, I may not be, so how about if I’m interested in stuff well being so I get to join that committee, and you get to join the digital transformation committee. And yet a third person may be interested in doing events, so that person get to be part of the events committee. So we looked at interest, skills and capacities, to what is the need. And so we created this small ports, where people are just having a focused approach to because one of the thing I heard from staff was, I have these great ideas, but nobody’s listening to me, I don’t know where to take it. So we established so many different systems and approaches in how that no voice is being enhanced within our capacity. So of course, there are capacities and how far we can go on with something and then a certain things I need to sign, but not everything I had to sign on. And so we approach the whole approach to system view, as intrapreneurial. And also, we do make mistakes, and that is okay. You know, like it is not going to be you’re going to be punished and disciplined for one thing. But like, again, do I have a process and a system in place that will help you make the right choices and doing the right thing? So for me, I think maybe I’m investing energy on that. And that is helping the other pieces of work, for example, the digital transformation, I say, Hey, this is what I’m seeing from the report. And what do you guys think. And that is actually with another committee si here, and we talk about it in the leadership team, but the committee actually make recommendations how conversation with the external parties we are in conversation with so it is I’m trying to be make it as much as a flat approach so that the best can be built out of it. Because I don’t want to pretend I know all of it. I’m even when I’m talking to you, I feel I’m representing many voices from the organization, right? I just happen to be in that privileged position of having this conversation with you. But I am carrying the voices of my IT team, my senior team and the frontline staff who invested time and energy. So I think that whole approach is based on that principle that you want, I have something tangible to contribute, whether it is digital transformation, or social transformation, that commitment and the passion. And I think that came through and that is continuing to serve as well.

Marco Campana 34:08
So clearly, it’s important that sounds like to create that space where people can focus on what’s really of interest to them, and what they might be really good at. And then they’ll gain the knowledge from the other groups of similar people who are knowledgeable in other areas. And so across the board, then, I mean, it certainly feels like it would increase morale and engagement in the organization to to feel that their perspective is valued. You don’t have to be an expert in that other thing, because we’ll get you up to speed on it. But feel free to contribute what you’re passionate about over here. Exactly. That’s great. It sounds like a really promising practice for others to think about as well. I’m curious, this is such a rich conversation. I feel like we could go in so many directions. But one of the things that we see in the sector a lot is is the question of leadership around digital transformation. It needs to come from the sector, from funders from within organizations. There’s you know, as you said, you’re looking outside of the sector to see trends in other places, which I think is so valuable. You know, why reinvent the wheel? Why replicate when we can borrow? And, and and, you know, create a version of our own. When you look at that leadership, what do you think is needed for our sector to move forward with a hybrid service delivery model? And you know, and I’ll even put like a timeline on it, right? We’re, we’re less than two years away from the next big national call for proposals where, in theory, some of these are going to be funded based, like talking about baselining. And, you know, what leadership do we need to get to that conversation with our funders.

Agnes Thomas 35:31
So one thing that I forgot, or I omitted in well, something that we have done probably that also is probably important was last year that we hired a consultant group to look at digital transformation from a system perspective. So for example, because you mentioned the next CFD 2025, this may be very good for all of us to think I think it was in your report also, like, you know, how many systems and how many reporting systems we have in place, and how that is actually not creating efficiencies in how we, you know, utilize and how much time we invest. So, it was a problem that we have been looking at. And I know it is not, we are not isolated in that. So we hired this group, they looked into all of our systems, our policies, our procedures, our the whole structure, and they produced a report and also provide the recommendation. So right now, our committee is looking into prioritizing, which part of that can be implemented right away, what could be two years from now and what kind of money is being added? And so that leads to your final question about what we need to do and what leaders should be or funding should be thinking about, in my humble view, we need to be open, we need to be flexible, because whether I want it or not, the ecosystem is changing. And I’m part of the ecosystem. Right. And I also wanted to talk a little bit about the ecosystem, I think we need to pay attention to what is happening in the ecosystem. Right? And, yeah, so that would help us to move the needle a little bit, and then be productive. Because often we create policies or processes ones, when something is falling apart. Why are we looking at something that is working and say, you know, okay, is this good enough? Can we do something different with it. And so something new gets created and invest resources, I don’t think we talk I mean, there is so much about we need money, it’s like when we when I talk about resources, it is people, it is monetary stuff, it also added stuff that is again in the ecosystem. So I think investing and having the time allocated for that is also going to be very important and

Marco Campana 37:55
love that time is such a luxury that it should that it needs not to be anymore. Isn’t that true?

Agnes Thomas 38:00
Exactly, exactly. And so because we have conflicting priorities, this may fall into the bottom, because we are like, you know, many of us are so passionate about what needs to get done, how many people we need to serve, and there are people who need this and that. But if you don’t have a house with a roof, when it rain and snow, your house is gone. So I think that when we look at digital technology or any type of infrastructure, if you don’t invest and secure it, you can go and those good people that you want it to serve. And for me that is the same principle ITIL here internally also, if you are not well, you cannot help other person to be well. And so whether it is technology or policy, it has to be approached that way. Right? When you

Marco Campana 38:53
look at that ecosystem approach, then what is that? What does that looking like for you, it’s based on on well being, it’s based on that sort of foundation, having the foundations in place,

Agnes Thomas 39:03
I think that our foundations needs to be in place. And there are things that we are seeing from the current the past two years, like you know, as we mentioned, cybersecurity, I believe it’s a must and I think it should be mandatory for everybody to go through that process so that we are protecting like we are far over firewalling ourselves is I think that’s the language they use. And while hybrid model models are great, I think we need to find out what are the technological needs still there for each of the individual programs or specific programs and services and develop and plan according to those needs. Where it says you know, again, how this is how CTS is going to go, but that that may not be the case for air settlement team that is working in the peripheries you know like so there are various pieces to it and as I already mentioned, communication is key. Go back and forth internal and external not system Receiving one side of it is not going to be making it an equal space. And and I think we can expand our efficiencies and effectiveness by partnering and collaborating with other organizations and groups. And I think that is something we should all encourage more partnerships, more outcomes, and and then, you know, how do we become impactful in what we do? It’s not that we are not impactful, this is not a criticism at all, I think the sector is doing a great job. But what else can be done? I think that asking that question, Martin is right. And one thing that is a serious lack, I find is, we don’t have a best practice repository yet. So we needed to have a best practice repository for all aspects of settlement and integration. Even maybe it begins with what is settlement, what are the definitional outcomes of settlement and integration for individuals and groups and communities, I think that would change how we look at the whole system as going back to your ecosystem Goldston. As you can see, I’m so excited about it, I think it is space for transformation,

Marco Campana 41:15
for sure. And I really feel like it’s important that you’re bringing the digital together with the rest of our approach our foundations, you know, that ecosystem, it’s not that here, we’re doing settlement in here, we’re doing digital settlement, because that, that’s such a dangerous conversation of like, not seeing how they’re connected completely. And it sounds like you’re recognizing, and you’ve been living that this is it’s not, we do settlement, and then we do digital settlement, we do settlement, and it incorporates digital in person, you know, hybrid, whatever you want to define it as. And it’s just one, one approach to how we deliver service, we still need to be grounded in our communities, we still need to have that privacy and security perspective, we still need to go back and look at the foundations of why we do this kind of work and understand what can be.

Agnes Thomas 42:00
Exactly. And also you know that it’s maybe one other component, this is me wearing my research hat is that how much data we receive and collect? And what do we do with them? Right. And so I think an increased efficiency, then capacities within the system approach, like in a digital world, would help us to uncover some of this data. Either it is aggregated data, or disaggregated data will help us to lead into program development and design in such a way that responding to the current need. And so, I think there is much deeper, this is laid, and this is multifaceted.

Marco Campana 42:41
Absolutely. And what an interesting point too, because you can ask people, and that’s so important to do your serving and your consultation with with with your your communities and your staff. But the data can also reveal other trends and themes and outliers that they may not themselves have recognized. So I think that whole combination of of being able to be actively having those conversations, but also really like you say mining the data for trends and themes is also important.

Agnes Thomas 43:09
Can I like you know, I’m there are interesting things happening in BC, and in Nova Scotia, but three different landscape, three different type of geographical areas. And so how do we collect that data unless you go into a conference, and if you get a 10 minutes of a glimpse, do we have a system and efficiencies that we can actually pull down all these three, and look at Oh, my gosh, this is what they’re seeing there. I mean, that is not individual data, individual data may be important when we are looking at, you know, the scheme of things from a programmatic or a policy perspective, but like a national wide for that looks at different emerging trends or themes, I think would change the way we look at and understand. You’ve got my

Marco Campana 43:55
heart there. I mean, that’s part of that bone knowledge mobilization repository, and that approach is that the more we know about each other’s work, the more we’ll recognize some of the similarities and themes, and how we can build things together collectively, but also some of the uniqueness of some of the solutions that need to happen. But a rural solution in in, in Halifax in Nova Scotia might be just as legitimate in a rural spot in Ontario or in BC. Correct. Right. And so wouldn’t it be great to understand that and then, as you mentioned earlier, have the time to actually do the analysis, the integration to see oh, what could I take from this these kinds of things? So it’s Yeah, knowledge mobilization, the resources for it, the culture of doing it, and building data into that are just, I think those are really, really important for this ecosystem as well for us to in a meaningful way.

Agnes Thomas 44:44
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, and that is when we become so intentional in how we write.

Marco Campana 44:51
Yeah, what a great way Oh, I love it. Oh, it’s such a rich conversation. I always answer I always end with is there anything I haven’t asked you about that you want that you want to finish with or let people know either about the work that you’re doing or ideas that are that are floating in your head put you to forget you’ve had the teacher how you’ve had the IDI how you’ve had the researcher hat. Are there any other hats that you wear that you want to make? Sure we understand? No, I

Agnes Thomas 45:13
think we are serving humans. And I think that human element and the humanity and so when we are looking at humanity as a whole, it is a collective approach. It’s not one of us, it just all of us, right. And I think when we approach things, systems and processes and policies, that is a collective approach. And I think we are better and richer when we do that. And I think when we are less afraid of there is not what is there to lose. When we are less afraid of those power relations, I think we will be able to serve the humanity better as a whole. And I think for me, that is my kind of deep desire, even, you know, any conversation. This is not I’m an expert, I’m not an expert. Yet, what helps me stay on course is that our desire and our common goal of serving the humanity first. And so that comes from a collective intentional, fearless peace.

Marco Campana 46:14
I love it. That’s so inspiring. Thank you so much for this conversation. I imagine we’re gonna have more in the future. But I really appreciate you sharing your experience in your organization’s experience and perspective, I think there’s so much value for people to hear that who may not be on the same path yet that you are, to know that this is a place that they can get to, and how you’re approaching it is really also really, really useful and inspiring for folks. So thank you, Agnes, for taking the time today. Really,

Agnes Thomas 46:39
thank you what a privilege Marco. And you know, I tell you, that you what you’re doing is the right thing. You’re asking the right questions. I think we need enough people who are asking the question so things can move. And so great work, kudos to you. And let us know how we can support you in that as well.

Marco Campana 46:56
Absolutely. Thank you so much again, thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes, wherever you listen to your podcasts are also on my site at marcopolis.org I appreciate you listening and if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website, or [email protected] Thanks again.

Welcome to episode 39 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I speak with Ross McCulloch, Director of the Third Sector Lab in the UK, about Open Working.

Ross and his colleagues have created the Open Working Toolkit to help charities, funders and other organizations share their work openly. As their toolkit states “Great things can happen when something is made open… more people can reuse it, often cheaply. People can learn from it, even if they don’t use it. And there are almost always wonderful unintended consequences.” I love this project, and even just the idea of it. The toolkit provides a simple, practical, and replicable model for anyone to use. And it focuses on both organizations as well as funders. It starts with the idea of sharing what you’re working on, in the open. Just start. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The format doesn’t matter. But share a bit and share often.

Ross provides a great overview of the Open Working approach, where it came from and how it’s going now. We talk about the kind of effort it takes, what you should do if you’re interested in exploring Open Working, and why so many great ideas and initiatives focused on non-profit collaboration seem to be coming out of Scotland! If you’re wondering how to build awareness of your work, connect with others, and learn from your efforts, I think you’ll find this introduction to Open Working of interest.

Some questions we discussed:

Some useful resources:

Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has not been edited. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.

Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 39 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I speak with Ross McCullough, director of the third sector lab in the UK about open working. Ross and his colleagues have created the open working toolkit to help charities, funders and other organizations share their work openly. As their toolkit states, great things can happen when something is made open, more people can reuse it often cheaply. People can learn from it even if they don’t use it. And there are almost always wonderful unintended consequences. I love this project. And even just the idea of it, the toolkit provides a simple, practical and replicable model for anyone to use. And it focuses on both organizations as well as funders. It starts with the idea of sharing what you’re working on in the open, just start, it doesn’t have to be perfect, the format doesn’t matter. But share a bit and share often. Ross provides a great overview of the open working approach, where it came from and how it’s going. Now, we talked about the kind of effort it takes what you should do if you’re interested in exploring, open working, and why so many great ideas and initiatives focused on nonprofit collaboration seem to be coming out of Scotland. If you’re wondering how to build awareness of your work, connect with others and learn from your efforts, I think you’ll find this introduction to open working of interest. Welcome to the technology and human services podcast. Thank you so much for joining me to talk about open working and can you maybe start by telling us a bit about yourself, your background and your work around the nonprofit sector in particular, open working?

