Technology in Human Services Technology in Human Services

Welcome to episode 32 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I chat with Marium Vahed about how service design and innovation thinking can be brought into a nonprofit service setting.















When I saw that Marium had started an MSc in Digital Management, I wanted to learn more about how she had been able to incorporate design thinking into her work. I think it’s an approach that more of us in the sector could benefit learning more about, and she agreed to chat.







I’ve been open about how I consider design thinking more or less a rebrand of popular education and community engagement techniques our sector used to focus a lot on. The language has changed, but the idea of co-creation, or creating with our communities, is something in our sector’s core values. I think there is much to learn from what has become a formalized and professionalized practice in the design thinking world, but also a lot we contribute and bring to the conversation.







Here are some of the initial questions we used to guide our conversation:







* How would you define design thinking?* How can it be used in a community service setting?* How have you been able to introduce it into your work?* How have your colleagues and peers reacted?* What’s been useful, what hasn’t worked as well?* When we we look at design thinking and community engagement approaches typical in the nonprofit sector, do you see a lot of overlap in the ideas, models, and approaches?* If someone in a nonprofit was interested in learning more about incorporating design thinking into their work, what would you suggest they do to get started?







Marium’s bio







Marium Vahed believes in a green movement that prioritizes collaboration across diverse communities and sectors to build a robust, equitable and sustainable future. In 2019, Marium co-founded Green Ummah, a non-profit that raises awareness amongst Canadian Muslims of the Islamic environmental teachings and empowers them to become leaders in the green movement. For her work, she was awarded Top 25 Environmentalists Under 25.







Marium graduated from the University of Toronto with an HBA in Anthropology and Diaspora and Transnational Studies. She brings this passion to North York Community House where she works on the Journeys to Active Citizenship team to co-design civic engagement curriculum for immigrants and refugees.







Marium is currently a candidate for a Master of Science in Digital Management at Ivey Business School where she is the VP Partnerships at the Ivey MSc Entrepreneurship Club. She envisions bringing best practices of innovation and entrepreneurship to her community.







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 0:00Welcome to Episode 32 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I chat with Marium Vahed about how service design and innovation th...

Welcome to episode 31 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I chat with Aletheia Délivré about service and human centred design. She is currently a Design Manager with the Government of Canada and an Organizational Development consultant doing service design at AlphaPlus, an Ontario nonprofit that helps adult literacy education professionals to incorporate digital technology in their work.







I came across Aletheia’s work in a converation with AlphaPlus about digital literacy during a recent project. She works out loud, sharing, musing, connecting with other service designers on Twitter, which I love and think is both incredibly helpful, and brave. I’ve been meaning to connect with a service designer for some time on the podcast. As I read about and how she shared her work, approach, struggles, and successes, I knew she was the right person to reach out to. I’m grateful that she agreed to chat, and I think you’ll find our conversation insightful, fun, and useful for your nonprofit work.







Resources:







Where you can find and learn from Aletheia:







* Website* Twitter* Articles on Medium* Her reflections on bringing service design into AlphaPlus







Some core questions we started with:







What is service design and user experience, and what should nonprofits know about it? How can it help them? How can implementing a design and user experience process help nonprofits create better services?







How are service design principles and approaches different from other approaches to creating services in nonprofits? How are they the same?







You’ve worked in agency and consulting firms, government, and nonprofits. What are the unique challenges or differences in service design work in these different cultures and contexts?







For the non-professional service designer, what are some core skills, attitudes, and beliefs that any nonprofit staff should develop to build into their work creating services for their clients and communities?







Can you tell me a bit about your experience at AlphaPlus? You’ve written about using a design approach to find the why of your job there as well as to help re-envision the organization’s why?







How has service design impacted AlphaPlus?







You’re also working as a Design Manager with the Canadian Government. In many departments, entire service design units and labs have been set up to bring service design into the public service. How have you found the ability to do service design and impact service delivery in a better resourced environment?







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 0:00Welcome to Episode 31 of the technology and Human Services podcast. In this episode, I chat with a lithia delivery about service and Human Centered Design.

