 Thank you. Thank you, Yosef, and thank you all for being here. It's been my misfortune starting off, my misfortune to not being here for the rest of the day today, and that's quite a disappointment to me because I've had the pleasure of being here yesterday and also for one evening earlier on in the week, and I got to see what a fantastic gathering this is and what a fantastic opportunity it is to share ideas, so I would have liked to have been here because education is one of the areas that we're particularly interested in, environment being the other, and today unfortunately a bit of a clash arose where we partnered with a big company and big companies run to their own timetable in one of our projects. The Fonterra and the dairy industry announced today that they're putting $5 million into one of our projects, Zip, which I know a number of you people here today were involved or have heard about from Lou and Lou and Al over the last few days, and so that's fantastic step forward for Zip, and given that it's really the first month of Zip's existence, it's a great start for the business or for the opportunity, but I'm going to talk about education and our interest in education. First of all, I know for some of you who were here yesterday, I talked a little bit about Next Foundation, but for those of you who weren't, I'll run quickly just through who we are, and because we've been around for less than a year, Next Foundation was launched in March last year with a fantastic gift of $100 million to the country from a couple of fantastic New Zealanders called Neil and Annette Plowman. Very low profile New Zealanders, their wealth came from a company called New Zealand Towel Services that I think many of you will have had some experience with if you've used the white towels with the blue stripes on the side in public places at any time over the last 90 years or so, and Neil and Annette had been involved in a number of philanthropic projects already over the last decade really, most notably for those of you from Auckland Way, the restoration of Rotorua Island, and now the restoration of Abel Tasman National Park, and they have really decided to formalise the way they went about their philanthropy in forming Next Foundation last year, really with an objective of creating a legacy of environmental and educational excellence for the benefit of future generations of New Zealanders. So it's $100 million to give away over the next five to ten years and to give it away to a small number of large-scale projects in a way that can make a difference in the areas that those projects are operating in. So and really those projects that we're looking for have got three characteristics really at a high level. We want them to be able to be transformational in the area that they're operating in. We want them to be inspirational so that people who are in that space really look at them and say these are projects that we think should continue and we want to support in whatever way we can. And part of getting to that place in our view is that they need to be run in a business-like way even though they're not commercial projects. We're supporting charitable organisations, not for-profit organisations, and we're not looking for financial returns. We're looking for in the educational returns and in the case of the environmental projects, we're looking for ecological returns. Just how do we operate? I guess I've come from outside the philanthropic industry. The last 20 years for me have been involved in private company investment really and one of the sort of observations or one of the things that's become clear to me is that our way of philanthropy is a little different from many players not all in the space in New Zealand but not in the US. Our model for next is really the US philanthropic foundation model and really we are doing that in New Zealand in a way which will work in New Zealand, we believe, and we are all New Zealanders although our Chairman is based in the States. He lives in New York and has been there for about 15 years, Chrysler Dell, and Chrysler's exposure to the US philanthropic scene has been a big factor in shaping next and the way we go about things. But we think about the projects that we're joining with as having, we bring funding to them obviously and if they don't need funding then we're not there but we also bring partnerships and that's really about networks and introductions and so on. That's something, I think it's probably fair to say that if I take today's example with ZIP I think relationships with Fonterra that really were held by next were really a significant factor in actually getting that discussion started and getting it credible and so it's a good example of how those networks can help the projects that we invest with and if we do things in the way that we believe that we can and we believe that we should then we'll build credibility for those projects. I don't think that we've necessarily got it yet because we haven't really done much yet but if we continue to do things and build a credible way of evaluating, of investing and of partnering with our projects then we'll hopefully build some credibility which will bring credibility to those projects that we invest with and I think in an educational, particularly in the educational sphere, one of the things we can give projects is some surety of longevity of support. The electoral term is a major factor I think in educational initiatives and there's not a shortage in our view of good educational initiatives in New Zealand and probably the opposite but getting past the three-year mark or that mark or the next three-year mark when it comes is often