Ross McCulloch 1:24
Yeah, so I run organization called Third Sector lab. And so there’s a team members here. And we’re really focused on a tape forget, and particularly within the charity sector, across the UK, we’ve got a small number of public sector clients, but 95% of the people we work with our charter is a lot of our work has shifted quite a lot since the pandemic. And we’ve actually really quite focused now on trying to deliver as much work as we can free at the point of service for charities themselves. So one of the things we found during the pandemic was people were reacting very, very quickly to digital, which was great, but actually a lot of the time that was coming with its own pitfalls, whether that was about safeguarding the service users, whether it’s about making the right technology decisions. And so we’ve we’ve kind of put quite a lot of work in that kind of a three strands of work that we’re doing as part of the catalyst, which is the wider UK Tech for Good network. So one of them is the current training program. So we’ve trained the relevant 5000 people, since the start of the pandemic working in third sector across the UK. And we run a workshop once per week. It’s our 90 minute format. And we previously bring an expert speakers to run training session where the queen is powerful for the sector as the powertrain and but what they’re certainly not is people coming along and just kind of listening a PowerPoint from the minutes with a lot of charities has given them access to someone who’s an expert in their field and they will ask the right questions. So we’ve had different ones recently on a building data dashboards and data analytics, we’ve had ones in SEO,

Ross McCulloch 3:03
a few really well received ones in accessibility with drill down specific tools like MailChimp and Canva. We’ve covered that can a really broad spectrum of digital and helping sector understand it’s not just you’ve spoken with before, where people become fixated and online fundraising and marketing. And that’s a core part of any nonprofit but actually seen this as as more than just those kind of small parts of what you’re trying to do. And the other work that we’re doing. We’re doing some work called Digital trustees, which we actually used to do pre pandemic as well as physical matchmaking events. And we’re loading them online. So once someone’s bid on those, anytime they can come along, and they did really simple is that basically zoom a bit of Heldens in for 60 minutes or a 5050 split between people in the tech sector who want to join J boards, and Charlie syndicate expertise in the board to asset one this morning, which we specifically ran with the YMCA network in the UK. So there was a bunch of local YMCAs some of them did amazing stuff with digital around youth works all the really cool stuff around a given particular younger people access to Raspberry Pi’s and running code classes, and really interesting stuff using augmented reality. But actually that recognition that they need strategically than their stuff that they’re really going to push the boundaries of what’s possible and often the best services because young people that are coming along to IMC every week. And then so we’ve kind of done the hard work of recruiting the people who come along with it everything from service designers to data scientists to web developers, they’re kind of cybersecurity specialists. And what is allowed a lot of guys to do is broaden their horizons in terms of what a digital trustee may look like. And again with stuff you’ve touched on, we tend to find that people feel with tech that digital trustee box but they’ve got a kind of IT specialist people at Microsoft reseller or they’ve got someone who works in online cons and that might be what they need. Actually, for a lot of organizations. If someone’s YMCAs today, you’ll be better served have services already.

Ross McCulloch 5:00
Get a scientist or someone who’s working in AI or augmented reality, to really thinking about who they push what’s possible as an organization. So we run them once a month, they’ve been really successful helping people start that journey and get digital embedded that much more strategic level in the organization. And in particular, if you look at things like the chatty digital code, which so EMR and her team have been working on one of the big findings over the last couple of years, there’s been a real lack of digital knowledge at the board governance level things like 65%, of boards, rank or a digital skills is very, very low. And actually, that’s a critical part and potentially, where you’ve got passionate staff coming aboard to investment or to make changes. But there’s nobody in the board champion that stuff, what does that look like in the future. And then the famous strand, which we’ll talk with you that we’re about today is around open work and reuse. And more recently, we’ve delivered a thing called Open working program, which is an eight week program to get fast tracked, is to work more transparently and more agile way. And we’ve got a fairly simple framework, which we can talk through in this call, and then draw on some of the resources, more than LeKan open working Toolkit, which we’ve produced in collaboration with cast.

Marco Campana 6:14
Awesome, and how did you come to this work? Have you always worked in the in the third or the charitable sector? Or is it something that’s kind of you’ve shifted away from somewhere else?

Ross McCulloch 6:22
So I’ve worked in the charity sector for over 15 years I was hated comes with a national charity prior to that. And yes, I was working working freelance, but we also, yeah, photo lab has existed for over a decade now. And we’re going to read the infancy of what this looks like. And it’s interesting that a lot of the stuff that we were banging on about for years and trying to persuade people have made it as soon as the pandemic humans like can a penny drop woman hat and people realized, actually, this isn’t an external, this is not a thing that will push them away and be explored in six months or 10, cut edges. It’s fundamental how people live their lives and 2022 and how to meet people’s needs. How do we broaden diversity for the services we offer, how important diversity in terms of our volunteers and our staff. And so getting people to think of it digital as more than just that social media marketing exercise, or just our own fundraising exercise, or the kind of the electronic tools that become an office and use or the server that sits in a cupboard and getting to think about it beyond that. So yeah, I find that quite difficult talking about the pandemic as a positive thing, because it’s just not. And so like, you know, although there’s the positive element old Chinese have taken digital Mercedes, I mean, that’s a massive tool for society and the people that they work with. So just, it’s definitely,

Marco Campana 7:43
ya know, I I’m totally along the same line to do, we had the same kind of, I guess, revelation here, in the sector that I work in was that there was a lot of organizations who, for years have have resisted digital service delivery, in spite of all the evidence, like in our case, for example, we have lots of evidence of newcomers being much more digitally literate, and with the preference, then even the Canadian born population, but it unfortunately, kind of took the pandemic for people to realize it. Now. I’m curious, because we were starting to see the flip side of people wanting to kind of go back to how things were, from a leadership perspective, and some organizations, but the frontline workers are like, no, no, this is we’ve always been talking about digital because they’re at the front line, they, you know, they’re they’ve been using their personal devices and their texting. And you know, because their clients demanded it. And so now, they, they recognize that this new normal is gotta be can be quite positive, even though we’ve also learned a ton about digital equity and digital divides in digital inclusion, which I think that’s kind of one of the positives as well is that we’ve realized that, yes, there’s a lot of people who are who can access this, but we also know that there’s a lot of people who can’t. And I’m curious, if you’re seeing something similar around that sort of, you know, people want to go back to how they did stuff, you know, pre pandemic, even though we’re not really out of the pandemic, can make an argument about that, but that they’re like, I want to return to the in person only, and not looking at it from kind of what we’re calling a blended, or a hybrid model where you kind of, you know, you mentioned that, you know, you start with the people you’re serving, and you figure out, you know, what they want and then you you know, figure out okay, so some of these are our clients that will want to access our services through technology, and some that will want to do it in person. So I’m just curious where that conversation is for your sector.

Ross McCulloch 9:25
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s really interesting. I think. I think there’s there’s just a huge variety. I think there’s also the nuances within it. So one of the things I think is probably the most interesting thing that’s come out of the pandemic, in terms of the sector and where it goes next is this notion of a charity being specifically for a local area was turned on its head really quickly and you asked economics and quite small channel is based in Scotland Erlich. We’re delivering our services online and this week, someone from Brazil joined a session that we had and or someone in Manchester joined us Action Group based in Edinburgh and Lee If this has never happened before, because the logistically it just wasn’t possible. And none of these channels were beloved and digital services. And I’ve actually spoken to quite a few small charities that were set up to, you know, no local area. And just specifically because of their use of digital. That’s who they were serving, it was never necessarily in the memorandums of article looked at taking the decision that was just geographically, that’s where we are. And they’ve now to sign on taking a strategic decision, say granola, which are anywhere we are a national charity, because we’d have a really good quality services, and actually, anyone can access them, it would be silly for us to just provide the community that said, I don’t think every child needs to do that decision, because lots and lots of charities are based in Baden communities for a very good reason. And I think that, for me has been one of the most interesting conversations has come over this is like what is which I didn’t realize the nature of that versus national data in inverted commas. And we’ve always thought of it being, you know, a huge course or brand with lots of staff split on all across country, but actually, you can be really hyper focused on doing something incredibly well. And the one that I always like, the chatty chin, and I always think actually pronouncing the name wrong, but the other relatively a small chat, I’m just gonna get a link that you can be up share with, with listeners afterwards. But they provide a lot of support to women, or even things like the events online sexual harassment, they had a really interesting partnerships with quite a small charity, but it’s kind of grown, like exponentially during the pandemic, chatty with a charity partnership with I think it was Bumble have also to check this was one of the huge dating platforms. And basically just because the retreating these amazing women led resources about staying safe and updated environment. And actually, the deep platforms like well, we don’t need to recreate this stuff, because someone else is doing and we can support them. And for me, that was like, wow, that’s really amazing, relatively small in terms of staff numbers, jadie, is able to kind of like do something at scale. Because they’ve been really clever about how they’re delivering that and really thought through like, how do people have the leaves, which are responsible, and word of women have these questions of how do we operate in that space? And that from easily just be so interesting to see more and more Chinese thinking of digital in that sense? That is not just, we will do our thing we’ve always done but no, we do it on Zoom. But actually, fundamentally, how are people living their lives? How do we fit within those digital spaces? And what’s the thing we’ve got a value to offer. And actually, the thing that’s interesting about that is that organization from the the way they approached it have a sort of wrinkle, to seen who runs the organization have felt like equal partners in some of their dialogue with corporate entities, the reality of that leave that behind closed doors, it just feels like it’s less of a differential relationship. It’s about both sides bring value to us. And that, for me is like watching the excitement in the sector and being able to see more of those types of partnerships come,

Marco Campana 13:01
I feel that that’s a perfect segue to the discussion about open working, because I assume it’s because that that small charity shared the work that they were doing that it then got on the radar of Bumble, and that those connections were kind of made is so I mean, that and yeah, what a great example of the impact that just knowing about something instead of replicating it, you actually work with the organization that’s created it and it raises their profile, it raises their work, but you’re also not duplicating the worksite. So I guess that’s a great, let’s talk about open working. So how did what is open working? And how did that sort of model come about?

Ross McCulloch 13:36
Yeah, so we we’ve been working in a space for a while. So I mean, I’ve been working in around charity comms for a long time. And one of the things that I’ve always talked about in charity comms is this notion that, you know, you may have someone who’s at the center or a team at the center, but their role is simply to facilitate columns that comes from your organization. And what I mean by that is not just you know, someone who works in frontline service emails, your 12 page PDF, and says, Make that a Facebook post this week, please. Actually, how would you empower staff who are either experts in the field? Or who are people doing the actual work that people are giving their charitable donations to? How do we empower them to tell their stories and talk about that stuff in a way that’s open and transparent, and been relaxed about it? That wouldn’t always go perfectly. And that is okay. So that’s some, I guess, third sector life have always spoken about. So we’ve been working in a space for well over a decade. It’s not always have a guess, a formalized approach from us, because it’s always been kind of woven into kind of how we talk about online cons. Gov. The UK have kind of led a lot in this stuff. So and we’ve worked really closely with Amazon called jails from Google that JL Collins handbook. And so jails was kind of one of the advocates within gov.uk about the need for their work to be transparent and open. and actually moving away from this narrative that I think hasn’t been that helpful in the charity sector, when it’s seen as being a very altruistic thing. Like, we’ll share our work so that other people can benefit from it. And actually, if you share your work and these your work better at positions you, as a leader in that space, if you share your work, your funder knows what you’re doing in a really open and transparent way. And they’re more likely to give you more money, people are more likely to give you donations, your border will let it understand what you’re doing. And so for me, it’s that a big part, I feel open work and as moving the narrative away from this is a nice thing, because we’re really altruistic sector. And we should really work in open because it’s very model important. And that’s an element of it. And of course, that’s key batch again, just understand that this is a huge competitive advantage. So if you can work transparently and open your differentiate yourself from everyone else as your fast track to collaboration, that’s your fast track to getting a broader staff team internally on board with what you’re trying to do. And let’s move away from, you know, giant PDFs that we give to our board before the meeting, no giant PDF reports that we give to our funders, or change chief exec updates that come in our newsletter internally for staff and audit, it’s how do we get people to engage with content and questions in an open and transparent way, but over a long period of time, and also, you have to do those reports, like your annual report and things, it becomes very, very simple, because you’ve written out your revenue over the last six months and your weakness through the work in open. So for me, that’s, that’s probably the big educational pieces, getting people to think this isn’t a nice to have as they if you can do this, well, you’ve got a huge competitive advantage. And it actually is going to save you time over the long run. And so yeah, I mean, when we get into talking like a program that we run some approaches and that kind of toolkit we’ve got as well. Yeah, before before

Marco Campana 16:49
we dive into that, I’m just curious, like, there’s a lot of benefits, obviously, from the the person who’s sharing the organization that’s sharing, one of the things that we hear about, from sort of the recipients of of information, I mean, we’re still dealing with creating a culture of, of sharing, and I’m hoping, calling it open working might be useful, in particular, being able to share the model and the toolkit, but we hear a lot from from folks, and especially frontline workers that they can hear about information, but they don’t have the time to reflect they don’t have the time to figure out how to incorporate that maybe into their own work, which I think is a benefit of open working as if someone shares something else, and I’m working on something, maybe I can use that tool, or maybe I can I’m working on something similar, and we can come together and create something bigger or better. Is that an issue that’s come up? When when you’re dealing with this with with organizations as well, that notion of like, yeah, it’s great that I can get it, but I don’t have the structural institutional time in my day to two, you know, really sort of sort of, you know, not just receive it, but also kind of analyze it and, and reflect on it.

Ross McCulloch 17:52
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest challenge that we face than trying to level up and working with teams and charities is cultural is not the logistical bit is not about actually being able to write orally, where do you publish early and the kind of technology that’s of its cultural and the cultural that might be, there is no time set aside in my organization for any form of reflection. It’s just like a culture of constant busyness. And some things that you know, depending on what channel you work in, if you work in a small, Frontline, chatty work in a very difficult area, this stuff can feel like a luxury. And I think it’s getting people to understand that, you know, yes, it’s not as important as the hot phygital oven and someone or the counseling session you’re delivering, but I can make those things better. And I think from the years well, culturally, there needs to be and again, speaking before about the need for kind of the job leadership, the biggest blocker that we found to be delivered some work through a kind of quite a major funder in the UK, and their grand holders came along and often come along, people run in with frontline projects. They weren’t necessarily chief execs or trustees. The biggest blocker was not the person in the room common didn’t work in the buttons. They got it, they could rate pretty well, we could ask the right questions. The big problem was the Bosco and all I don’t know, we should probably will maybe if you send me that, I will check it and we’ll publish it maybe on the blog later, or we don’t we didn’t work in the commons. I’m not sure we should really do that. Or if we talk about stuff and other charities will steal our ideas, we wouldn’t be able to do it. And that’s

Marco Campana 19:30
that’s like the constant. Oh, yes. The fear of our idea will be taken. Yeah, that happens all the time.

Ross McCulloch 19:36
Yeah, yeah. I think I mean, some things haven’t oblique it to boards and chief execs that you probably don’t have a huge amount of new ideas, and that’s okay. And actually, being vulnerable and transparent and open is much, much more powerful, and much stronger signal to send to your funders and your supporters than trying to squirrel everything away. And I’ve worked in organizations. I’ve done that before. I’ve worked in Oregon. stations that are culturally quite restrictive and tight. And so all that happens is there’s another organization who’s very open and transparent, and who talks to the media and uses their own channels to do this stuff effectively. And the other ones government comes in, and we want advice. They’re the ones that funders approach first. They’re the ones that journalists pick up the phone to. So that stuff is not a nice to have, we can move away from that narrative of trying to persuade people, but ultimately, only really practical terms, we need to champions and organization to get this stuff and have a simple framework to deploy it and understand that other people are doing it and the world hasn’t broken. But actually those organizations helps you to benefit from doing.

Marco Campana 20:39
So let’s talk about practical terms. Because you’ve, you’ve helped develop a toolkit, and you mentioned that you’ve got to actually coach people if I think it’s eight weeks now. And and so what does that look like? So someone so again, like someone in Canada is is hearing this conversation, they’re looking at the links that I share in the in the in the podcast notes. And they’re like, Okay, this is this is really interesting. So what does it take to really operationalize this and to to commit to it as an organization? How do you walk someone through that process?

