 Thanks, Phil. Hello, everyone. That's incredible. NDF is nearly over for 2015. And everybody's probably gagging for a coffee. Who's gagging for a coffee? Come on. Okay. I'm going to try and keep this really interesting. There'll be some pretty pictures up there. And I'll try and tell this as a series of stories. So you're going to see photographs of real people, children as well. And this is all with the express permission of the people involved. And I hope you enjoy the stories, because I found them incredibly engaging. And it's those stories that kind of make me want to go to work. Also, because I have a wonderful boss who happens to be sitting in the back row. Okay. So, yeah, this is a thousand dots. I'd like you to think of those thousand dots, each one of those dots. Think of as a household. So mum and dad, perhaps, and you know, two, three, four kids. Each one of those, okay? Just keep that in your mind. Now, I'm going to talk about two innovative digital projects that we're doing at the library. That attempt to solve a digital exclusion problem. They're about digital access, inclusion and citizenship. And the projects are called Digits and Refugees Inclusion, because we haven't come up with a cooler name for it yet. But that's, yeah. I'm not really interested in the institutional view of those projects and the problem of the thousand households. I want to, I'm much more interested in the real people view of what that looks like. I'll be covering what we learned, what we did, what worked, what didn't work, what we did next, and then also some take home learnings for you as well. So the problem is that there are a thousand households, I think it's a thousand and seventeen actually, households in Pubs North with school-aged kids that don't have access to the internet at home. So that's the thousand households. Now, what does that look like? You know, it depends who you are really, because that's also a thousand households. So maybe, you know, if you're an accountant or maybe a librarian taking the institutional view, that's what a thousand would look like. It's just like, they're all the same and they're in a big block and they're all white and black and there's no kind of shape or pattern to them. But what would it look like if you were a teacher? So this is, this is Kersti sitting at the back. Oh, there's a pointer. That's Kersti and that's Claire. So Kersti, what's her story? She teaches in a one to one digital class. So every child has to have access to a computer in her class. Some of the other classes are one to two and then others, there's no real digital component. And it's at Roslin School. It's a great little school. It's a Dessau 3 school and their whole thing is about pride and they, each of those letters means something and all the kids know that and their learning outcomes are all built around that and it's just, it's great. So in Kersti's class, every child has to have a computer. She has 32 kids but only 22 of them have a computer. So what about the other 10? So it's roughly a third. Now that's in the one to one digital class. So the other teacher you saw there, Claire, the head of design and technology, reckons that in the other classes, it's only maybe two or three kids that have access to a device and even fewer have access to the internet at home as well. So how does that work? If you're wanting to do this kind of thing, you're wanting to do the digital learning thing, you're wanting to, you know, use all these digital tools, online collaboration and you're wanting to take not only the kids but the parents as well on this digital learning journey and you're wanting to do those amazing things that Claire reminded us about this morning that, you know, these kids are going to do jobs that we can't even imagine. They're a digital future they're going to be involved in. We can't imagine right now. It's just going to be that different. So the whole thing about the independent inquiry and giving them authentic projects and looking for those real world outcomes and solutions, how is that possible if one third of your most digital class doesn't have access to the technology? How do you do that? And then, of course, this isn't only a problem for low DSR schools. So St. Peter's College, DSR 6, some of the richest kids in town go there. But they also have the same problem, a third of kids without devices or internet at home. Why? It's a Catholic school. So one third of the kids that go there are incredibly poor but they go there because it's a Catholic school. So the digital divide is felt even more clearly in that. So let me introduce you to this lovely lady. This is Amy. And she's one of the mum. She's a school mum and she is unemployed. She's a job seeker and she has seven kids aged between 18 and nine. And the three youngest at Rosalind School, one of them is in Kirstie's class. They happen to have broadband at home due to weird quirk of another family member moving in with them and bringing an internet contract with them. But they literally have one smart phone between eight people in that family. That's it, you know, and that's what