a hurdle or an abyss or whatever you and if we're looking to support projects for the terms of five years or more so that I think with those initiatives that we support we can hopefully make a difference to them through doing that. We certainly see ourselves as much more than just a funder. We'll build over time in those areas we are interested in, become a source of research and information. We can be a convener and bring parties together and again I think today's a great example of that. It was really interesting for me sitting and listening to Tayo Spearing, the chief executive of Fonterra and then the chief executive of one of the four other companies that joined with them, Westland Milk Products standing up there and both saying that this was a fantastic opportunity for them to work together which is something that they both acknowledged that in many cases they hadn't done in the past and so I think that we have the good fortune to be able to help create an environment where that sort of thing can happen and I'm not overstating it. I said help create, we're not doing it but we can bring those parties to the table and maybe help start them acting in a way that they wouldn't necessarily be doing naturally and that's a great gift that I think philanthropic groups have got and something that I think hopefully we'll do more and more of so it's a lot more than just handing out money. We're about transformation means change and so we see ourselves very much as a catalyst for change in those areas that we choose to. I've talked about us partnering and partnering with projects and with others and you know New Zealanders are unnaturally outward looking. I think that's one of the benefits of living in one little corner of the world and you know having to get on a plane for three hours to get anywhere and even when you get there you only get to the West Island anyway so it's a long way out so I think we look out. So partnering with global philanthropists is something that I hope that we will do over time and the US is obviously one of the key areas that we look for that. We've chosen that sort of model here and partnering with groups and being a New Zealand partner for those groups is something that we're really keen to do. Not many of them have got the foresight and the get up and go that you people that mantained and you people have got to actually be here in the way that you be here and I think this is, I value the opportunity to meet and make the relationships that we've got here. You guys have partnered with New Zealand in a way that's just incredibly powerful but we'll look to make those connections with others who aren't here yet and help build that. So that's next. What about education? Well we're new at education so I'm not going to give you any blinding insights into education and I'm sure you've had those over the last five or six hours really but I can talk to you about our short experience with it. We ran a once a year process in terms of applications. We did that in the middle of last year. I thought in education we might get about 40 applications. We got 140. They were incredibly spread in terms of the areas that they were in. This is this pie chart that sort of gives you a feel for that. I wouldn't read too much into the splits that we've chosen. That was something that we did at the time and it was just a way really at the time of helping to bring some order to what we'd got. You'll see that the biggest section is environmental education and I think we'll start talking. I've said to you that our two areas of interest are the environment and education but I think from now on or certainly after my board meeting next week I'm hoping that I'll start talking about us having three areas of interest and those will be environment education and environmental education. I think that's an area that we haven't got engaged in yet but we definitely want to get engaged in. There's a number of people that are here this week who have got significant experience and capability in that area of environmental education and that's another one of those connections or one of the other values out of this week for me and for us. The other comment I'd make about that pie chart is how diverse it is and for those of you who are from the education industry none of that will be a surprise because you know how diverse it is. One of the things I'll talk in a minute about the two projects that we did choose in education out of 140 or so but one of the things that we will also do and are starting to do now is narrow down what are the areas of real interest to us. You know $50 million for education is a lot of money but it's not changed the world type of money unless you're very targeted about where you're going to go and how you're going to go about doing it and if we're looking to commit to maybe you know I say half a dozen projects I hope with partners it'll be more. Again today's a great example we've talked about bringing partners in. The dairy industry comes in and pitches in $5 million that's not that's additional in fact to the money that is in there already but there's other situations where we'll be able to put less in and others will put more in and we should be able to do more projects. I'll talk about the two that we supported but just briefly how did we choose really? How did we go through our process? You know five characteristics really and for those of you who are here yesterday I touched on those yesterday but transformational really transformational change and change that would would not otherwise occur so we're not looking to be a substitute funder for anybody and if there are other funders then that's not who