Ross McCulloch 21:05
Yeah, so our I mean, our program, I can kind of talk about that. And then you can talk a wee bit about, I guess, what some of their stuff looks like with an organization. So already, the program is front loaded with some initial training to get people up to speed with open work and get them to grips with the practicalities of what this may look like for them and their organization. And so for example, we have an open working overview workshop, which I lead on. And, and that is really taking people through some of the core principles that are in the toolkit, and some of the more practical elements and helping people think through some of those cultural questions that they’ve got as well. Now, workshops, usually within minutes long, we also have a rating for the web workshop, usually run by Rosie McIntosh has done lots of work in this space over the years, given people whose skills that’s great, because that we’ve done, we’ve done quite a lot of kind of user experience work and less, and that’s one of the big fears is like, putting pen to paper for people as terrifying. And how would you give people the confidence to do that, which led people to know that, you know, going back and editing something later on, and that is okay, or actually getting a bad first draft is fine. But actually, some of the best open work is 70% finished and the rest of it as the question that you can’t quite answer, and moving people away from this notion that writing for the web as essentially an online version of a press release. And actually, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’ve also got a we run a master class, which I was tambul, who I mentioned who JL Collins handbook, and everyone who comes along to the open working program gets a copy of the handbook and the access token working toolkit open working toolkit is, is free and open source, anyone can get that on link. So we give people that I guess that kind of confidence and equip them early on. So we can frontline for all those workshops. running alongside that. We have, we can sessions every week, and they start from with one of our programs, we get people like we pretty much drop them in the deep end after they’ve done the rain for the way of workshops that we’re trying to allay those fears. But what we’re not doing is hypothetically talking, talking about open working, and then you’ll go back to your organization. And we’ll hope that you’ll do it, the way that you can do it is by doing it. And so one of the things that we get at the start is we get them to pick a topic to focus on. So we had someone from my local UK, who they were going through a website redesign process. So they were talking openly and transparently in the bank kind of audience for that was internal teams, but also their supporters. Were going through a journey of user testing that exists and say, we’re thinking about making some changes have been really open and transparent over an eight week period about what that incrementally looked like. Rather than just like at the end of eight weeks, dumping a report on on the staff and telling them what we’ve made these changes, it’s like staff can actually be part of that, that journey as well for people who maybe just got new funding, talking about how they’re implementing that some of the decisions are making them into launching a new project. So the program has been been really successful. But the kind of minimum commitment per week has been half an hour or so that the shortest treatment sessions happen are usually some tiny tiny template that can fit with a once a week and we find people can rate pretty good stuff. So we’ve got a we’ve got a medium I can set up sort of on medium a few people often work in toolkit or open working program, you’ll find it quite easily. We’ve we’ve given people a kind of shared safe space to do that stuff open and transparently equal some equally. Some people want to use their own charities blog. Culturally, we kind of found that like setting that up on our own space and letting them use that and then they didn’t have to spend lots and lots of thing getting that internal buy in before they were a part of it. And we’ve also encourage people to think about doing this stuff in different ways. So if someone a use Twitter threads to do it, so you’d started blogging, but also found that like, breaking everything down into like five things you need to do over x. So she works in a really difficult project on a kind of financial control and abuse channel, it makes them Glasgow. And she was using really effective Twitter threads to work and open a bit some of the work that she was doing some other people using Instagram to do it. And I think that’s one of the things is like the medium is not that important. So I think people get obsessed in the space of you have to read week notes, they have to work in a very specific format. And actually, for me, it doesn’t really matter a huge amount every week not so good vehicle because it provides structure, and it’s been clean. But if you’re more comfortable taking that format and doing a video on a piece of audio content, then that equally has made it as well, on next and up. And I think from you that regularity is the main thing, whether it’s be clear whether it’s fortnight, maybe monthly, I think that’s maybe maybe a too big of a gap between right and that regularity is really kind of key to what that looks like.

Marco Campana 26:01
Sounds like a really interesting model. Is that a model that you mentioned earlier that the charities and geographic boundaries, in particular, during COVID have exploded out? Is that something you’re interested in exporting? So for example, if charities here were interested in going through a process with with your organization to become you know, open working literate, as a whole put it? Is that something that you’re you’re open to replicating or sharing?

Ross McCulloch 26:24
Yeah, I mean, we, we’d be keen to work with Mod organization, right, because we’re in Cubase, that tends to be UK based charities that we work with. But yeah, we definitely be open to working with other people across the globe. And there are things, which I didn’t mention that as part of that. So we usually have a cohort of around about 20 people. And they’re also part of a Slack channel. And the big thing that we found was actually that kind of peer support is key to people giving each other feedback or, you know, in a session, we will say, Look, my dear friend, this week as x or I’m having this challenge, because my boss doesn’t want me to read this thing. Have you have you had this problem, how to get in this, and actually build in that kind of peer support community, and people become part of our collective open working program, Slack channel that we’ve got. So as those cohorts grew, they become part of a kind of bigger community in there. And I think globally, a lot of governments are doing open work, and it doesn’t seem to be happening, a huge amount the charity sector, or when it does, it’s not necessarily spoken about as open work. And it’s kind of still very traditional online comms, but it’s kind of needed more than to be open and transparent, it would be really nice to see, I guess I kind of collective terminology and stuff is quite important as well, I think like trying to destroy a lot of the jargon that’s been sitting around open working, because I think a lot of it’s quite unhelpful, and just getting people to understand some kind of core principles. And again, that’s where the manifesto in the toolkit is quite useful. And we kind of send shape that we create a big group of people through the catalyst. So just, you know, getting people to just start being intentional about your writing, using it as a tool to build relationships. And it also ties in you mentioned previously, I think the service recipes that the catalysts have got this notion of, if we want technology to be open, we want other people to learn from successes globally or UK wide, or in Canada, that only happens by working open and transparently. So you don’t, you can’t possibly know that Charlie’s had a really successful time of the youth council service and actually up, take that in time service and deploy it really quickly. Unless they have spoken about open and transparent. And I think that’s another big cultural thing is to really shift the juillet scale within the sector, we need to open work, and it’s the thing that’s going to make it happen, because otherwise, we’re kind of like everyone is trying to fund tiny pockets of activity over and over and over again, or we’re at the whim of technology companies are going to come and try and solve it for us. And actually, for me, the solutions are in the sector itself. And some things that will be an off the shelf commercial product that solves it might be a community based technology solution. But getting charities to understand that the real difficulty is understanding your user needs and the challenges people are facing, and then thinking about the technology that’s going to solve

Marco Campana 29:07
that my wheels are spinning. But I see so much potential in exporting this model globally into Canada, because we have this conversations in different ways here. But I think people are trying to figure out what’s the right way. So I love that for example, you have a community that keeps growing with each cohort that can support each other and build that out and be supportive. And I when I was reading through the toolkit, one of the things that just strikes me is that the practicalities like just start, just start sharing and like you said earlier, it doesn’t matter which format doesn’t matter which medium, but get into that habit of like just talking about your work talking out loud, you know, just thinking about it and not feeling like you have to have all the solutions because again, someone might read something and say, Oh, I have this other thing that I can connect to your work and we can build something up together. So yeah, I just I feel like it’s we’re ripe to bring it to bring your model to to Canada and to build that as well. Maybe hit you up later. For some of the links around your core, but I guess, in your training cohorts, are you open to having our international participants? And is that something? Or would you be more interested in kind of trying to replicate a model? Like, you know, in another country?

Ross McCulloch 30:11
Yeah, I mean, I probably make more sense to replicate the model. Part of it is just I guess, so we have a fully funded program that’s funded by UK funders. So there’s probably some restrictions around that stuff. And then about the GDPR stuff, and all the complications of that as well. But I mean, I think, I think it’s fairly easily replicated. And we’re not. And we’re not overly precious about it, you know, so the delivery and one of the things that we’ve been doing, actually, as we’ve been offering support organizations to try and deploy their own version of working program internally, so at the end of the last quarter, we ran at a meeting with the Chief Exec of one of the people who had attended and was like, This is amazing, the staff members come on this, it’s totally transforming the way that we use our comms channels, which had felt really stagnant and one dimensional. And it was just this kind of this moment of clarity, they were like, well, this is how we should communicate online. This is culturally what we’ve wanted to do for a long time, we’ve just not had the mechanism to make it happen. And what they are now looking at doing is kind of implementing a smaller version of that internally led by that champion, who now knows, you know, how to roughly pull together a good blog post, the rhythm of what needs to look like how they can support other members of staff. And so for that, for me, again, it’s another thing. You know, chorus of 20 are good. But again, how would you do this stuff at scale, and that’s one of the things that I’ve always been interested in, in the sector is that there is good support in individual organizations, and you need to make change and provide that something’s quite intensive support. But for this stuff to happen quickly, it needs to happen at scale. And that either means lots of delivery, or it means thinking about how you build champions within the sector and within individual organizations and sales to really make this stuff grow. Because what I don’t want is I don’t want like 20 charities come along. And now we’ve got 20 individuals and 20 charities who want to do or put work in, but actually, they’re fighting an ongoing battle culturally, internally to make this stuff happen. What amazing to see between the people that can pair me at that to 20 new people in their own organization. And that kind of snowball effect kicks. And as people move jobs, they keep that kind of culture and that approach with them. So that for me is like that, that needs to be a key part of it is how do we how do we make this snowball? And how do you grow

Marco Campana 32:24
up quickly? I wonder if you see any any role for funders? And that you mentioned, for example, that funders react well to this whole idea? What about them, making it part of service agreements, or contracts or grants or whatever you guys call them necessarily, but saying like, you will share your work. And here’s the model, you’ll follow with that? That’s a bit of a stick, but it might kind of help with that scale it so what’s your What are you hearing from funders around the ideas? Yeah, yeah.

Ross McCulloch 32:47
So I mean, we’ve been quite lucky here in Scotland to to, to Scottish funders have come on board and been part of the working program. So a William Grant Foundation and inspire in Scotland, as well. And we’ve also had conversations with some of the other funders based years, if you will, like the National Lottery, corner Foundation, edition, Scotland, Community Foundation for Scotland and a few others as well. And there’s, there’s an appetite for this stuff. And what I don’t think I don’t think open working feel feels to the kind of funding space, and not necessarily as if it’s a proven thing. Because accountability of public money, or money that’s been donated is really critical. And I totally get that. So that’s a really tricky thing to scare off. And what I guess what I’d like to see is maybe like, is there an approach where you could kind of chip away that we’re not a support and build that into open working. And over time, there’ll be this shift where everything can be much more open and transparent. And we’re giving people the vehicle to do it, rather than necessarily mandating it, but also still having a very rigid, formalized structures. And then it’s just yet another thing for that charity to do. So for me, it only works in a mandated we have some other stuff as and if this other stuff is there, all we’re asking guys to do is yet another onerous thing, oh, that’s what it feels like in their head. But one of the things we did with the last cohort as we prioritize that kind of group of funders that we’ve worked with, we prioritize grant holders in those funders. And there was like clear message to those grant holders from the funders that we think this is a good thing. And that for me is like that’s that’s a powerful starting point. Because a lot of the things that that in itself is not there. We talk about openness and transparency. But we don’t often go well, here’s the way you’re actually going to do or here’s what we’d like you to do. And that’s the kind of messenger and if we can start people on that journey, that’d be really powerful. But I think you’re right, and funders are the critical bit of all of this, because if if a funder saying to you, I’m gonna give you money, the reporting process is actually not very big at all. And then do you one Google doc at the end of it, but what I’d like you to do is I’ve linked to rate open and transparent Like every week or fortnight about this, we’re going to give you some genuine support didn’t get happen, that was incredibly powerful, don’t think it’s in abundance, as well as like, they are all struggling to, you know, to have really good content to communicate the impact that they’re having. But now suddenly, you got, you know, 30 charities who are working in the open and talking all the time about the difference are making with the money that your grant has given them. That’s, it just feels like a new beta. And that moves those funds in a space where they become curators for that open content, rather than thinking like we need to kind of get all this stuff entering people we’ve given money to is actually stops happening. It’s good. It’s happened open and transparent.

Marco Campana 35:40
Yeah, I can think I’m thinking about, you know, a foundation that just pulls in a bunch of RSS feeds from these blogs that just show up on their site. And it’s like, impact impact impact of the work that we’re doing, it doesn’t it’s no more extra work for them. They don’t have to just go through and just still, you know, have quarterly narrative reports and things like that, because the narrative is just constantly screaming to them. sounds really interesting. I love it. I love it. I feel like I’m gonna follow up with you. And I want to bring this to Canada in some meaningful way. So we’ll have that discussion in a different form. But is there anything about open working that, that I haven’t asked you about that you think, for people considering it that they should know more about it? Or, you know, again, like the first step is just take the step that’s, like, practical, you know, share one thing a week and do and don’t feel compelled to to make it perfect. But is there anything that we haven’t necessarily talked about that you think would be important for folks to know about the approach?

Ross McCulloch 36:31
Yeah, I mean, I think I think, for me, giving yourself giving yourself regular and to write badly, initially, just as important. So, you know, some people would come along, a cohorts have never written anything like this before, they will never written kind of a formal reports, some people are a bit more confident. But giving yourself that ability to rate some fairly average content initially, as Okay, people I mean, like, you know, by the end of the weeks, people are writing really good, coherent stuff that is SEO friendly, that, you know, ask questions builds community, and it doesn’t take long to get to that point. And the other thing for me is just going back to that cultural bet, like if you want it to stick in work to work, how do you get buy in from senior people know, the buyer may be my Chief Exec is going to commit to that. And they’re going to do it as well by inmates simply be, the chief exec shares the blog post that you write once a week as a junior member of staff so that other people can, can see it. But that that cultural bet, where leadership, gets this stuff and sees the value, and it’s built into those values of openness and transparency, I think is really important. And that, for me, is critical. And yeah, I think keeping, keeping an eye on some of the really good work that’s happened and as part of the catalyst network, and the UK, because some other interesting stuff going on. So I’ve been doing quite a bit work with a CDO, they have a monthly call called digit shift where they bring together and people who are doing interesting stuff in the technology space, we’ve got one this week actually, specifically focused on community tech. So there’s a big one of the funders has committed, like 400,000 pounds to kind of a support and community technology. So we’re grassroots organizations have created their own tech solution, then how do we bolster that? How do we share what that looks like? And then within that, like, you know, that only works if those Community Technology organizations are working and open so that other people can build on it and work with each other. And so I think that’s one of the things that isn’t to be like and Pandemic was kind of less than a definite pre pandemic was missing. And is this notion that, yes, open work is important, or getting a digital trustee is important, or thinking of a digital service library, but they’re all part of a much bigger ecosystem. And we all need to be thinking about how we work with each other. And I think that kind of the global work and stuff has never really happened a huge amount part of that against culture. You mentioned before, you know, in the states have such a heavy focus on fundraising and philanthropy. And that’s when people think of it digital assets. And that’s when a lot the kind of chat goes but I’d be interested in like, how do you how do you play music and amazing project that’s happened and deliver digital services in Canada? And how does someone in Britain learn about that and deploy that really quickly? What does that look like in practical terms?