they have to use for the whole thing. So how does that work? Now Amy can't get credit. She can't walk into Harvey Norman, get credit. Not going to happen. And she doesn't have cash for a laptop. So you know, what does that look like then for those kids when they come home? How did they do homework? So she's telling me that they write their homework by hand, you know, handwrite, old fashioned handwriting, and then they go to school, and then they use one of the school computers to type up their homework. And you know, is that good enough? But that's what that thousand households looks like for one household. So sometimes the homework is done at the wonderful and vibrant Rosalind Community Library, which is just down the road from the school. But honestly, three PCs shared by 20 kids after school, you know, getting half an hour each in an afternoon in this highly competitive environment, trying to get time. It's not good enough. And this is often the library's idea of our contribution that we're making to bridging the digital divide. And it is just clearly hopelessly inadequate. It's wonderful that it's there, but it's really time for libraries to step up and take it to the next level. So, you know, Amy's kids are often the ones in that class whose homework isn't done. I'm going to introduce you to this lovely couple. This is Jess on on the right. Well, that face is a bit big. Sorry. And her lovely daughter Shelby. So Jess is a mum with three kids that don't have broadband. They bought a tablet at warehouse. It was on special. It was like $80 or something. Surprise, totally unused. You know, it just was useless. There was no internet connection. And Shelby is in the one to one class at Roslyn and same problem as Amy's. Now, these families all would qualify for computers and homes. They could get an internet connection, digital literacy tuition and a desktop PC at home. But computers and homes, is anyone from 2020 Trust here? It's Vanessa here. I mean, just tragically underfunded. Absolutely tragically underfunded. This is like this is the government's effort at digital inclusion. And anyway, sorry, I will move on. So I'm going to move on now. This is, by the way, about the digits project. I'll just show you quickly. Another little story. And this is about another project called refugees inclusion. This is at all. She's just lovely. She lives with her parents and grandmother and a disabled relative, also in Roslyn, just up the road from the school. It's the same community. She grew up in a Thai refugee camp. I spent 15, 16 years of her life there. That was her whole life until she fell in love in camp. But then she was migrated to Palmerston North six years ago. And she left her boyfriend in the camp. He had done this amazing drawing of her and the house is actually just full of these really wonderful drawings. Okay, so for the whole, who's the hopeless romantic here? Who wants to know what the outcome is? Come on. Come on. We know. Yeah, so it's a lovely fairy tale story. She went back to Thailand to the camp and married him in the camp. And he now through the good services of refugee services lives in Palmerston North as well with her. Isn't that great? So she's she has a job. She's a carer for this high care disabled family member. And she's part of the funded family care program. So she gets paid. But she actually can't get paid. Like she literally cannot get paid without a computer and access to the internet. She cannot. You used to be able to do it by pay performs and phoning up. You just can't. So she doesn't have access to any of those. And she also doesn't qualify for the computers and homes refugee program. So she's just completely, you know, without a hope there. And she said to me, you know, I I only want a computer for their funded family care payments. I'm not interested in spending time on the internet. In other words, it's totally irrelevant in my life, which kind of brings us to the two main barriers that seem to have come out of the census and out of the World Internet Project. The main barriers really are, you know, in our context, I can't afford the internet. Can't afford their technology. And the internet is relevant irrelevant to my life. Why do I even need it? Those are the the main barriers. And you can sort of see those illustrated in these stories. I hope, you know, hope I've put a human face to that for you. There are institutional barriers as well. So, you know, at City Council, local government, libraries, museums, archives, we might be saying, well, you know, we provide free internet at libraries. And anyway, isn't that good enough? And is digital citizenship really local government's role? Should we really be worrying about every member of society? Isn't that just a monstrously huge problem that can't be solved? There's not enough dollars, surely? You know, that's the kind of barrier that we face. So, this is where I want to talk about this different, yeah, just a different mindset. You know, let's just turn this on its head and say, you know, let's not think about customer service anymore. Because what happens if the majority