would do things then that's not the place for us. That puts us in places where there is either higher risk or different time frames or different ways of doing things from traditional means and that means that not everything we back will succeed and we're upfront about that and you know the people who are from Silicon Valley or been involved in early stage ventures themselves will be well familiar with that. You don't expect that they're all going to succeed but that's a place that will be. Understanding what the problem is and being able to be clear and have clarity around it is a fundamental part of the early part of the evaluation process for us and if Africans haven't really got a clear picture of that themselves then that tells you something. You know the project management I've put there project management with leadership but I probably should have put those the other way around. It's really leadership you know if you've got leadership then the project management will come and one of the things I'm sort of proud of but not surprised by is that if you look at the leaders of the four projects that we support they're all outstanding leaders in our in our view and you know not necessarily high profile. Al Bramley today this is up who some of you have seen did an outstanding job standing up there beside Tayo Spearing who's you know probably one of the bigger CEOs in a New Zealand context. Al's probably one of the newer ones were in week two of Zip in his first CEO role and he stood up there and did a brilliant job of talking of talking about Zip and that you know that sort of you know if you talk about leadership capability and so on then Al's got it he hasn't got the profile. Some of the other projects Dayman Salmond is the leader of one she's probably known to to many of you and for on the educational side Francis Valentine maybe known to some some of you are people who've got probably more of a profile but but a strong leadership capability and potential. Why the impact we want to support projects that we think can ultimately have a national impact even restoration of Abel Tasman National Park is obviously clearly a local thing but but that's having an impact on the on our partner in that which is dock and and so we can see that that project even though it's clearly not got national geographical aspirations can have national can have national impact and the and the the last capability is around sustainability. There's no point in us going and supporting a project for five years doing wonderful things or other things with it and then if the end of the five years when our we we decide that our funding stops that it all falls in a hole or goes backwards. So having a plan for sustainability is an integral part of us of us being involved. In Abel Tasman National Park one of the ways we went about that was we talked to the government about the fact that we were keen we were happy to come in and fund making Abel Tasman National Park predator free. It's a 30 year project but a lot of ground can be made in the first 10 years but we said that we were happy to do that provided the government was prepared to commit that any ecological gains that were made during that time would be at least at a minimum maintained and the government agreed to that and have signed an accord with us called the tomorrow accord by which they undertake that that what I what I've just described to maintain the ecological gains and and we have the ability and and it is written in a way that any philanthropic group with a suitable project can join to to bring their projects in under the tomorrow accord so it's not just a it's not just a next agreement. So that's that's how we got to sustainability in that example so there's lots of different ways of doing it but it's it's a fundamental part of the of the picture for us so the projects look I'm going to talk there's I've got a short video on on these two projects which which I'll show so the mind lab how many of you know of the mind lab just out of interest to me okay maybe maybe a fifth of you say and so the mind lab is a is a technology laboratory in Auckland set up by a lady called Francis Valentine she really set it up because she recognised that kids were not getting you know young people were not in her view getting exposure to to technology in a way that was that was good that was quick enough and fast enough very quickly she she set it up with holiday with holiday programs and so on very quickly school started bringing classes in very quickly the day filled up with school classes coming through the mind lab and then she and and she noticed that when classes came classes would come along with maybe 30 children and there'd be 10 teachers and and and not because that took 10 teachers for the class but because that the teacher told the other teachers in the school and and brought them along because they they were hungry for that knowledge so Francis who's a who's a woman of action brought Unitech in and set up a postgraduate diploma for teachers 40 week program that started last year or the first course was run last year teachers do it while they're teaching 10 hours a week the first 16 weeks they do six hours six hours a week in the mind lab as a cohort of 40 they're sharing all their work online obviously and working and then the second 16 weeks of the course are are done online and you know we we took a look at the program thought it was thought it was fantastic and really Francis just wants to get it out around the country as quickly as possible so we're we're providing scholarships for teachers to help get it out the the program cost $2,750 a teacher we're providing $801,000 