Marco Campana 39:23
No, I love it. And I mean, I have to ask, it’s like, there’s something cultural about Scotland, because there’s your work. There’s SCV Oh, there’s the more collective which works on Digital Champions, which, by the way, there is an organization that’s bringing them in to Canada to teach about Digital Champions, so that it’s starting to kind of happen. What is it about your culture that makes this openness in this sort of collaboration happen that that we could learn from?

Ross McCulloch 39:45
Yeah, I mean, I think another another one, I guess dimension as well as connecting Scotland seven was lucky enough to be part of the strategy group and that right at the start of the pandemic, and that’s poor. I mean, like, I mean, maybe not now in terms of scale because Scotland’s a small country, but certainly when that that started, that was probably the most ambitious Digital Inclusion Project from any government globally. It was certainly the quickest response, I think to that. And the premise behind that was was basically given data devices and basic digital skills to people who are disconnected for a number of reasons. And the scale of that has been hourly phenomenon through some of the workplace if you’re a little more collected, Scottish government have been doing all of that has worked, because grassroots community organizations taking ownership. So basically, people apply to a fund to have, you know, advice to get in Digital Champions training, to get access to unlimited data. It’s not done by like, a centralized, a person or organization who’s deploying it as leader. And I think for me, that’s one of the things we’re Scotland’s quite powerful as the third sector isn’t necessarily always dominated by these kind of colossal charities. Actually, most of this stuff has been delivered by volunteer aid, long run organizations. And there’s some amazing stuff happening digital in that space. There’s a closer proximity to government than probably that, as the rest of UK turns approximately to Westminster and decision making stuff can happen more quickly. And yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know what the magic formula is. But I think people people talking to each other and not being too precious about their work as well. And also trying not to duplicate work. So I mean, but you’re talking about work like that we don’t deliver anything that is around basic digital skills, or Digital Champions work, because an organization like that does it incredibly well. And a CBO is really skilled at doing things like the amazing tools of like digital audits for charitable organization, digital skills audits, we’re not trying to deliver that work, because they did incredibly well. And that, for me is like that, that ability to kind of move really quickly. And I think a lot of a lot of the sector is unfortunately still bogged down by governance, even if we put a kind of shady label and processes over there. It’s like decision making takes far, far too long. And that’s Steve looked in JSON, or impactful happen quickly.

Marco Campana 42:14
Yeah, there’s there’s a cultural impediment right there, obviously, that we need to work that way. We have that here as well, for sure. The governance and the auditing and things like that. It just yeah, it takes away from the ability to be flexible and nimble. I love it. I love this conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time. You know, it’s been great. And I feel inspired. I want to, you know, like I said, I’ll follow up and we’ll figure out a way to bring you bring you in your model to Canada because I think we’re right before it. I think there’s some of us who really think that this is the way to go. But I really appreciate you taking the time today to have this conversation

Ross McCulloch 42:43
going. Thank you.

Marco Campana 42:44
Well, thanks. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes, wherever you listen to your podcasts are also on my site at marcopolis.org I appreciate you listening and if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website, or [email protected] Thanks again.

Welcome to Episode 38 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I speak with Bo Ning about his role as a Digital Navigator at Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia, or ISANS.

Bo and other Digital Navigators play an essential role to support both Newcomer language learners and his ESL instructor colleagues. One of the important nuances that is clear in our conversation is how effectively Digital Navigators bridge technology and subject matter expertise. He understands the systems and processes Newcomers as English language learners are going through, as well as how ESL is taught, and can be taught and facilitated online on in a hybrid format.

What is a Digital Navigator? Digital Navigators provide digital literacy skills orientation or training for Newcomers. They help Newcomers access digital/hybrid services. During the pandemic these new positions were filled by admin staff or settlement and language practitioners whose roles changed to incorporate digital support and orientation for both clients and colleagues. Digital Navigators are emerging as an important bridge in the Immigrant and Refugee-serving sector as we continue to move to a hybrid service delivery model.

There is so much useful information in this conversation, I hope you enjoy Bo’s insights and important perspective on the role Digital Navigators play and can play in our sector.

Some questions we discussed:

Some useful resources:

ISANS’ Digital Navigators talk about their role

Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has not been edited. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.

Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 38 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode I speak with bohning about his role as a digital navigator at immigrants Services Association of Nova Scotia or ISense. Bow and other digital navigators play an essential role to support both newcomer language learners and his ESL instructor colleagues. One of the important nuances that is clear in our conversation is how effectively digital navigators, bridge technology and subject matter expertise. He understands the systems and processes newcomers as English language learners are going through, as well as how ESL is taught and can be taught and facilitated online in a hybrid format. Digital navigators provide digital literacy skills orientation or training for newcomers. They help newcomers access digital or hybrid services. These new positions are filled by admin staff or settlement practitioners whose role is changed to incorporate digital support and orientation for both clients and colleagues. Digital Navigators are emerging as an important bridge in the immigrant and refugee serving sector as we continue to move to a hybrid service delivery model. There is much useful information in this conversation. I hope you enjoy Bo’s insights and important perspective on the role digital navigators play and can play in our sector. Welcome to the technology and human services podcast. I really appreciate you being here. Um, why don’t we start with you telling us a little bit about yourself, introduce yourself, your background, and what brought you along the path to your work, you’re doing it I sense now as a digital navigate?

Bo Ning 1:23
Sure, so thank you for having me here today, Marco, and always wanted to be to be part of that whole project to share, to let my voice heard and also to share my resources with everyone. So my name is phoning and I go by Bob. I started with my EAL teaching when I was a graduate students at the University of Buffalo in 2013. And in the past years, I taught general ESL, TOEFL and tussled, those international preparation, class preparations. And also I did link in the past and now as a teacher, navigator, at Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia. I am an immigrant. So I moved to Nova Scotia in 2018. And from mainland China, and I started with Eisenerz as a client. So I have accessed a lot of resources that ISIS has provided in the past. And I feel that those sessions were super helpful to me to settle down in the new country in a new city. Yeah, so that’s basically in the past. And because of the COVID, everything, everything’s shifting online. And with my previous experience, teaching remotely teaching in hybrid mode, was my expertise on digital literacy, I’m able to transfer some of the skills that I had in the past, the experience that I have learned to support our instructors. So that’s why right now at this position, I’m supporting instructors and client navigating in general, navigating our online programming.

Marco Campana 3:02
That’s great in this whole idea of a digital navigator. I mean, I think it’s a recent name in terms of as as sort of an official position. But it’s one that’s definitely emerged in particular very strongly during the pandemic, I think, you know, as the sector pivoted, and was doing just online, there was a real need to kind of help both newcomers as well as staff really figure out this technology and how to use it practically and how to apply it. So can you tell me, I mean, and again, we were just talking earlier about like, there’s probably as many definitions as there are digital navigators out there. So when you think of yourself as a digital navigator, what does that mean to you? Can you describe a little bit I guess, what’s a day in the life like for you?

Bo Ning 3:40
So very general, is that I am, I’m always thinking of myself as an instructor, but I’m instructor with educator with more technology skills. So I am able to use those technology skills to make my class like virtual classes, more interactive, and more how to say I just had like, like a more interactive and also like, you know, clients be more engaged in a virtual environment. So in person classes, we have a lot of amazing activities that we can do with client but how we’re able to shift those activities and tweaked and tailor into the online version and see the thing fee those activities. From the instructors perspective. First, I think that is very important as this row ever if I always have people calling me I’m an IT person. And very frankly, I’d say I’m not a specialist it although I have some IT skills, but it’s just that everything we see, obviously I see is from a teacher’s perspective, how I may be able to modify the teaching method to an online mode and make those online classes more suitable, more suitable to our clients.

Marco Campana 4:55
Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things to touch on that I think are super important. And then in the way that the role is evolving is that you are, you are not just as you said to technologists, you’re perhaps a little more digitally literate than the people you’re working with, or perhaps sometimes a lot more, but you’re a subject matter expert, you understand the system and the processes that they’re going through, and how to apply to I guess, like how to be part of that system. And I think that’s I’m flubbing it. But basically, what I’m trying to describe is that you’re not just a technologist who comes in and says, here’s how you use WhatsApp, here’s how I use Moodle. But you’re someone who understands that they’re going through a learn an English language learning process through i sands. And I think that’s a really important nuance to this is that the digital Navigator is kind of it’s building on the other systems navigation that you might be doing as an instructor as a teacher. And, and I think that’s really something that’s, that’s quite interesting for us to think about in our sector.

Bo Ning 5:55
Right. And then another big advantage for me myself is that because I am a second language learner, English is my second language. So I understand how a second language learner needs to learn those skills to be able to achieve, you know, you know, sediment set down in another country, right. So, I know, I have been using those tools to support my English. So for sure, like I see since very differently from a native speakers perspective, especially with technology and stuff. So yeah, so I’m when I’m designing or developing something I usually see not only from a teacher’s perspective, but also I see how this tool is being can be used can support a client’s in the learning the whole learning journey. Yeah. So

Marco Campana 6:47
you bring your own lived experience as exam or into the process. Again, that’s so valuable, because it’s, you understand where these folks are coming from you also talked about something that has come up a lot in conversations during the pandemic, but also recently, around, you know, we’ve all figured out how to use Zoom, and we’re running webinars, and we’re doing workshops, but where a lot of the questions keep coming up for me from people and I see in conversations is what you talked about that engagement, making it interesting, making it active, keeping the learners engaged, and keeping it interesting, even for the for the facilitators. And I wonder, and people are still struggling with that, I find that they haven’t been able to take the kind of group dynamics and kind of more informal or almost kind of social interactions and dynamics from the in person and apply it to the online, the online is much more sort of transactional. Here’s the information, ask your questions. Now we all go home kind of thing. And yet, there are also a lot of people who have been incredible facilitators online, they create engagement, they, you know, they use the breakout rooms really well, they perhaps extend instead of an hour, they think, well, let’s do an hour and 15 minutes. So we have some play time at the end some social time at the end, kind of, again, trying to replicate what might happen in a group in a room. And so I wonder if you can speak a little bit to how you’re helping folks at AI Sans and if the if you see that dynamic shifting in the work there where people are actually able to do more of that engaging kind of online facilitation rather than sort of just transactional English learning, for example. Sure. So

Bo Ning 8:21
I think one thing that has been kind of like invisible in our teaching is class management, whether you’re doing in person class management, doing a given clients instructions, I think less is more, I think that is what I want to say. So especially in the virtual world, if everybody is here and there maybe there are laws, they can see teacher to have the you know, this and that technology issue. Less is really more the clients will be feel more comfortable in your classroom, instead of struggling to use this and that tool, doing this H. SP activity or doing that on, on let’s say, Avenue dossier, right. So we are teaching, you need to make sure that the instruction you’re giving, whether it is in a man class session, or in the break room, is clearly delivered to your clients. So that is one thing about class management. So at ISense I have a list of a checklist of of because we’re now we’re using Microsoft Teams. So we have a checklist of what teacher needs to know to make sure that they’ll be able to manage the whole class to be very easy to be a start from the simple is that you know, how you’ll be able to to control the microphone, the web cameras, and also how we’ll be able to answer teachers answer students questions when they’re when there’s a knee so that is a lot of things that is not you have to be trained to be a teacher but is to something that you need to you need those class management skill to be able to be successful teaching remotely. I started Did online teaching back in 2013. And in the past, and remember, we don’t have audio sharing, like sound sharing, so we cannot do listening practice. So what I did was that I use the microphone to my speaker and broadcasting that listen to practice to them. And also in the past, we don’t have breakout rooms, we don’t have screen sharing. So as long as so I think the, I think another thing is that to lower the expectations for for virtual learning, as long as you are able to see the students student able to see you, you’re able to chat, and students are comfortable there. That is learning, you don’t need these in that many tools to you know, to make a class like you look like fancy. As long as you know, you’ll be able to meet each other in the virtual world, that is a success for step number one, right? And student will not be like Oh, teacher, I can’t see you, Teacher, I don’t know how to do this. But maybe tomorrow, you can see each other. And then you can start use chat, to reply to a chat to give people informal feedback, but give us a like, give us a thumbs up or something or send emojis and pictures in the chat and people are feeling uncomfortable using that tool. Right? So yeah, so class management is very important. And also lower expectations, because most of our instructors are very experienced with years or years of ESL teaching there, you know, but moving to the online shifting online is like, you know, it learning curve for everyone, not everyone learns the same step, right. Same, you know, the learning how to say that the way of you absorbing the knowledge is different. Some people are, you know, a visual learners, so they learn very fast, but some people are not. So, as long as the student can see the teacher teacher be able to talk to students, that is the initial step for success for the online learning.

Marco Campana 11:53
I love that. I mean, I think like keep it simple. Focus on small, tangible steps, make sure that you’ve mastered each step before you move on to the next one. So like, exactly, we couldn’t see each other today. Let’s see if we can see each other tomorrow. Okay, that works. So let’s move on to the chat, let’s move on to emojis. And I mean, you know, I imagine that also helps the instructor not feel overwhelmed with all that technology, as you describe, they may not be that you know, interested or excited by it, it may be more of a challenge for them, for example, and I love I love that you have that history going back to 2013. Because I think there’s, there’s a lot of technology use that’s happened in our sector over many, many years. And we kind of forget we, we lose that memory, right? Like all of a sudden, the, you know, the pandemic hit, and we were all like, Oh, my God, we have to use technology. And it was like, Well hold on a second. You know, especially in language teaching, you’ve probably been doing a blended version of teaching for some time anyway. And there’s a lot of people like you who have that kind of memory of even worse technology, right, where you couldn’t do a lot of the things you can do today, like you described, and look at the suite of tools and how easy they are to use now. So we’ve come such a long way. But I think it’s also really important to have folks like you who have that memory, that institutional memory of like it used to be very different. And taking that knowledge because it was so much more challenging that managing your expectations, understanding that there’s going to be challenges and problems and that that’s part of you know, that’s part of it. That’s okay. And kind of working through that. So I guess one thing I’m curious about in that whole kind of continuum of of managing expectations, you’re working with teachers, for the ones who perhaps were less inclined either from a skill set or an interest sort of perspective to move towards online or blended learning, how do you support them to kind of feel confident to feel comfortable and, and to even feel like this is a viable way to do their work?