of your community doesn't come into your organization at all? They're just not your customers. So, how is customer service going to help them? It's this idea that we are providing service to this impoverished community. Like, there's this massive deficit out there and we've only got resources for, you know, 20% of them or 30%. So, it needs to be turned on its head and so, you know, we like to think much more about community development, not customer service. And it's really important to get that mindset right because it means you can start talking about assets, not deficits. So, if you take this asset-based community development model which handily is ABCD, you can then move on to other acronyms like digits. And this is a, it's a story again of an attempt at an ABCD digital inclusion program. And it's all about the assets. So, what are the assets in that community? There's an amazing school there. A wonderful school. We've got a really active community group called Rosalind Reach doing an amazing job. There are businesses with a social conscience, there's vibrant community library. We've got such passionate innovative teachers in that area that just want to do amazing stuff. And they kind of looking to council and saying, let's do something. And then they're volunteers. I mean, we are, there's so many volunteers, we go to the volunteer resource center and they just send us volunteers to do stuff. It's, there's an abundant community actually. Oh yes, this is part of the abundant community. So, what is digits all about? It's this collaborative citywide effort to provide devices, internet connections, digital literacy tuition to a thousand households with school-aged children by 2018. And why would we want to do that? It's all about, you know, this is the institutional view again, citizenship, participation, everyone having the opportunity to take part in the digital economy. I guess to be, like Claire said, free range learners, you know, provide that space so that that can happen. So, digits is really trying to move from this sort of the library providing a digital access service to developing digital citizenship in and with the community. So, yeah, let me tell you about the pilot project we've just completed. So, we're working with 10 families. I know that's a long way from a thousand, but you know, you have to start somewhere. So, fundraising. Yes, the community did buy ill-fitting and strangely designed weird-colored t-shirts for vast amounts of money at an auction. And so, in one evening, we raised enough money to buy the first six Chromebooks. So, we were up and away. We did get sponsorship to provide internet connections and we did get just superb volunteers. So, Priyanka, on the left there in the blue, she is a qualified computer engineer from India. She has given the most incredible, built this most incredible relationship with the mum and the daughter there and in terms of helping them on their digital journey. She does it completely free of charge and we heard two weeks ago that the lovely Priyanka is about to be deported. Her visa has expired and she just doesn't fit the right category. So, we're going to lose Priyanka, which is really annoying and sad. So, the school, the school selects the ten families. We don't select the families. The school has this great relationship with the families and knows who. And we have wonderful teachers who advise us on the learning outcomes in the curriculum. I know you can't read this, but we have this sort of discussion with teachers about, so if we do this, what might the outcomes be and what are the outcomes for parents and for children and families. And then the families, here's Jess and Shelby again, they make small weekly payments. You know, it's not a handout, so they make these small weekly payments to own the Chrome box and it's really achievable for them and they value those devices because they're paying for them. And then it makes it sustainable because as those payments come in, we can buy more Chrome box and that's the idea, that's the financial model for it. And then the kids use the Chrome box at school, so they can take that to school and come home and do homework. And mum and dad can use the Chrome box for their own purposes. The digital literacy tuition is actually focused on mum and dad, not on the kids, because the kids are just learning so fast at school and they're learning on their own. And so we're really trying to encourage this kind of family approach to using the internet. And we have guidance about how to keep safe online and all those good things. So how did it go? You know, did it work? And we found after the pilot, yes, actually it does work. We're kind of astonished. Yes, it has worked. The model works, not perfectly. So we had some families who dropped out for various other reasons, not to do with, you know, like just moving away from the area. And yeah, we found it sustainable. We found the volunteers do just make excellent tutors. I mean, we're going to provide them train the trainer training. Okay. You know what I mean? But yeah, they've been great. And then all but one of