Welcome to episode 30 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I chat with Cybersecurity professional Kassia Clifford. LinkedIn has become a great place to learn from others and make new connections. Kassia and I recently connected, after I’d been following her excellent sharing for some time. She shares practical, useful, and urgently important tips about cybersecurity. She calls herself a “Cybersecurity Interpreter,” an important skill set and attitude that she uses to share what she’s learning about cybersecurity risk, in an accessible way.







I’ve learned a lot from her and when she shared a particular post about free and easy ways to improve security, I knew I wanted to chat with her on the podcast. I think you’ll find it useful and you’ll leave with some practical next steps to make sure your online activity is secure.







Here’s that post and what she wrote:







* #MFA : block #hackers who gain access to email creds ??* #Passwordmanager : store complex pswds in a safe place?* Auto-updates : keep the latest #security patches on your OS??* #Antivirus scanner : detect threats proactively??* Full-disk encryption : #reducetherisk if a device is lost/stolen ??* #Awarenesstraining : make #cybersecurity a part of the convo* Access mgt: MFA, limit admins, team drive







If some of those hashtags make you scratch your head, don’t worry. All is explained in this episode!







Some core questions we started with:







In spite of moving services online over the past year during the pandemic, and even before, many nonprofits have low literacy when it comes to online privacy, security, confidentiality, and knowledge of encryption. On your site you describe yourself as a “cybersecurity interpreter.” I think many nonprofits could use someone with a title like that! Can you describe what that means?







You share great tips and what you’re learning on LinkedIn. Recently you shared practical and easy ways to improve individual digital security. Can you go over those tips and explain why they’re important?







What would your advice be to nonprofit leaders about steps they need take when it comes to risk assessment and security in their agencies. In particular, I’m thinking about social service agencies that interact with clients and lots of their personal information.







How should nonprofit organizations and workers go about learning about cybersecurity? What baseline skills, attitudes, and approaches should they be taking to ensure they work safely online and with client data?







Resources:







Kassia was nice enough to provide a list of useful and important resources that will be useful for you as your explore and learn about cybersecurity:







General Cyber Awareness Training:







* Securicy* Wizer* Udemy * RBC Kidsplanation Videos: (Easy, light 1 minute videos, could have a Lunch and Learn with an entire team, watch and discuss together)Email Phishinga rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://youtu.

Welcome to episode 29 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode, I talk with David Phu from Nonprofit Video Comms, a nonprofit video and communications consultancy.







Years ago I used to tell nonprofit peers that the emergence of YouTube had both raised and lowered people’s expectations of nonprofit video. Raised them because YouTube was so easy and ubiquitous you were expected to create and share videos. Lowered them because people were not expecting hyper produced video production, just good stories, useful and practical content in video format.







As you’ll hear in this episode, David’s approach exemplifies this notion of nonprofit video use. He sees video as a key communication and information sharing tool for nonprofits. And while he can give you the hyper produced video product, he’s more interested in getting you to see how you can and should start creating videos now, today, with the tools and content you already have, without focusing on perfection. I think you’ll find this an interesting and inspiring conversation.







Useful resources:







David has created an awesome Should we make a video? resource you should definitely check out and learn from. In it, he outlines a 3-step process to help you decide on what type of videos you should be making. There’s a 20-minute walk-through video and a PDF you can download to help guide you through the process. It’s practical, simple, and I highly recommend it to you.







David and I have a favourite informational video that I’m embedding here. It’s a great example of how to use video to provide practical information to you clients. In this case, CultureLink is an organization with offices deep within a mall/apartment building complex. Not easy to find. But super simple with this video!



















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 0:00Welcome to Episode 29 of the technology and Human Services podcast. In this episode, I talk with David Fuu from nonprofit video comms, a nonprofit video and communications consultancy. years ago, I used to tell nonprofit peers that the emergence of YouTube had both raised and lowered people’s expectations but nonprofit video raised them because YouTube was so easy and ubiquitous, you were expected to create and share videos lower than because people were not expecting hyper produced video production, just good stories, useful and practical content in video format. As you’ll hear in this episode, David’s approach exemplifies this notion of nonprofit video use, he sees video as a key communication and information sharing tool for nonprofits. And while he can give you the hyper produced video product, he’s more interested in getting you to see how you can and should start creating videos now today, with the tools and content you already have without focusing on perfection. I think you’ll find this an interesting and inspiring conversation. So thank you so much for joining me on on the podcast today. Can you just give me a bit of a background about you and how you came to work in video? Yeah.