Bo Ning 13:49
I think from the teachers perspective is scaffolding. So scaffold the teachers step by step, given them the idea of the virtual world, giving them the idea of how to manage a class, give them the idea of how to interactive with client, in the virtual settings, right. So what I what I have been doing is that I not only offer, you know, group, professional development seminars, but also I support instructors. One on one, I go to the actual classes, and I see how they use those tools to deliver an online class. And I use my eyes so I’m giving them the suggestion from a teacher’s perspective on how, for example, an activity how we can tweak those activities into an online piece. For example, this morning, I had support a teacher to use a quick polling on in the chat like so for example, in the past, we do paper needs assessment, but now we can use those quick polling to transfer those paper needs assessment to the Are you no virtual one. So that is another success for them. So I scaffold them step by step. So today, you can do this tomorrow, you can do that. And then the next day, you can do breakout rooms. And then the day after, you will be able to have your clients to be able to share the screen in the breakout room. That is like a scaffolding to build up those skills. And they’re getting more confident, and more confident, and more comfortable using those tools. If you dump everything at once PBL a mudo, virtual learning tools, scheduling, scheduling meeting, that’s a lot for them. For everyone, right? We all learn things little by little, we do it by day by day, and all on Saturday, and we’ll go back like wow, I have learned so much, right. So yeah, scaffolding, little by little it and getting to that certain level, and you need to know what the organization expectations are. And once the teacher meets expectations, then then they are there. Right. So they’re successful, you know, online teachers

Marco Campana 16:09
have a summit. So yeah, so that’s another part of it, I guess, is the organizational expectations, your organizational framework around this is also really important, because even if people are not necessarily 100%, comfortable, it’s kind of becoming the new normal of how we work. So it sounds like having that built in is also I mean, there’s the carrot and the stick, right? Like you’re, you’re the carrot, you’re the person who can help them along, you can provide the support. But sometimes they need a little stick, which is our framework as an organization, we’re going to teach in this way, we’re going to provide services in this way. And Beau and his colleagues are here to support that as you move forward, but you will move forward, you are expected to move this way. But the approach that you’re describing, it just sounds like it’s so human, it makes sense. You’re embedded in the classroom, you’re watching them teacher, you know, and then you’re you’re not critiquing, but you’re supporting, you’re saying, Okay, I saw this, let’s talk about how we can do it differently. You seem to be struggling here, I have an idea or solution for there. And then like you said that that one on one, because I think again, these are really like you described earlier, and I’ve had this experience with people as well, these are very accomplished professionals, right, they don’t want to feel like they can’t do something. And sometimes these these little boxes, these technology, things, make them feel dumb, they make them feel inadequate. And so being able to provide that time with them, that reflection, that one on one support, I imagine is really important. But equally important is that group where people can can build off of each other’s successes and learn from it. The peer support the peer to peer learning, I imagine is also something that’s really important. So it sounds like the model that you’ve created. Up, you know, this idea of a digital navigator in the language sector is it sounds like it’s an indispensable it’s becoming a core kind of job that is going to be necessary. Moving forward.

Bo Ning 17:55
I think he says that our instructors are, trust us the faith, the they rely on us, and we are filling as myself fill in the responsibility of sharing, and to support them when I need them when they need me, sir. So another thing is that, when talking about teachers ask us questions, they’re professional, for sure. Another environment at ISIS that we most have a teacher there have been very humble. They don’t feel like you know, asking us questionnaires are silly questions. They asking us questions, because they care about our vulnerable clients, they care about their classes, they, they want to work better, to better support our clients in the virtual world. So that is something I see instead of see, oh, you don’t know about this, you don’t know about that? No, but I since working, where I’m at that everybody’s still so humble, and to share. And they’re all everybody’s supporting each other. So for example, me and Serena and Riley, when each one of us if for example is taking days off, we always have a backup person to be there to support ourselves. So that is the working environment. And also like our teachers, when they were talking about supporting peers, they share resources, they share some amazing classroom activities. So that’s why we also have a shearing course, on on Ave does ca that student teachers put their, you know, teaching content there and people can tailor that from there. So yeah, I think is the working environment. And also, it is the management team that put us in a position that teachers trust us. They think we are the person can be the bridge person to communicate with the clients kimkins with them, and also communicates with our IT team because we’re kind of in the middle of clients, instructors and other co workers in the organization.

Marco Campana 19:57
You’re like a multi interpreter right? I mean, that’s like For that, you know, you’re interpreting for it and it to, to the teachers and, and helping the the instructors understand the perspective of their, their their students and their clients as well. I mean, that’s that’s another really interesting role by

Bo Ning 20:12
using plain language.

Unknown Speaker 20:14
Yeah, very important, right?

Bo Ning 20:17
Yeah, very important talk sort of going, if we go too deep on certain things, that it sees things differently. They see like, okay, so this should be something from the backend, but our teachers don’t think so. So we need to, instead of escalating this, we’re explaining everything to different parties about why we’re using this breakup, why we’re setting this as not everyone be able to present, we are explaining everything to different parties. And for sure, we need to digest everything. First, we need to learn ourselves, we need to learn the new technology, we need to learn the new tools that we have.

Marco Campana 20:56
So these are those soft skills in digital navigated roles of people management, not just classroom management is that managing all of those different players and those actors in an organization who are who are inevitably going to be part of that conversation that sounds really

Bo Ning 21:08
I mean, every anyone who work in these virtual world you need to have, you need to be able to always be ready to change. Technology changes every minute, right? Like this tool is good. And then the other day, there will be another tool replacing this tool. So like, in the past 10 years, can you imagine that we just don’t have these in depth features like what we’re having. Now. We can use channeling use your breakout room, we can assign people to present, like in the and also we have so many, like gadgets or extensions that we can use to make the class you know, more fun. So yeah, it’s just that you know, you to be ready to change.

Marco Campana 21:48
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you had a recent change. You mentioned you’ve moved to teams. And that’s for the I guess the the live web, the like the group chats over the video calling What were you using before? Were you using zoom or something else?

Bo Ning 22:01
So yes, we started with Big Blue Button on Moodle. And then we switched to zoom. And then now we are using Microsoft Teams?

Marco Campana 22:12
And can you tell me a little bit about the progression? Because I think that’s something that’s interesting for people, they’re never sure sometimes what the right tool is, and they just use the tool that, you know, oh, just use Zoom. It’s really easy. How did I sans or the language team decided to move from one one from big blue button to zoom two teams, what was that like?

Bo Ning 22:32
So no matter? No matter how we trend, you know, we transfer from A to B to C. The the idea behind is that how clients learn is the most important to us. From big blue platen to zoom the decision was made because click Blue Button, there are some features that clients would not be able to use. So we switched to zoom to practice to better support clients with listening and speaking skills in the late language perspective. And then we switch from zoom to teams is also because for teams, there are so many possibilities, there are so many tools to explore, we can we can not only practice listening, speaking skills, but also we can practice reading and writing. So that is why we decided to make a huge shift from zoom to teams. So no matter how the change is, the idea behind is always always house clients be a bit better to be supported in a language class. So that is the reason why we’re changing from A to B to C.

Marco Campana 23:38
I mean, that’s, that’s a great reason that should always be the core reason around technology decisions, right? It has to be easy for them and support whatever the learning or service outcomes are that we want for them. That makes a lot of sense. One of the things you talked about was was about sharing and with other teachers within the organization as well as elsewhere. And I noticed that for example, you know, beyond I sense you’ve you’ve created a sharing culture for yourself, you know, we’re connected on LinkedIn and I see you share there you’re excited to share something you’ve learned you’re excited to share something you’ve changed or something you’re working on for example and and I personally love that I think we should all be working in the open and and building on each other’s work and inspiring each other and things like that. I wonder how important you think that that has always been perhaps is becoming now that you know so much changes constantly, that we share our successes, but also our challenges we share what we’ve been building we share what’s inspiring us in the work that we’re doing with each other.

Bo Ning 24:40
So about sharing is, especially on LinkedIn, it’s more of a way to to remind myself I am still I’m a learner learning new technology and also to showcase can show what resources the digital navigator team has created Eisenerz so people, other people will See this? Suppose they can just use the resources? Or maybe we can connect and be able to collaborate to work on some of the future project?

Marco Campana 25:07
That’s great. Do you use other like there’s a number of community of communities of practice, like to tele and subtle net? Do you also design sands? Or do you in particular? Do you participate in those conversations and those networks as well?

Bo Ning 25:20
In the past, we had several collaboration sessions with NorQuest. Yeah, so but because we’re, like, we’re always always always been busy with clients supports teachers support, we have very limited time to collaborate with each other. So like, everything I share on my personal LinkedIn, it’s more of I’m sharing what I have with others. But I’m sure that in the future, we’ll have more opportunities to share with other colonizations.

Marco Campana 25:52
That’s a really good point. I mean, you’re so you’re sharing on your private network, you’re on the side of your desk, if you will, or after hours on your private time, would you like to, I mean, this is a conversation we’ve had a lot in the sector, when it comes to open working and knowledge mobilization and sharing what’s working and learning from each other. Does it make sense to you that in the future, at some point, a portion of your day or your week, however, you want to sort of, you know, break it out is dedicated to that kind of reflection and that sharing, but it’s actually part of your job, and you’re paid to and expected to spend some time doing that?

Bo Ning 26:25
Definitely, I think it’s great to share resources. So we can make best use of the expertise in different organizations, let’s say, at ISIS, we have a strongest, I think I have the strat, we have the one of the strongest literacy team, we have a lot of amazing resources that our instructors has made, and how we’ll be able to modify those content into those digital pieces. That is one thing I have always been thinking of, and but one person only have this much of power, and this much of time and this much of capacity. So I’ve so I’m I have tried my best to, to kind of understanding those materials first. And then using my existing knowledge, adapt those contents into a digital version. So the whole network can use those pieces, right? Because we’re all we’re we’re all, you know, funded so we can share resources with each other without any restrictions.

Marco Campana 27:27
Yeah, definitely, there’ll be some value in that within there. So when you are speaking about community, when you’re looking for inspiration or community, when it comes to your role as a digital navigator, where do you look? Because again, this is a very new and emerging role in our sector. And it’s actually quite even new and emerging in general, right? It’s a kind of a new term, a new job, a new role. Where do you find inspiration or connection to sort of to other peers, where you can sort of learn from their approaches and share how you’re doing digital navigation.

Bo Ning 27:58
So we are always we’re all new to this role. So it’s more like, watch and learn. I am 100% of visual learners. So I usually watch free YouTube videos, webinars. And also, I found those Avenue is hosted by learning to teach. And they have a lot of amazing videos, webinars posted free on YouTube. So because like because right now I’m in Nova Scotia, we usually have a time difference. And then I cannot attend their live sessions. But always, always watch some of the most amazing webinars that are hosted there, for example, how to use this to to do writing how to use just due to reading. So I use those free resources to retrain myself and also for me, because I’m always exploring new ways to support clients. For example, for WordPress, last year, this time last year, I found that our literacy clients were struggling with us and this and that in the digital world. So I found that instead of having clients to log into this system to do this, and this, why not having something that is a direct link to send to them, they click and they can open it and do it themselves. So I started to learn WordPress, and I created a website. And then so it’s just that every because like, I’m a person that when I feel that the clients having difficulty using this and that tool, because of the limited digital literacy skill, it’s very challenging for them. And it’s, I don’t say it’s a waste of time, but it’s the love of time they’re spent on us to to get trained on us certain certain tools. So I will use some other ways to seek to see if I can find certain ways to ease the whole process and to support them. So I think it’s my personality, but to be honest, like you know, always digging into different things to make the thing works better for other people and save other people’s time. Right. So you especially for a you know, literacy client, if they have four hours at home learning and they’re learning they’re not if they’re not learning, maybe they have a part time job to do They have a shift work to do, they can make the most money. Right. So yeah, I think it’s the personality. And I have work OCD. So you can help yourself. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, especially when, when I see something that is not right. I, you know, I always do that myself.

Marco Campana 30:17
Yeah. But I mean, I think that that for me, that sounds like a core trait of a digital navigators that you’re trying to make things easier, like you talked about earlier, plain language, right? Managing expectations, you know, scaffolding and one step at a time. It sounds like that’s just a really important kind of personality and work tried to sort of be focused always on trying to find a solution trying to make it easier. So even, for example, the shift from Blue Button, to zoom to teams, it’s all about, you know, clients being able to use it in the way that they need to, to build their learning, to make sure that they’re there, the system you’re choosing, and the approaches and the tools you’re choosing work for them. And don’t frustrate them, for example. So I mean, it’s it’s a great natural trait that you have, but it also sounds like something that every digital navigator should, should be should have as part of their if not personality, at least their skill set that they’re, they’re committed to that. Exactly, exactly. Excellence. No, I mean, again, I think that I think that the sector is looking at roles like yours as becoming a permanent role, right? There are a lot of other kinds of roles, like cybersecurity specialist and data analysts and data scientists, and there’s a lot of emerging kinds of roles, but from a client service perspective, as we’re moving towards a blended or hybrid sort of service delivery model in a more permanent way. You know, people like you are going to are going to be popping up more often, that role that that that perspective, and it could be a whole new role could be part of a another person to halftime? Well, it depends on how people kind of do it. But, but the skills are also something that’s that, you know, need to sort of, or even the attitudes, I guess, like what you’re describing, you know, that focus that that commitment to service that, that commitment of to simplification. So, I’m curious, you know, it’s a big question. But as organizations are looking at this, and maybe they’re listening to this conversation, thinking, Yeah, this makes sense. I’ve heard of this role. I don’t know what we should do to create one, but what advice would you give to someone in the sector about creating, supporting and developing this role in their organization?

Bo Ning 32:29
I think, for the organization’s perspective, I think, start from little start from, you know, the fundamental pieces. And then moving forward, we have so much resources that we can use, like, for example, to learn to teach link teacher, pre stage one, stage one, pre stage two, stage three training, these are enough resources for teachers to get started with online teaching. And for teacher navigators for this rope, specifically, I think, to be able to been been putting herself into client’s shoes, understand what student’s needs are, and starting from there, to build those activities that better support the clients, at the same time, to support instructors to how to better facilitate a class online. No matter what we do, you’re the knowledge behind you always be client centered, how the activity, better support a client doing a classic activity online, how the tool that you use can better make them feel that they’re part of the class make your class more interactive and engaging. And also, the tool that you use, that can make class teachers, class management time, more efficient, instead of so less clicking, more efficient. And also in a virtual class, the teacher if the teacher is stressed, if this client stressed, this is not a good learning environment, they’re not learning. They’re they’re distracted by these and that, am I, if I’m clicking this button, will I be in another classroom? If I’m doing this, well, well, I lose the class page. So start from beginning and start from little and always see things from the students perspective to better support their knees, developing resources that for example, we are seeing based where we’re using PBL A, so developing the themes that is an urgent need to support a client’s and then starting from there when you’re, you know, there are 1000s of tools that you can use, but which tool is better, you, it’s better for you to use and to support them immediately. And think that is the tool that you go to and in the process of learning these and that tool. You’re learning some other skills that you have never, you have not think of.