the families could afford the $5. We had one who just defaulted and it's just this horrible situation where we have to take the Chromebook away from the family. And we haven't done that. And we're kind of working through, well, how do you do that? You know, what's another way of doing? So we thought maybe where families default, the Chromebook would just have to stay at school until they start paying again. But we don't want to take a Chromebook out of a child's hand. But yeah, so what does what do the teachers say? So let's go back to Kirsty. She says, you know, those other 10 kids in my class, they have to lease a Chromebook from the school. And it's quite expensive. And the Chromebooks have to stay at school, they get locked up, and the kids can't take them home. And that is a real problem. And she says next year, all of your seven and eight will be one to one. So more and more kids are going to need devices and the internet. And she said, you need to roll this program out. You need to roll out digits more widely. Amy said to us, yes, I can afford a digits Chromebook for three children for less than it cost me to hire one from the school. And it works because $15 for her is just the best deal. She's been able to I've been able to make the weekly payments cheaper than leasing a school laptop and with digits, we get to keep the laptops. Is it actually meeting a need though? Well, Amy says, well, they used to come home, do their homework on paper, take it to school and type it in. Now they can come home with a Chromebook and do their homework and it's done. And is it actually impacting on kids learning? Jess says Shelby is now doing brilliantly at school. And Amy says, I can see the difference in the kids schoolwork even after just one month. Is it impacting on mums and dads learning? This is Amy's kids. And Amy says, my nine year old knows more than me. No surprise, you know, my kids teach me. All of us learn together. One kid knows this, another knows that. And Tracy's taught me Google Drive. So I needed to print something today. And when I got to the library, I just logged into Google Drive and there it was. So I printed it. And Tracy has shown me Gmail. And now I email the teachers. So the because the financial sustainability is key, you know, and trying to argue for a continuation of or scaling up a program like this, we have to go to our paymasters and say, well, it we think we can make this work financially, you know, if we just get enough people contributing in and because it sort of spreads financial responsibility for the project, you're not saying to council or to ratepayers, we need 1.8 million dollars to solve this problem in the community. It sort of spreads that financial responsibility between the community, the families, businesses, community development groups and agencies and, and council. And what did we learn? A fixed digital literacy curriculum just does not work. Every family is at a different place than their digital learning journey. So you need to customize and that means you need to have a really good conversation before you even start. So there are now only two essential or mandatory rather lessons, introduction to Chromebooks and the Internet and being safe online. There's the only ones we say they have to do. Coordinating the work of multiple organizations and individuals and volunteers, that is a lot of work. It's a huge amount of work. And I think this is really the, you know, if you're looking for the library's role or the council's role in this, yep, it's the coordination. That's, you know, who else is going to do it? Who else will stand up and say, come on, let's do this? And it just is a huge amount of work and that does need to be resourced. So where to from here? We'll be scaling up to 100 families in hybrid next year and then we just need to get this program city-wide by 2018, 1,000 households. And that is just what we're aiming to do. So what about Etto? Because she's not part of Digits. Have we still got time to complete Etto's story? How's everybody doing? Oh, he's still with me, great. Okay, so here's an interesting thing. Can you read what it says on there? This cabinet, public lending, Chromebooks, laptops, tablets, e-readers. Yeah, so we're doing this public borrowing technology collection. So you can just go into your library and with your library card, you can just borrow cool technology and stuff. So out of that, we've developed this refugees inclusion project. So for those who aren't eligible to be on the computers and homes program for refugees, like Etto, you can come into the library with your card and you can borrow a Chromebook. But more than that, you can borrow an internet connection as well. That's the most difficult part to solve, technically and financially, but we're trialing that. And so you get, you know, it's not for everybody. This is for those that, you know, basically most need it. And they get lovely, this is Tracy. She's our newest digital literacy tutor and she's a Montessori teacher and she came to us and said, I feel I want to do more in the community and we just love Tracy. It's