scholarships and and the mind lab and Unitech have come in with $1,000 scholarships so 800 teachers this year will get to do the course for $750 fact in Gisborne off to the side but you know sort of how these things can build on each other in Gisborne they've said it's so fantastic Eastland Community Trust have come in with a program and they're they're paying the other 750 so teachers in Gisborne will be doing it for free the year 2020 is 1300 days away you know we can't keep talking about 21st century literacy and incapability as though it's coming you know we're right from the thick of it the mind lab was an interdisciplinary lab it looks at the needs of today's world we need to raise our digital competency and change in the role of careers and jobs we need to start with young children and so the mind lab was developed fundamentally so we can enable children to get excited about the possibility of technology but once we realised that it's all very well to teach kids and to have schools come through and get educated the teachers are just important and with that probably more so we're developing the next generation of teachers and what they are is teachers who have been in the workforce in the teacher profession for many years in many cases sometimes 30 40 years but actually are wonderful teachers who are trying to continue to be engaged with their students for the support from the next foundation what we've done is establish the next generation teacher scholarships 800 teachers around New Zealand next year undertake postgraduate studies in digital and collaborative learning in their region or region post them where they'll be able to learn all about new ways of actually teaching changing the way the education is delivered in this country as a nation contributing to a global market we don't have time for catch up right now we need to be leapfrogging our teachers forward and we need to take them from where they are right now which potentially is a fairly old traditional analog model of delivery and we need to go rock it fire them forward to make them feel really confident working with young people today digital literacy for teachers was something that struck us as as as an issue that and and something that we could that we could help make a difference in and and and was important um the other educational project that we supported is springboard trust out of interest how many of you have heard a springboard trust yeah rebecca because you've talked to me so yeah same not many and it's it's it's interesting it's that's what i sort of what i expected so um springboard trust about leadership professional development for primary school principals really focused on low-decile schools and um it's uh it's it's a it's a program that started about five years ago has worked only with schools in south Auckland to date about 90 principals have done the program and um is expanding with the back of our support into northland uh and um and then next year will be Waikato um and um and is and is really building up its backbone the backbone organisation to be able to expand further um in a rev who i've got a have got a video who's the chief executive of commonwealth bank which is about a 50 000 employee business uh in run out of australia um is is the champion for this he was a mckinsey partner when he started up in new zealand a passionate new zealand a passionate about education and and um and gives you know his time and energy to driving this program in a way that we think is fantastic and has and has brought in a really great range of um of of educationalists and business people together and part of the thing that attracted us to us other than just the importance of leadership in terms of um uh driving education outcomes uh was um uh was the fact that it's a partnership between business that business and education that is for education um but but the educate the principles are not the only beneficiaries of this so are the business people business people who partner they buddy they run a program but they buddy principles up with business people uh for the year for 12 months asb have been there from the beginning and i've now made that partnering that buddy program part of their leadership program within asb because of the value that they see that their people have been getting out of the buddying with the principles um and for those of you who don't uh haven't got the sort of exposure the principles it's one of the hardest jobs in the world really and it's a it's a it's a really challenging job so i think it's not only been an eye opener for a lot of these business people but it's been an education for them too i had a great time at school as i say grew up in the public system i remember inspirational teachers right from what used to be called the primers tried my best in class maybe wasn't always the best student loved the sports loved the drama classes the music classes and just felt that there were a whole lot of people there to try and help me do the best i possibly could in whatever area i choose to to try and do well simply put springboard trust works with principles to help make their schools better uh so our view is that with schools like in business like in the arts like in sports if you want to help an organisation or a team get better you start with the leader we are definitely focused more on the low-design schools who tend to need a bit more of the support because they don't have the same resource delightfully what we found a lot of these schools are run by great principles with great staff who really are in a good position to provide good education to kids and we bring people from different businesses to work