Marco Campana 34:57
Oh, that’s great. So the first step is being clients centric and person centric, and then it just feels like from there the natural evolution flows that Oh, does that lead a digital navigator to help them but also the staff, manage their classroom, figure all the systems out, so that they’re not feeling overwhelmed. But also you provide kind of a centralizing role too, because if one instructor figures something out, if they don’t share it with others, then it’s just that one person. Whereas if you’re figuring it out with that instructor, everybody gets the benefit of that knowledge, because that’s centralized sort of support role that you offer also focuses on Hey, everyone we’ve got, we learned something, let me tell you about a kind of thing. Exactly. It feels like it just as a natural evolution in some ways. Exactly. Awesome. I love it. Well, listen, this has been a really fun and interesting conversation. Again, I think that you’re on the cusp of like new emerging roles. I love the way you’re working. And I and I’ve been I’ve been meaning to kind of reach out. So I appreciate you finding the time. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you want to share with folks about being a digital navigator about the importance or the significance of digital navigators in our sector, before we wrap up?

Bo Ning 36:05
I think we also need to take digital navigator as nice to have. So we I have been in some situations that were kind of in the customer service position like that. But I’d be very friendly to, to the instructor saying and telling people that you know, when things happened, we can be the person to be there to support but did your navigator should not be something of should not be in the middle that if a client doesn’t have a digit navigator, they cannot. They cannot, you know, access to online program, you know, so we’re there to support when there is a need, but it shouldn’t be we shouldn’t be the guardian person in front of the door saying that the door is locked, you cannot get in, we should not be that person. So to position ourselves in the right way. So I think that is one thing that I have learned,

Marco Campana 37:03
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. And it also speaks to the fact that everybody has to have some digital navigators part of their job as well. So even the instructor is going to be doing a little bit of supporting this, the students when it comes to technology, the settlement worker will be doing the same thing. So that really is interesting to sort of solidify that. What is your actual role in this process? And what should the expectations be of everybody else in in, in that continuum? Great, great perspective. Bo, listen, thank you so much, once again, for spending time, I appreciate you taking the time. And I know that this will be interesting to lots of other folks as well as they as they think through some of these things in their own organizations.

Bo Ning 37:40
Thank you for having me, this is a great opportunity to have the conversation with you.

Marco Campana 37:45
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes, wherever you listen to your podcasts are also on my site marcopolis.org. I appreciate you listening and if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website, or [email protected]. Thanks again

Welcome to episode 37 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I speak with Charles Buchanan.

The discussion about technology and non-profits is not a new one. But throughout the pandemic and now, even with lessons learned during that time, we’re struggling. Service providers are struggling to make the right decisions when it comes to infrastructure, skills & training, and where to invest. Funders are struggling to figure out how to fund technology in service delivery. It feels sometimes like we’re going backwards.

After moving from the private sector to support non-profits, Charles recognized that the state of non-profit technology and digital maturity was troubling. In fact, he saw a situation he called “technology poverty” which he feels best articulates the dire tech situation currently affecting non-profits.

I approached Charles because we were part of a recent Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience group discussion. In that discussion we talked about how non-profit leaders are paralyzed with fear and anxiety when it comes to discussing and figuring out what steps to take to protect their organizations, their data, their staff, clients, and communities when it comes to cybersecurity. So I knew I wanted to chat with him in more depth. Turns out he’s deeply connected to, works with, and understands the technology poverty in the Immigrant and Refugee-serving sector.

We discussed what technology poverty is and then took a deep dive into cybersecurity and the pressing need for non-profits to get Enterprise Risk Management right. His key message is that you’re not alone in this struggle. Get in touch with him at Technology Helps to take those important first steps. I think you’ll find his perspective and insights interesting and important.

(An aside. The beginning of our conversation focuses on Charles’ insights on AI. I like to start recording my podcast conversations early so I don’t forget to hit record (which has almost happened). We started talking about AI because I use Otter.ai for transcripts (see below) and the service has a feature where Otter can join Zoom meetings and transcribe as we’re talking. So I have to explain why there is another connection in Zoom with us, so folks are comfortable, or I turn it off. It got us talking about AI and I love what Charles had to say, so it’s in the podcast. )

Some questions we discussed:

Some useful resources:

Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has not been edited. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio.

Marco Campana 0:00
Welcome to Episode 37 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I speak with Charles Buchanan. The discussion about technology and nonprofits is not a new one, but throughout the pandemic. And now even with lessons learned during this time, we’re struggling. Service providers are struggling to make the right decisions when it comes to infrastructure skills and training and where to invest. funders are struggling to figure out how to fund technology and service delivery. It feels like we’re going backwards. After moving from the private sector to support nonprofits, Charles recognized that the state of nonprofit technology and digital maturity was troubling. In fact, he saw a situation he called technology poverty, which he feels best articulates the dire technological situation currently affecting nonprofits. I approached Charles because we were part of a recent Canadian Center for nonprofit digital resilience group discussion. In that discussion, we talked about how nonprofit leaders are paralyzed with fear and anxiety when it comes to discussing and figuring out what steps to take to protect their organizations, their data, their staff, clients and communities when it comes specifically to cybersecurity. So I knew I wanted to chat with him in more depth. Turns out he’s deeply connected to works with and understands the technology poverty in the immigrant and refugee serving sector. We discussed what technology poverty is, and then took a deep dive into cybersecurity and the pressing need for nonprofits to get enterprise risk management, right? Its key message is that you’re not alone in this struggle, get in touch with him. And technology helps to make those first important steps. I think you’ll find his perspective and insights insert interesting and important. A note on a side, if you will, the beginning of our conversation focuses on Charles insights on AI, artificial intelligence, I like to start recording my podcast conversations early. So I don’t forget to hit record, which is almost happened. We started talking about AI because I use otter.ai. For transcripts, which you’ll see in the show notes. And the service has a feature where otter can join zoom meetings and transcribe as we’re talking. So I have to explain why there’s another connection in zoom with us. So folks are comfortable or I turn it off, they got us talking about AI. And I love what Charles had to say. So it’s in the podcast, I hope you enjoy this conversation

Charles Buchanan 1:58
that we have to get more used to AI and in fact, your I mean, less intrusive, more in the background. I mean, AI would is the is the path forward. And I don’t know how come from that people will will will get more like now chatbots are generally accepted if though, I mean, some somewhat useless at times, but they’re like, but people have gotten used to them. I tried to avoid them, because they just they if they’re going to just read me an FAQ, then I could just read the FAQ myself, right, like just,

Marco Campana 2:32
it’s true. No, I know, I find with the chat bots I intersect with or interact with when it comes to like, if I need some sort of actual answer to a question I have to go through until they finally say Oh, would you like to speak to some a human? And it’s like, yes. Why don’t you give me that, like at the first step. It’s like going through voicemail hell, but we’ve applied that to AI and it’s like, really couldn’t do

Charles Buchanan 2:54
it. No big thing is, so it’s like, no, it’s bad AI, right? It’s actually like, and that that’s what it is. It’s not that it’s, I mean, we have a tool that could do something like it’s like, like we should AI you know, they come in there, there’s an intelligent part of it. And and what we realize is that, not every we just assume that the fact that something is human means it’s intelligent, sorry, this might sound elitist. But there’s a, what we’ve done is just taken or pedestrian stupidity to a technical platform. And what we’re getting is not artificial intelligence is artificial, pedantic stupidity that we that we engage in, like, it’s like going to get bad service at the store, you walk in, and they’re like, may I help you? And you’re like, Yeah, I need this. Oh, sorry, you’re in the wrong department? Why didn’t you just tell me that you’re? You’re in that you know, nothing about houseware? Or why don’t you just tell me what, you know, like, we don’t sell that here rather than? So yeah, it’s and that’s what it is just bad AI just the way they’ve designed interactions. It’s like, Is this really how someone would want to interact? Is this really how you would want to be treated? Like I mean, an AI? It’s one of the things I’m super passionate about, because that’s where I started my career. So interesting. Okay. So I’ve I spent a few years building expert systems for the mining sector and not in northern Ontario, but I live in Toronto, and then I listen, now, I’m, I’m hyped about AI, we’re looking at using some AI in our work, but we are not going to be using it for service desk, not initially, because we do not want someone calling for tech help. You know, say, okay, my computer’s broken, and it’s like, so tell me about your computer. I think or, you know, like, who are you? Oh, it’s Oh, are you having a pleasant day? No, I’m not. You know? You cannot help me with this. You know, like, I need to speak to it. So we’ve decided to kind of we’ve been through some scenarios around that. And none of them are scenarios that I would personally want to engage it like it’s with with a bot. But so what we are applying In AI for in your cybersecurity work around and not in the areas of threat detection or vulnerability management, but more in the area of, of governance that can lead to some of the higher level decisions that you make, after using all that data, like so you’ve seen, okay, so you have a vulnerability over here, you have these controls over there. What does that really mean, from a threat posture standpoint, which is really what the artificial intelligence where you’re taking information from a number of sources and actually doing something that a human would have. So you’re basically infused in some real human judgment into their, into the algorithm rather than just stop? Just the process steps? Yeah,

Marco Campana 5:45
no, I mean, oh, yeah. It’s the it’s actually infusing the intelligence in your I mean, there’s, there’s a long standing phrase that came out of the international development and humanitarian world about appropriate technology, right, you’re using it appropriately in the right instance, for to solve the right problem kind of thing. And it sounds like that’s kind of what you’re describing.

Charles Buchanan 6:01
Yeah. And that’s and that, so that’s what we’re taking, we’re taking what work we will be doing with AI for, for making cybersecurity delivery easier, rather than our service desk where it’s like, it’s, it’s nice to have a chat bot to tell people that they’re, you know, that we appreciate them calling but and we will get back to them in an hour, or I don’t think most of the problems that people need help with, in tech support can be solved by by bought, like some of the AI could be used in a background to help route it to the most appropriate person that we might be doing some of that, like make sure triage, right? Yeah, yes, just for triage. But very, very effective. Triage is not annoying, and I have yet to find a way where it’s not annoying.

Marco Campana 6:45
It’s astounding, isn’t it? Oh, listen, we’re diving in. And I’m gonna use what we just talked about in the in the session in the episode, if that’s okay, because I thought you said some brilliant things. And I don’t want to lose it. But but let’s dive in. Let’s let’s before anything else, before we dive in any more, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, Charles, and your background? And what brought you to this work? Now you shared with me an article which I’ll share with folks who are listening in the show notes, but I’m just curious, in your own words, what brought you to technology helps to to where you are today.

Charles Buchanan 7:14
Okay, so that I’ll give you that on the very short version. So the so the short version is I’m a, I’m trained as a computer engineer, we have grew up in Toronto, did computer engineer at U of T then did my, started my career in AI, did my MBA got into consultant and Technology Management spent several years in that space. And then in the last about six years, almost gone on seven. Just, it just hit me like I mean, it was throughout my career, I’d spent a lot of time around the nonprofit sector. And that when I say around, I mean, as a board member, as a volunteer, you know, but really just pretty much the way most professionals interact with the sector. And so 27 2016, you know, we I was Board Chair for the Center for newcomers, which is you’re familiar with them immigrant servant agency across in Western Canada. And we decided that we’re going to look at, we’re going to do an org review to help the new executive director, take charge of the organization. And we looked at all the, you know, so I did a Technology Review. And, and what I found was absolutely astounding. Like I did not believe that an agency of that stature or any agency was was experiencing that had that level of technology, or basically, the difference between what they had and what we what we experienced in corporate was dramatically different. Like, I mean, there was just no, there was just no comparison. And I looked at a few other agencies around around Calgary, and the situation was just dire. So what I realized that we had was just like, basically two classes of, of technology implementations or technology usage out there. corporates, which is unlike like, where I was at Suncor was, you know, like, I mean, where if we had half a billion dollars of technology investment in a year, and a nonprofit sector, which was just like, make the second class or worse, just almost like a technology ghetto in the middle of the shine in Tech City. And so, you know, realize so at the time, I did not know what caused that or what reasoning was, I just thought they were just human services organizations or nonprofit organizations who just didn’t have the didn’t have the capacity. They just didn’t have the they just didn’t have the technological alignment or the strategic approach. That’s what I thought was was the was the real reason and not that it was that it was that it was based on a whole bunch of historic and systemic wrongs. That got us there, but but that’s where I, you know, want and it just, it just occurred to me that I should just that This is a problem that needs to be focused on, it needs to be solved it needs it’s not something that you’re going to do from the corner of your desk, or as a volunteer, it requires focused, dedicated action to make this happen. So it I mean, the timing was just such that it was I was pondering some some things, some personal things, I call it a midlife crisis, if you will. But it’s like, Am I really using my talent for maximum good in the world? I mean, yes, I’m in a career where it’s very lucrative and doing some interesting things. But am I, you know, so the way I put it is that the pendulum shifted from making money to making a difference. And, and it’s shifted hard. I just, you know, came back from vacation just got up one morning and said, That’s it, I’m done. And I just jumped in no business plan, no, nothing, I just know, there was a problem to be solved. And I’m going to solve it. And, and I, you know, thought about it, the problem was, I didn’t even think about it having a name. But when I looked at it, and saw what was happening in the state, it was it was very, very similar to real world poverty. So poverty in the real world has, you know, people who are the I mean, the poverty issue, I mean, I’m not an expert on poverty. But at the time, my sister, she was doing her PhD in the feminization of poverty at UBC. So we were having a number of conversations about poverty. And I realized that wait a minute, what I’m seeing in the nonprofits and the tech space is very similar to what people who are experiencing poverty or living in poverty are experiencing like and it’s, it’s it comes from, it’s basically the same, they just on the surface, you’re just seeing things that look like they just don’t have these things, okay, you don’t see the bright shiny computers, you don’t see it. But below the surface, there’s so many other things like with real poverty, their issues around education, digitalization on health care, there’s so many other related things that are that come from this. So it was I’m like, wait a minute, this really is, you know, technology poverty. So we just started off with this is our mission, we’re going to end technology poverty. And from where I will sit in it wasn’t

Charles Buchanan 12:14
I, at the time, I did not see it as a difficult problem to solve. Granted, it was probably the single most naive position I’ve ever taken in my life. I didn’t see it as something that could not easily be solved the same way. People like homelessness, and some of those other where poverty related problems can be solved. It’s not absence of housing or absence of money. Why these why these problems persist. So I just figured, well, for such a well functioning sector, or well, you know, well regarded sector well recognized and a problem that’s so that’s out there in the open, like technology poverty in the sector, we should be we should be able to shine a light on it and fix it. in very short order. I didn’t see how it should, you know, like, seven, almost seven years later, we would be even worse off than we were 70. But when I started this work,

Marco Campana 13:06
Oh, wow. That’s astounding that notice, do you feel like the sector sector is worse off than it was seven years ago? Even?