Welcome to episode 28 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode, I’m chatting with Whitney Loewen the manager of E learning and special projects at The Immigrant Education Society (TIES) in Calgary. I reached out to Whitney after discovering their Newcomer Introduction to Classes Online project, or NICO.







NICO is an online course designed to help newcomers overcome barriers to online learning. It offers a flexible, self-paced curriculum that can be accessed online at any time. Upon completion of NICO, participants will possess the digital literacy skills required to undertake online language studies. That sounds great, and is needed. But what particularly got me excited was that they created NICO to be an open digital literacy educational resource, free for other agencies to use. If you’re using Moodle as your Learning Management System, you can get the full NICO curriculum to use with your clients. I had a great discussion with Whitney, and discovered even more innovative work The Immigrant Education Society is doing. I hope you find this as interesting and useful a discussion as I did.







If you’re interested in transferring the course materials to your own Moodle LMS, contact WhitneyLoewen@immigrant-education.ca.







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 0:03Welcome to the technology and Human Services podcast. Can you start maybe by telling me a little bit about yourself and the immigrant education society?







Whitney Loewen 0:31Yeah, sure. So my name is Whitney Loewen. And I’m the manager of E learning and special projects at the immigrant education society. We’re otherwise known as ties and we’re a newcomer serving agency in Calgary, Alberta. We were founded in 1988. by Mr. Swenson do and he was an immigrant from Pakistan at the time. And so he noticed, even at that time that immigrants were having a very difficult time accessing English language training, never mind getting their credentials recognized. He was an engineer himself. And so he wanted to help other people have a slightly smoother transition into Canada. And so he founded our first our first location and Forest Lawn, which is in the southeast quadrant of Calgary. And today, we have three locations, actually, throughout the northeast and southeast. So these are really vibrant communities. They’re very multicultural, most people don’t speak English at home work may not be their first language. So I don’t think it really fits the stereotype that a lot of people have, but what Calgary is from the outside, they’re beautiful communities to work in.







Marco Campana 1:31That’s great. Yeah, no, I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, I think people when people think of Calgary, they don’t think of the same kind of multiculturalism that exists in Toronto, or Vancouver or Montreal, but, but it is a vibrant, thriving, multicultural community. So it’s really great to kind of place the organization in that space. Thank you for for doing that.

Welcome to episode 27 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode, I’m chatting with a few folks from the Somerset West Community Health Centre in Ottawa about their experiences with digital equity and virtual care. On the line with me are Sue Merrill, Manager of Quality Improvement, Planning and Evaluation, Lisa Vadeboncoeur, Digital Equity and Virtual Progamming Project Assistant, Magda Osman, Community Health Promoter.







I connected with Sue late in the Fall of 2020 after I saw their request for proposals for a Digital Equity and Virtual Programming Capacity Building Project. Digital equity is something that has come to everyone’s attention during the pandemic as a huge issue and challenge in newcomer communities. It was exciting to see an organization formally tackling the issue in our sector and I wanted to learn more. Fast forward to June 2021 and we have all learned a lot. It seemed like a good time to find out Somerset West Community Health Centre’s experience with their project, and what we can all learn from them.







As you’ll hear, they’re still learning, but what they have implemented with a little bit of funding is valuable for us all. I hope you enjoy the conversation.







You can learn more about their project in the Settlement Sector & Technology Task Group AMSSA Lecture webinar recording.







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 0:00Welcome to Episode 27 of the technology and Human Services podcast. In this episode, I’m chatting with a few folks from the Somerset West Community Health Center in Ottawa, about their experiences with digital equity in virtual care. on the line with me, we’re Sue Merrill, manager of quality improvement planning and evaluation, Lisa van debunker, digital equity and virtual programming project assistant, and Magda Osman community health promoter. I connected with Sue late in the fall of 2020, after I saw their request for proposals for a digital equity and virtual programming capacity building project. Digital equity is something that has come to everyone’s attention during the pandemic as a huge issue and challenge in many communities, including newcomer communities, it was exciting to see an organization formally tackling the issue in our sector. And I wanted to learn more. Fast forward to June 2021. And we have all learned a lot, it seemed like a good time to find out Somerset West Community Health Center’s experience with their project.