alongside the principles we call them capacity partners maybe somebody from McKinsey ASB Russell McVeigh Spark Fonterra we've had people from all sorts of different businesses and they work very closely with the principles talking to them about the schools getting out of schools they help the principles a lot the partnership between the principles these capacity partners works very well for the principles we found that what we also found is what a difference that makes the life of the capacity partners they are inspired what the principles are doing they love going to the schools they love seeing the impact the schools are having on the kids they repeatedly tell us well actually i think i'm getting more out of it than i'm putting in and that's when you know you're onto something good what we're hoping to achieve over the next five or ten years again starts with the kids we want to help impact the education outcomes with the schools we've worked to date we've touched schools comprising in total over 32,000 children we're hoping to more than double that number without that we need from next foundation and others the good news is even if schools get to an even higher level you then want them to get to a higher level still so the model of helping principles helping the people who make the most difference bringing businesses together with schools and all focusing on better outcome for kids that never goes away and what all of us currently working at springboard hope is that when we all leave we've left an organisation which is sustainable and which five years will be doing an even better job than it was doing and we were out and we're pretty confident we're on that path okay so i'll uh i'll finish up there they've got uh the um one of the things i love about those videos is the um that the music it comes is is from our secondary school students in New Zealand there's a competition run here in Elijah you know you're here there's a competition run in New Zealand by a guy and by a guy called Mike Chan which is for which is for songwriting songwriters for secondary school children and they and it's widely supported they choose 40 each year and the four songs that we've chosen have all come from those kids and um they are um i love them and uh you know they're very cool and one of the nice things that will come out of this will profile those kids and their songs on our website and do some stuff with them over over the year to come and uh that's sort of one of the that's that's one of the little nice kickers for us okay so um yosaf i'll go to i know on time but if you want to go to questions and answers that's fine by me so oh hi um it's really exciting that you're investing in education in this country um i i used to be a secondary school teacher and i've involved with been involved with some of the professional development around um upscaling teachers around language code ict that sort of thing um i guess i found the experience pretty disheartening um and the the experience that i had was that the the acceleration of learning and the students was outstripping anything that the teachers could hope to keep up with and i found that the approach was uh teaching the teachers how to deliver and it was the the word delivery used a couple of times in one of those talks um i feel like my my preferred approach would be give teachers the skills they need to just really support the students and get out of the way i think we've heard that theme as well do you have any sense of of whether that's possible with these programs um and i'm also interested do you i'm not sure if you mentioned whether you've got someone who's got experience in the education system on your team sort of advising you on these things yeah thanks okay well to take the second question first thanks um yeah i've got a um uh first of all uh an advisory panel uh that works so um the two of the educationists that are on it that you might know uh Margaret Bendall who who was um who was a former principal of Epsom Girls Grammar actually but has been involved and and is involved with uh things like cognition and Teach First uh and and uh and others now and a guy called John Taylor who was um who was also a former principal uh and then talked to a lot of principals and talked to a lot of uh and and talked to a lot of other people one one point i'd you know one point i'll make and and uh it's not defensive at all but in in any sense this is not the end of what next is going to do in education it's just the beginning and um and they're the two that we chose this year um the question around you know all of this gets every educational project and our view gets back to what what's it doing for learning outcomes in the classroom that's the that's really that in some ways the only measure and um so our response to try to get to that is that each so each project that we support we are also supporting um what what we consider to be um rigorous uh you know evaluative framework to go alongside to find out whether that's the case so in the so in both both of those two cases we have we have also funded that research that is commencing and that is so that is going on and in the case of springboard trying to draw the connection between improved strategic direction amongst principals and learning outcomes in the classroom is is a very hard thing to do but these guys are going to have a go at it they've they've they've um so NZER have been contracted to do that to to essentially shape up that framework um and do that so we think that that I guess my my main response to your question is that we can't guarantee any of those things but we're going to make sure that there's good evaluative