Charles Buchanan 13:14
Yeah, absolutely. Because the problem was the problem with technology in the sector is that are the problem with technology poverty, and our failure to acknowledge it. And, and go to the heart and the root of fixing the problem is that, yes, there’s a systemic reason for the problem exists. And and, and they could get into quicksand or into poverty cycle that we’ve had have designed. But but one of the things is the is the fact that the technology is changing. And it’s changing at a rapid pace. So if you’re standing still, you’re falling behind. So so we are falling behind, because we are not running as fast as the technology is changing. So, so years ago, so what techno mean, right now, a lot of social service, a lot of community based service agencies are technology companies offering social services, it’s completely flipped. However, they’re their organization, their structure, they’re nothing, but they have not evolved, or they have not accepted that. And it’s not like something that the board needs to meet and say we are now a technology company, it technology has crept up they don’t have the means nor the resources are the skills to to make that shift and and they also do not have the the economic capacity to attract the people who can, who can, who can orchestrate that shift to that kind of organization and even culturally and up from a brand perspective, they would hate to see themselves as such, but they don’t have to define themselves as such. They just have to recognize the important role that technology now plays in their in their structure. So that brings me To our the technology poverty cycle, which funders hate and, and they acknowledge it, but they hate it because the technology, technology poverty, I’m not going to say it’s, it’s a funder created phenomenon. But it starts with the constraints we place on, on investment, and I. So throughout, I tried to move away from words like funding, and I see it more as an investment I used, I try not to see where it’s as volunteering, I see it as community involvement, because they don’t so, so let’s start with the investment or the funders, or the people who, people who do all this work from an economic from a financial standpoint, there is this misconception or this, this idea that 100% of the fun of the money that goes into an organization should go to the programs, and zero or very little, as little as possible, should go to overhead. So they, it’s people who work in the sector, people who work in capacity building, they know that they don’t a fallacy of that. So why so however, technologies are always been considered a part of overhead. So as the there are two shifts happening, there’s increased pressure on the on overhead, to reduce it to less, and the role of technology or the requirements of technology in these organizations is increasing. So, you have this, this increase in not less investment, and more and more needs, which means that a widening gap in the, in the in their ability to invest. So it starts off with these constraints on on investment, those constraints and investment lead to natural under investment in, in critically required technical infrastructure, that that under investment comes in the form off of not hiring the appropriate skills, not having the appropriate support, not been able to keep your organization safe, and what with that under investment comes some some retardation in the in their ability to deliver effective programs. So their organizational effectiveness is is reduced, their efficiency is reduced. And their their reach their range, their relevance, their ability to serve community or respond to the needs of community are reduced. And that basically leads to, to arrested impact. And so, constrained investment leads to arrested impact. And that’s the, that’s the cycle that goes on. However, it’s not it’s it’s less of a cycle and more of a death spiral. Because with with impaired impact or reduced impact, that caught the basically that you’re less eligible for, to win the funding contest that happens every year, because that’s how that’s some investment is made in the sector through a contest. And it’s a ridiculous notion. But there’s this funding contest. So if you’re less eligible to win the contest, then you get less funding, or you get more constraints placed on you by through these funding agreements that have thou shalt nots. And and then it just goes back, it just keeps going on over time. So since considering it being a spiral, you can you can see why we’re falling behind because organizations are being less effective or less impactful and, and more constrained. So we’re basically killing these organizations with our, with our policies with our funding agreements with our approaches. And But that said, there isn’t unlimited funding, or unlimited resources for for everyone. Right. So that brings, you know, so that’s, that brings up but so I could just stop there.

Marco Campana 18:56
Oh, man, there’s so much to unpack. But I wonder one of the things you still talked I mean, I think you’re right about that, in particular in the immigrant refugee serving sector when it comes to technology. But that’s also a really well researched and documented challenge overall, in terms of service delivery, not just with technology, with technology are mediated by technology, but but in general, the lower wages, the lower the competition, right, the contest, as you put it, you know, those types of things. And I wonder, it’s interesting, because even with technology, though, this is this is a more than 20 year conversation in our sector. There’s some research that I’ve been part of over the last few years. And one of the things I did was a chronology, looking back at all of the restriction reports. And as you know, IRCC is the main funder, and one of the things that they they seem to be doing every five years and I can take you back to 1997 when there was a massive investment investment in the Ontario the Ontario part of the sector by the Ontario regional office, where every settlement worker got a computer on their desk, every agency got what was at the time. Hi speed internet, it was dual ISDN lines, right, which was a massive step up from from dial up. And And settlement.org was created, which is a website for newcomers as well as for settlement providers to share information. And, and then the recommendations were, along the lines of what you’re talking about this investment can’t be a one time investment, we need to look at the total cost of ownership, we need to factor that into the operational costs. But we also need to look at technologies not just operational, but also as programs, service delivery costs. So it’s not just this budget line over here, part of overhead part of you know it or whatever, but also, its skills. It’s training, it’s, as you say, it’s evolving with the technology that evolves. And then every five years or so IRCC funded yet kind of another project, sometimes it was called Innovation. Sometimes it was specific to technology, and essentially the same recommendations would be made, the sector in the funder needs to work together. And you know, there’s tons of innovation that can be harnessed, but investment is required. And we need to set up, you know, until ultimately, you know, two years ago, I was part of the this settlement sector and technology task group where we basically looked at all of this stuff and said, Okay, it’s the middle of the pandemic, you know, what are we learning, the future is no longer possible for us to stop doing this investment. But we started talking about these baseline. So when you talk about infrastructure, for example, you know, I think that’s a key word to talk about. Because when we looked at it, it was infrastructure, not just from an IT perspective, but also from the human side of it. Right? So the leadership skills, the ability to manage in a hybrid service delivery or digital environment, what what new skills do staff need to be on boarded with or expected to have when they’re hired? And how do you compensate them for those skills with the, you know, because the sector has terribly low wages? And then what about all the new roles that need to be created the data scientists, the AI people, the, you know, the app developers, the, the cybersecurity folks, the, the the whole range of, you know, as you say, I said earlier, the whole range of types of positions that exist in the private sector that are going to eventually be required, either being part of somebody’s role, or an entirely new role in these agencies, if we’re actually going to move forward harnessing technology, all of this, at the same time that we are going to about to go through an inevitable budget, belt tightening, post COVID spending kind of thing, right, so for our sector, the next big call for proposal or contest, as you put it, is 2024. And so we’re looking at what needs to start happening to move that move things forward to actually create that investment. So so that’s my version of infrastructure, it’s all of those kinds of things. When you say it, I wonder if it’s similar. Or if there are other nuances to when you look at moving an organization out of technology, poverty, what does that look like to build up that foundation?

Charles Buchanan 22:48
So I’m glad Okay, so I’m, I’m, I’m relieved to hear those conversations have occurred, and that they, and that the record that there’s recognition, that technology and technology infrastructure goes beyond, goes beyond computers and, and hice and broadband internet. It is, I just, I participated in the City of Calgary digital equity strategy. And I’ve been part of other strategies, and I’ve had conversations with telcos. And there’s still this common misconception, even at the federal government level, is that all people need our, our computers and our connection, right? That is basically the that’s not even table stakes. Right? So so what we’re when I would say, I stopped using the word infrastructure, because I realized people did not know what it meant coming from coming from Enterprise Architecture and Long Range Systems planning, I just did not, I realized our infrastructure to was to me was just the base part. Whereas in, in a technology stack, its infrastructure, its applications, if the data is a process, security, there’s mobility, there’s social. So there’s a whole there’s nine levels above what they call above what they’re calling tech. So so when I look at what’s required for the Secretary, I’m really I really like to spend some more time looking at some of those, some of those studies and hopefully try to get IRCC and other government departments to see to, to accept the what they know, I don’t think they’re they don’t know, because they exceed that’s not the lives they live even in their own departments in their own day. So I’m not sure why it should be. Why did it not see social community service agencies as as as service organizations that serve the community and and not just some special special organizations that are capable of just doing doing things with magical infrastructure? That’s that requires no investment and No, no cost? No, people know nothing. So so what? So that brings us to something which I didn’t know what we’re going to be talking about. But what we’ve looked at now is the solution for community members and community serving organizations is I’ve taken up the Beyond infrastructure, and what I call it is digital capability, right? And digital capability is, has four things associated with it very, very simple. One of them is, first and foremost is, is access. And access is the devices and economy activity that gets you started, right. So if you don’t have a device, and you don’t have a stick, an internet connection, you are not in the game at all. Above that you have an access gives you gets you to the table. And now what you need, you need to know what to do. So you need to have digital skills. So and skill development, it’s, and it’s appropriate skill development, it’s for the axis and for the purpose. So there’s a whole range of things around skills. Beyond skills. It’s not not technology is changing at such a rate that even I, as a computer engineer, don’t support, don’t do my own tech support. I have a team of people who are trained and they’re on the front line, I call my service desk, and I’m like, This isn’t working. And they’re like, Yeah, but you’re a tech guru. Why can’t you fix your own your own device? I’m like, No, I. So it’s, the support is critical. And tech support goes beyond just responsiveness. There is some proactiveness around it. And it’s proactive, and I keep saying appropriate and accessible. Support, then. So there’s the access, there’s a skills to support. And the one thing that people tend are not thinking about, they do think about it, they don’t recognize the importance of it is the security aspect of it. It has to be done safely. Like I mean, you know, I have, you know, I’m on the grandson committee for the Calgary Foundation. And we had a grant application that came in and they were they had a great notion of given laptops, and tablets to seniors. So I asked them, you know, they said, great, good idea, because it was during COVID, there was they were going to solve social isolation. And I’m like, yes. So, you know, so I presume you have a fund for the, for the homeless senior problem that you’re about to cause? And they’re like, we’re not going to cause a homeless senior problem. And right, yes, you are. You put device and connectivity in the hands of someone who’s completely naive about online dangers, you will be created significant, you will be causing significant harm to this community that you that you think you’re at. So where is your cybersecurity plan? Where is your endpoint protection? Where as your cybersecurity awareness training, where are they where’s the entire security apparatus required to protect these people from, from this world that you’ve just introduced them to? So security is is the other big part of the, of the mix. So we put all that together as a skills, support and security, you have what I call digital capability. And that is not that goes that’s even below you get into specific applications line of business services, just really the base, what I would call digital infrastructure require foundation base. Yes, the digital foundation is Yeah, I think Foundation is a great word, actually. So digital capacity, digital Foundation, is really what you have now. And by at that point, you could go on and you could engage in education, you could you could engage in your faith community, you could consume goods and services, you could you could participate digitally in society, once you’ve got those fundamental that foundation in place. So so that’s where and it’s important. The people who are invested in are not are probably failing to see or acknowledge that there is more to it, because it’s easy to do the capital, the one time capital expense of the tangible just, okay, we buy a tablet, and we throw it over there. And then we’re job done. Nobody wants to acknowledge that. That it’s ongoing, because ongoing we have this, this other bizarre concept about capital versus operated and, and we want to spend one and solve the problem. If if our approach to that problem is to spend once then, then no. So we have one agency that we work with in Toronto, and she basically she she, she she turned down funded.

Charles Buchanan 29:30
And it shocked It shocked the font the foundation that was trying to support her because she said I this this funding, yes, I will be wasting your money. Because if you’re saying that I can only I’m only you’re going to pay for me to acquire some technology and implement it. And you and you’re not given you’re not and I have no support to sustain it to keep it going to train my people on the use of it to to secure it. I will fail so I’m, I suggest you give this money to somebody who could actually, who will not fail with your investment. And they, they were surprised, because no agents is never turned away money. They were embarrassed because their shortsightedness was was brought to the table. And they came back and we worked with the agent, we work with that agent to help identify a way in which the funds they the funding could be used for subscription as opposed to purchase. And, and the funders, they still haven’t resolved that internally. That was

Marco Campana 30:41
the question I was gonna say is like, so they learned from that with you in that one case. But have they internalized that then going forward with their their approach to how they fund these things?

Charles Buchanan 30:50
No, they know, they have not. And so there are a few foundations that are that are seeing they’re going in that direction nurse and you know, like, I won’t name any but they’re, they’re contemplating or considering what would it look like for long term for long range funding three years, it’s still it’s still has not changed. It just becomes the goes from one time funding to three year funding. And it’s still it’s still like we do not want to with foundations there. I think their base position is we do not want to own the problem. We do not want to be to be responsible for solving this forever. In fact, we don’t like forever problems.

Marco Campana 31:35
Even though like you know they exist. Yeah,

Charles Buchanan 31:37
yeah, we like discrete project based things that could just be done. And done. So wins, right? Yeah. Yes. They Yes. They want wins. They want. Yes, they want things that yes, I call it Yeah. I hate calling them wins, because they’re really not wins. They’re just Yeah, checkmarks they’re just Yeah. Acknowledge, like, yeah, I don’t need it. Because they’re not wins. Like I mean, you you implement something, declare success, and I’ve run away while it falls apart. Right? That’s not a win.

Marco Campana 32:10
No, but for them, they got the tablets out to the seniors that’s there when the wind needs to be redefined. Basically. Right.

Charles Buchanan 32:18
That’s what I’m Yeah. So that’s what I’m saying. It’s not it’s not a win. It’s about the way they, it’s, and that’s probably where they can say where it’s, it seems like whenever we have these conversations seems like I’m dumping on, on funders and foundations, but they are at the crux of this whole thing. They they are the economic engines, they are off they have most of this work. And it’s it’s upside down. It’s you know, it’s it’s colonial it’s, it’s bizarre. And, and it’s that’s a much longer conversation about foundations, but it’s, it’s, it’s yeah, and there’s not a lot of true long term thinking. And, and not a lot of, you know, let’s say donor or investor education, around what would make sense because investors, they’re not dumb, and I commend if I know that I’m invested in, in systemic change. And this call it I’m not gonna call it a forever problem, but improving something long term for the community. I will accept that I’m investing in something long term for the community. I don’t, I don’t look at law enforcement that way. I’m like, okay, so we’ll just have a police officer patrol the street on January, and then we’re good for the rest of the year. Right. And I don’t look at our utilities that way, because I know, okay, so we’re just gonna tackle water, and then we’re good right now, we don’t do that. Right. We don’t not repair our roads, because we just repaired them last year. Yeah, but we drove on them. Right. Like, we don’t, we don’t. So we are, we’re capable of acknowledging that there are things that don’t get fixed once. So we know that it’s not like donors or investors, people don’t realize don’t have things in their world that are that require, requires that need to be sustainable. Healthcare, we don’t just, yeah, why don’t we just get our animals into school and just go chill, right? No, we don’t be. We have so we do have systems of, of support and service and care that we that we maintain normally. However, I’m not sure where we, where we get off thinking that when it comes to social services and Human Services, a different set of rules should apply. i That’s where I bet departure. I’m still like, if I were to do a PhD, that’s probably what I would study. Like, what the Okay, what were you thinking, how do you how do you get there? Like, what’s the, like, how do you reconcile that like, why would you think that I came here Human Services Organization is not is different, right? Do you think they can just solve these problems? And just or just make this thing go away? Like I mean, just stop having, you know, like, newcomers just stop having sick people just stop having kids with autism just stop, like, they can’t just stop. So how can we stop? Well, we don’t have, we only have limited funds for this period that we need to redefine, we need to change the way we look at, at how we’re doing this investment.