great. And she's just got that lovely way of coming alongside a family and understanding their needs and helping them with digital literacy. Now, remember what Etto said, you know, the internet is not relevant to my life. Well, she didn't say that, but that's how we would interpret that. So these are some of the fabrics that I saw. You know, we went and visited her at home. These are fabrics that she's got from various places around the world. And she has this, literally it's this old singer sewing machine with the treadle like my grandmother used to use. And she sows dresses and all kinds of things make stuff for her family and her community. So I just showed her, you know, just on my phone, I showed her some dress patterns. And, you know, it was like that moment, you know, when somebody's eyes just kind of goes bigger sources and she was amazed by that actually and amazed by what you could learn about how to make clothing. And her husband is a really keen fisherman. And he and his mates go off to Tengimai now they apparently just haul in the blue card and amazing. And so we showed her some recipes for blue card and showed her chefs on YouTube making stuff. And suddenly, you know, being a digital citizen, in other words participating in that online, in that online world and in that digital economy and digital network is really relevant to her, you know, it just needed, she just needed to be able to see how it was relevant to her. But if we had treated, you know, eto is just one of those, we couldn't have made that link for her. You know, we just couldn't. So yeah, suddenly, it just is really relevant to her even though the technology and the terminology is really foreign to her. It is absolutely relevant. So it's like, yeah, it's nearly, nearly that time. I've shown you some examples. Two new services we've developed digits and refugees inclusion. We're not unique. These things are popping up all over the country. I'd love to tell you about other new services, but Phil's giving me the eye. So here's some take home advice, you know, know the needs of individual communities. I know you all don't, you don't treat your communities like that. I know you do already. So I'm preaching to the converted. And just, you know, finally, we live in abundant communities. We really do just, you know, stop looking at the deficits, just don't do it, you know, see them as just opportunities to use all of that amazing abundance that's out there. Focus on those assets, you know, the asset based community development. Have you got volunteers? You know, they're amazing schools, tertiary education providers, community agencies and businesses. And can you see yourselves in that role of coordinating instead? So thank you very much for your time. I thought we could rush off for coffee. I haven't had my ice cream for the day. You talked about that $10 a week. You're really describing microloans, aren't you? Can you just remind me again? Where did you get your initial sum of money for that? Do you remember the lady with the Elford and Green T-shirt? We had a fundraiser. It was the business with the social conscience. They did this thing. They just invited all of their community along. And so it was a lot of business people, politicians, and they just came along and we told them the story of what we were wanting to do. And we had these really enough things like t-shirts that were really quite weird, quite funky, but weird. And people were like, I want that t-shirt. And, you know, they were auctioned for like 150 bucks. And, you know, there was just sort of quite strange stuff like one lady did massage service or something, which somebody bought for 180 bucks or something. So we raised enough money to buy the initial six Chromebooks that way. Thank you, Leif. That was really, really inspiring. I might have missed this in the beginning, but was this a collaborative project, the digits in the refugee inclusion? And who were your collaborative partners if it was? Sure. So digits is absolutely collaborative. The refugees inclusion is it has a collaborative element in that we're using volunteers as tutors. But digits is really collaborative. So the collaborators there are, there's this digits steering group, which is a loose collection of really interested people. And then there's a school teacher who's just really passionate about this. It's sort of imagine Don't a freak you out, Claire, but he's like the sort of male version of Claire sitting over there who just wants to see this stuff happening. That business, I told you initially, the community group is called Rosalind Reach and they handle all the financial payments and the relationship with the school for us. School obviously is a partner and they kind of signed up to it and it really meets a need for them. And who have I forgotten? Janet, can you remember Neil? Us. Well, I guess you have the library. Yeah. So it's volunteer and paid employees mixing together or is it in your paid time or your volunteer time? Yeah. So it's my paid time helping to coordinate but also the Rosalind branch librarian as well. Everyone wants their coffee now.