framework alongside each of the projects so that we can actually find out find that out over time um and uh and and it's the same and same in mind really so so for two questions you mentioned the other day that education is quite a broad area and you're narrowing down on a few sections of it would you be able to say what they are yeah I put them on the slide Josh there so as it turned out so this is not um as it turned out because it was the one it was the one slide I had to go so this is our current thinking don't take this out and and quote us uh if you can because um I haven't put this in front of my board yet so um uh but but this shows you where my thinking is going um and and let me say not my thinking too this is something that uh you know the educational advisers have been uh have been in as well so really those four areas um you know putting environmental education as an area in itself but you know early childhood education but really also the naught to two parents as first educators is an area where there's not necessarily a lot of institutional uh uh work where there hasn't been but but where there's where there's an increasing welter of research showing that to use sorry a commercial term but where you get the best bang for your buck and um and that's uh in terms of change so I think that's an area that will certainly end up uh end up uh looking looking to get involved in um I heard it might have been you Josh but just when I walked in somebody talking about collaboration as a factor and that's something that uh that we're really interested in there's a project called an XL Rotorua which uh some of you may or may not or not which is about the city of Rotorua really trying to take responsibility for the education outcomes across all of the schools in Rotorua 46 schools primary intermediate and secondary and they're going at that in a way which is which is not at odds with but is a different line to tomorrow schools and really looking for ways for schools to collaborate on various things um and uh and and learn from each other so that's that's one of the areas mentoring and mentoring and buddy systems there's a lot of anecdotal evidence and not a lot of hard research to support that that they're a great area and future focus really technology and education it's going to change things I'm sure you've been talking about it all day so it's a place that we want to look one more question hi um one of one of the big barriers that I find a lot of school leavers have to getting their first jobs is finding some um work experience um or some kind of volunteer project that's you know a really structured mission focused project that they were part of that means something to employers and the work experience often doesn't even have to be relevant to the type of career pathway that they want it's just a a way of being able to show that they could be part of a team part of a project be reliable so on I'm interested in whether um a next foundation could be a connector between some of your organisations that are doing big um environmental projects and people are organisations that are interested in setting up mass work experience or volunteer project schemes um and if it's on that scale it can be recognised you know as a young person I was on that such and such scheme to do you know the possum trapping mission to clear up able Tasman is anything like that in the pipeline yeah well it's got a bit further along the pipeline with your question because uh because it came it came up in a discussion this week uh really and uh somebody made a made a similar sort of suggestion around there was an opportunity there around and around predator predator management you know trap that you know um labour for manual labour for the traps is a major uh is a major constraint to to acceleration so so that suggestion was made you've you've given another another angle on it and it's something that we will go back and have a have a look at because we're interested we're really interested in the predator management space and we're really interested in the in that in that education space um the other thing sort of relate it the other thing I'll tell you to go and have a look at a website I just I just remit I said told Matt yesterday I was going to email it to you and I remembered just when I walked in here Matt so is a is an organisation called pride and joy that a couple of kiwis set up about 18 months ago um that is that is about providing vocational training for the young unemployed uh they will only take on the young unemployed in their business um and they want to form a these these two guys who are um who are who are young by my standards not by many of yours but they're in their 40s probably um two really capable guys one uh ex Nike managing marketing manager in the States one ran NZ ski basically the South Island ski fields they both want to develop a global brand in New Zealand and they latched on to out of New Zealand and they've latched on to providing vocational training for the young unemployed through this pride and joy which is about ice cream vending actually and um so go and have a look at pride and joy that's a um that's one uh you know New Zealand companies sort of take on it as well and your suggestions a great one thank you Bill I'd like to congratulate you for the great work you did today with Fonterra and the dairy industry coming in and for doing all the work you do through next and very excited to co-create with you uh in the education space as well as the environmental space but thanks very much for taking your time and sharing this with us really appreciate the insets and the work next is doing thank you