Marco Campana 35:32
I totally agree. And when I send you the some of the there’s, there’s a, there’s one report, I want to send you a bunch. But there’s one report that essentially pulls all of the reports that were done during the pandemic. But there’s a board has about six actually really interesting research reports done and this one pulls them all together, and provides a roadmap to the sector. And it’s not a roadmap that I would say is different from other nonprofits, but it’s specifically the immigrant or refugee serving sector. And a lot of what you’re talking about is in there in particular, around the nature of funding. So in our sector, for example, they’re now have five year long contribution agreements, but they’re inflexible, they’re rigid. So there’s no pivoting, there’s no learning and changing, you start with an idea, and you kind of have to go with it. And so there’s that conversation about the nuances of funding, which we learned a lot about during the pandemic, because there had to be a lot of pivoting, there was no choice. Right, so much changed in such a short time. So the question is, can they embed that into the institutional funding sort of structure that exists? But so and we can continue that conversation after for sure, I think you’ll find some really interesting alignment in that in terms of where some of those recommendations are. What I’m curious about is, is and I hate to do this, but I’m going to but practically speaking, right? So if there’s an IDI listening to this conversation, who’s got, you know, 25, to 50, staff organization, mostly from one funder from IRCC, but they get some provincial, they get some municipal and maybe they get some United Way, funding and things like that. And they’re thinking, Okay, this digital transformation thing, we’ve been on the path, I feel like I’m, I’m still just surviving, I’m not even sort of moved up to kind of, you know, thriving at all, I’m, you know, I’m trying to figure it out. We, we’ve done, we’ve we shifted, we were able to to be digital, but I don’t have a system in place, you know, I’m terrified of making the wrong decision when it comes to a cybersecurity vendor or a plan or policies, because I just don’t have that knowledge. And technology helps is an organization that provides support and scale. And and and this idea of, you know, we you understand nonprofits and where they’re coming from, what if they, if they, if they were interested, or they wanted to move forward with, you know, again, the way you help that other nonprofit, negotiate with a with a with a foundation, for example, what what this technology helps offer an organization like that, to help them navigate, in spite of the systemic challenges, right, navigate their way out of technology, poverty.

Charles Buchanan 37:57
So So, so technology helps is, is it’s a very different construct. Right. It’s, so one of the challenges we have when we engage when we were engaged with organizations is that they don’t believe that we’re that we’re real, in that we our technology helps is designed to solve the lawn solve the, the, the wicked problem off technology, poverty. So technology helps it’s yes, we parts, we present as a business in some ways, but we are our focus is around finding is around the way around solving the big problem. So the way we started technology have started with Yeah, when I when I started on health, it was we thought the problem was strategic alignment of of technology with, with, with, with services, or with the work that organizations do. And we found out in very short order that strategic alignment is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is sustainability off beyond beyond the project. So we helped a few organizations, implement some techniques, identify and implement appropriate technology. And we were like, Okay, guys, we’re done. We’re walking away, and they’re like, you can’t like because they were like, what will happen is like, well, it will fall apart. And we’ll be back here next year. I’m like, okay, that’s, that’s terrible use of investment and terrible waste of every time, talent and everything. So let’s, so we implemented our community service desk, which is our support, accessible available, appropriate support for nonprofits layered by service response, IT management, you know, applications as a service, service layers based levels based on what your organization needs, and it’s only as per their need. And then, so there was and within that space, we help organizations identify what’s appropriate and appropriate needs appropriate like we do not sell nor resell anything. We work with the organization Knowing their constraints know when their limitations know when they’re funding the nuances off of getting the investment and the challenges of getting investments and the challenges of, of accounting for that investment, and we make their money go for it. So we help organizations get exactly what they need most effectively. With cybersecurity one, you know, we’re from a safety standpoint, that wasn’t even on our roadmap, either. So one year in 2016, I gave a presentation to a bunch of nonprofit leaders on cybersecurity. And they left quite concerned. The next year, I was presenting to an audience and they were, I said, Okay, so what’s changed between last year and this year for the people who were in the room? And they said, Oh, last year, we were very concerned, we were concerned. Now we’re very, very concerned. And I’m like, so what have you done about it, and they said, We haven’t done, we’ve just been running around in circles. And so our cybersecurity program is designed for that, for the nuanced for the, for this special relation for this special structure of nonprofit organizations. There are a lot of cybersecurity tools and solutions out there. However, there isn’t anything that acknowledges that acknowledges the governance of nonprofit organizations, and the role that the board plays and the and the investment. So there’s a governance governance constraints or governance requirements, that exists within large enterprises. However, they’re not very many small businesses that have that same that requires that same level of risk management rigor as a nonprofit organization. So to get that to, to, to serve the board or to serve or for that, for the stewards of the organization, to have what they need to say an organization is safe, they need something way more comprehensive than just a pen test, or something more comprehensive than just some training, they need to know their vulnerabilities, they need to know what’s been done about it, they need to know they need to know the state of the response plan, they need to know so many things and what we’ve done, we’ve managed to pull all that together in a single in a single platform, based on an assets. And the way to do that. And the secret to doing all this for nonprofit organizations across the board is through

Charles Buchanan 42:19
an enterprise architected approach where the state of the sector is it’s almost the way I’ve described it before, it’s almost like a feudal village, village, a village of feudal families, where everybody in this village has their own water, their own well, their own sewage, their their own sets, you know, systems for everything, they traveled to town on their own roads, they can their own guides, particularly their own means of transport they, they have their own doctors, and what so that’s kind of like the state of the sector now. Whereas What’s needed is just some, just some common common resources and, and that scared people the first few years, we came up, because we’re not advocating for, for sameness, we’re accounting for commonality of things that are not, not, that don’t take that are not required to be, to be to be to be unique. So like my neighbors, and I and the people who live around me, we all drive downtown for work, we all use the same common roadways, and none of us need any special grants for that. However, what happens and you know, we use electricity from the same electric from the same grid, we have water come in the same except what happens in my house is my business and I do what I do in my house, Nobody tells me what I may do with what I may do with the water or the electricity or where I may go on those roads. So when we when we so what we’ve got is, is I mean, I’ve tried not to use words like shared services, because I know that scared a lot of people because if they okay, we’re going to share our data, we’re going to have things mashed up, we’re going to, you know, it’s going to be unsafe, we’re going to be touching things. It’s like no, we all know we know there is a there is an architected approach that works and I come from enterprise architecture, which is essentially the city planning off of technology. So I look at techno that’s why I thought the problem was easy to solve, because I could see some, some deep commonality around processes around systems and around skills and tools. And then I could see the unique mix being applied within each organization at at the edges and in no way affects their ability to execute there. So yes, you want to use a special app or go ahead and get your special app, you want to do various things. You want to deliver Human Services, you want to deliver service, do what you want. However, there are some things that could be provided centrally, like support and security and the security model. We mean each organization that we support and cyber secure Do they have their own response plan, they have their own awareness programs, programs they have, they’re, they’re dealing with their own vulnerabilities, but they’re using a common framework, a common a common way of going about things and accom. And it’s not that technology helps, it’s going to be solving the problem uniquely, and independently, we’re looking for accomplices to help us do this. And, and we’re also looking for people to help us scale that model and help us, you know, make them you know, improve the model, because they say right now, does it work? Yes, it works. It’s working for close to it’s worked for over 200 organizations across Canada in the last seven years. And they’re people who are joined in, you know, coming on board working with us every day, and we are, we have never made a cold call. So, it’s happening. And it’s not like it’s the only game. But it’s an approach that we would, that we that I advocate. And if people have better ways of doing things, then absolutely, we welcome it. But, but we are but that’s that’s what’s happened. And so for an organization wants to wants to

Charles Buchanan 46:08
have a conversation. Our conversation starts with what is your purpose? What is your mission? What are you trying to do? It doesn’t start with technology. It’s like, what are you trying to do? What role can technology play in? In you effect more effectively deliver on your mission? Are you having better impact? That’s the second question. And after that is, what how could technology has possibly helped with that? So we don’t come in saying, Here’s technology helps us do this. It’s like, what are you trying to do? Where are you trying to go? And one of the, one of the base conversations we have with organizations is around their technology roadmap. So what we do we look at their, their starting point, and we don’t call it the current state. It’s a starting point, because there’s intention to do something. And where are you with technology? What state? What are the constraints? What are the limitations? What are the aspirations? What are the pains? And then we say, what, where would you like to be, which is your target state and your target state? Today becomes your starting point tomorrow. And then in your target state? That’s a vision for okay, I would like to serve serve people remotely, I would like to do these things. Okay, then we look at something that’s what’s what’s happened. And what are the forces that are making that are causing is what’s changing in the environment, it could be constraints on funding, there could be a new class of people to serve, there could be new services, new geographies, all kinds of things might be happening that would drop that would be causing you to want to take action. And then then we look at So in considering though they they have the forces, considering where you are and where you’re trying to get to, what’s the path? Or what see what what paths or possible actions could be taken to bridge that gap? And what’s the priority? What’s the priority of that? And what’s the feasibility of that? And what’s the sequence of these these actions that would get you from here to there? And then for each of those actions, what’s the impact of the action? Because there’s no point taking these actions without them have an impact? And the impact could be, could be financial? Is it going to make you but is it going to score you revenue or save you money? Is it going to help you with your ability to serve your clients is it going to make you safer is it going to make you stronger is going to make you more effective, more efficient. So there’s a whole bunch of impacts off these actions. And when you look at all that, that is your entire technology plan on a page. So for every action that if for every action you’re taking to close that gap, or to bridge the gap from poverty to not so poverty, if there’s a justification, there’s a reason for it, there’s something causing it, there’s something known about it, and there’s some result of it. And that’s your bid, that’s the technology plan on a page. And that’s the approach we take with all the organizations we work with. And, and it’s so everything has to make sense within their context. So that’s how we that’s how we would engage and from that action plan, that’s where the conversation about specific like is, and some of the things the highest priority things on your action plan might have nothing to do with technology helps it could be you need to improve your your your bandwidth, which means we will we will walk with you down to your local telco, and we will have a conversation with them or we will or we need to have sustainable funding for something that’s not a one time. So we will we will assist we will then you know we will help you and educate your funder. Or in some cases we will help you identify sources of funding and and articulates your position or your your or your need. That doesn’t translate to us writing your grant application for you. But we do actively support grant applications and we do educate funders and about not just specific cases, but overall investment in in technology for organizations because funded would say Is this really necessary or is there a better way? And and then the other thing we also do we maintain? We curate a number of Technology Solutions. Not that we did. We’re not resellers, we’re not partner, we, we just solutions that we’ve identified. That makes sense. So people could come to us and say, What should I do here? Instead of going to an exhaustive search, we’ll start you off with a shortlist and say, Hey, you might want to look at you might consider these. And they’ve been used by people, like you who’ve who’ve done this, or I would not, I would not do that, because it does not fit well with what you’ve got in your current environment. So we are, we’re also a resource center for agent for organizations, and where we welcome people to come to us with off the wall questions or request for assistance? Or say we’re considering this? You know, what do you see it? Or what are you doing or, or for collaboration on things? So that’s how we do it engage with technology helps, and we and it’s about really, what’s appropriate for your agency, based on where you are.

Marco Campana 50:52
That’s, there’s I mean, there’s, it feels like that you’re talking about working with an almost like an ally ship, you’re standing beside them. And when your expertise is needed to help answer a funder question or to figure out a technology, they can, they can rely on you and or they can call the community help the support desk, and and move along with that. I think that’s a that’s a big thing that a lot of agencies, even large ones, in our sector, they’re just not sure what those steps are. So that curation, for example, is a really good example of Oh, an organization like me, who has the similar kind of restraints, but needs and outcomes and security requirements. You know, there’s such a vast field of possible technologies, how do I even start making that choice but without wasting time and again, that fear of making the wrong decision? Having having kind of a partner along the way, would go a long way to help them feel better about those decisions, and that they’re, that they’re not just one time decisions, as you’re describing as well, but that you’re looking at the lifespan of the organization, the evolution of that technology as well. Exactly. Amazing. Okay. I, we’ve we’ve been talking for almost an hour. So I don’t want to I don’t want to take much more of your time, other than to say thank you for this is there if there’s anything I mean, there’s a lot of other questions we could ask maybe we’ll have a part two sometime. But I feel like I feel more knowledgeable about what you offer and the role that you can play in our sector. Now, it sounds like you already are playing that role, but in nonprofits in general. Because I think one of the one of the challenges is exactly what I was sort of describing is that idea of too many choices. There’s too many frameworks, there’s too many options. And so there’s decision paralysis, or, you know, as as you described, the minute someone becomes a little more literate about something, they just become more afraid, because a little knowledge doesn’t take them where they need to go. It just opens them up to the possibilities of making the wrong decision. Even even more starkly kind of thing. So if there’s any is if there’s anything you want to leave people with from, again, my sector is the immigration refugee serving sector, but the nonprofit sector in general, and even if there’s a funder listening, is there any final kind of message for this round of our conversation, because I see us having more that you want to leave people with just to help them feel like a next step could be x, y, or Zed for them? What’s a good starting point?

Charles Buchanan 53:11
Yeah, the honest thing I would probably say at that stage, is that just stop being stop being afraid. Right? It’s and do something reach out, get in touch. We are, we are we are not going to sell you anything with it. Let’s have a conversation. If this is the you know, like, I mean, we can solve this together. Like I mean, yeah, as I would say is that together, we can add technology poverty.

Marco Campana 53:35
Nice. So they’re not alone. They don’t they shouldn’t feel like they’re alone. And they shouldn’t feel like there’s any bad questions when it comes to this. There are no bad questions. Thank you, Charles. So much. It was really great to connect. I appreciate the time, we will continue this conversation in other places. But this has been really useful and I appreciate you taking the time.

Charles Buchanan 53:53
Okay, thanks so much. Bye.

Marco Campana 53:56
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful for you and your work. You can find more podcast episodes, wherever you listen to your podcasts are also on my site marcopolis.org. I appreciate you listening and if you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or want to be interviewed or know someone who wants to be interviewed, please drop me a line through my website, or [email protected] Thanks again.