How Marginalized Groups and NGOs are Left Behind
[Music]
hello
i’m batiste and i see the world as a
mountain
and that we are all mountaineers trying
to climb our way to the top
the way you move forward in life is by
learning how you learn new skills you
get our
insight you get knowledge meet new
people you have new experiences
basically learning by living
but learning on its own is not enough
just like any mountaineer you need
equipment
i mean you need mountain shoes and a
backpack and climbing gear
for me technology is that equipment
that pushes you forward in life
technology is the tool that allows you
to learn and to discover new things
i mean today we live in a society where
information
is at our fingertips the largest human
built encyclopedia wikipedia
is accessible for free you can teach
yourself
programming or design or mathematics on
youtube
and in a split second you can find what
you’re looking for
on google anyone can do this right
wrong 52 of the world population
does not have regular access to a
smartphone
or to a computer the kind of tool you
need
to start your client so only a couple of
years ago
that i truly truly realized and also
witnessed
that not everyone has everything they
need to become
a mountaineer that some of us are just
wandering around in the world
they can see that mount you know but
there’s so many obstacles and so many
barriers in front of them
that they don’t even see where the foot
of the mountain is and where they can
begin
their climb that’s what they call the
digital divide you know it’s the gap
between people who have access
to modern information and communications
technology
ict and those who don’t have access or
who have restricted access
what i mean with that is that people do
not have access to telephones
televisions internet computers
and i believe that a digital divide is
an id
worth sharing and that’s what i’m doing
today with you by talking about my
personal journey
and at the same time by sharing tested
ways
of how we can collectively address this
digital divide
so let’s start with my personal journey
i grew up in belgium in the 1990s and
the first computer we had at home
was windows 95 and i still remember
being amazed seeing my father work on it
and then me afterwards playing a game on
it
it’s not the only technology memory i
have
i also remember the sound the beeping
sound of the dial of internet
also how slow it was compared to the
speed of the day
i think a lot of you are familiar with
the sound aren’t you
i also remember i think i was 9 or 10
years old
when i took a computer class together
with my father
and a friend from school and his father
and we learned the basic stuff about
computers and how to use them
it was kind of my first digital literacy
class
between that moment in time and today a
lot has of course changed you know that
first computer that windows 95
got replaced by others and when i grew
older
i had a smartphone and a laptop
looking back i have to acknowledge that
i was lucky
that was lucky that was born in a place
where we had a computer at home and that
was pretty normal
i was also lucky that i was born in a
place but also at the time
where i could learn the skills are still
useful
for me today and that i had the family
and the friends and the school
and the local community to support me
and to give me that little push
to set me up in life because fast
forwarding to today
i’m working as a product owner for
chiron kyron is an ngo
was founded in 2015 during the so-called
refugee crisis that hit
europe and a couple of months later
afterwards
after it was founded i joined them
because i was so intrigued by the big
big vision that karen had to support
refugees who arrived in germany
and wanted to go to university
because i don’t know if you know but as
a refugee it takes a very long time
before you’re able
to speak german and to get all your
documents in order
before you can apply to university
that’s why
karen built a platform where you had
online courses
and what you had guidance and advice on
how to apply
and besides that we also created a
partner network of universities that
were recognizing that online content so
these two years
average was not completely wasted
since 2015 and today five six years
we’ve learned a ton and every time when
we
discovered new challenges we had to come
up with new solutions
and we had to adapt our product and our
services to the needs of our students
so what have we learned
today i want to share with you five
insights
the first one is about our main goal
that main goal was to get
as many caring students as possible
into university i know it sounds
ambitious
and it was and we successfully managed
to get a lot of students
into a german university but at the same
time also a lot of them
did not get accepted on top of that
a lot of new students joined their
platform
and they were living in countries where
we as karen did not have an office
and that meant that we could not give
them the same support
as these students in germany because we
don’t know
in every country what the legal and the
university landscape looks like
and we don’t have the resources to build
up these partnerships with universities
that recognize that content in every
country
so at the same time we were noticing
that these students were still using our
platform and they were learning skills
and learning languages
in search for a job in search to start
their own
business that’s why we pivoted
we adapted our product we adapted our
curriculum we definitely support
to meet this new situation and to meet
the new opportunities
the second thing i want to share with
you is something i learned while working
together
with our teams in jordan and lebanon and
they told us that the distributed
literacy levels
of some of our students is rather low
because you cannot assume that everyone
who has a mobile phone or everyone who
has a computer
has also the right skills to use them
especially the skills that are needed to
learn
to live to work in a digital society
so we did two things one we created
together with partners already
three digital literacy courses and two
we simplified i technically will keep on
simplifying our platform every day
because
the more simpler it is to use the more
familiar it feels the more natural it
feels
the more easier it is more people can
use it
the third thing i want to share with you
is language
especially english i mean most of the
content
most of the internet is in english and
everyone speaks english right
no it’s a fact that 17
of the world population speaks english
natively
or as a second language so that means
that
four out of five people in the world
have potentially
extra barriers while accessing the
internet
and especially while studying online
because the big majority
of the educational content is in english
so what did we do we translated our
campus
in multiple language and we also started
adding
arabic content to our curriculum
the fourth thing that i want to share
with you is about the need for computers
and devices
when these students in 2015 arrived in
germany
they didn’t have a computer with them
they had a smartphone and
back then it was hard and still today it
is hard to study
a course online because so many of the
websites
so many of the content is only made for
computers
and of course we’ve tried to make
computers accessible for students over
the last years but
we cannot give every student a computer
so that’s why it’s so important
that we build mobile first
talking about building platforms that’s
the last point i want to do
is the need for low bandwidth and
inclusive
platforms did you know that 40 percent
of the world population
does not have access to the internet or
it is super expensive
we have a student his name is he’s from
congo he currently lives in malawi
and he is amazing
he is one of our community leaders and
he is every time
engaging and motivating and welcoming
other students and it’s
really great to see that but at the same
time it feels as well frustrating
knowing that he has to pay expensive
internet bundles
to be able to study online that’s why we
build a low bandwidth android app
and we keep on building alternatives
for users who have shaky internet
connections
these five lessons bring us to today and
as i said you know
every time when we discovered new
challenges we had to come up with new
opportunities and new
solutions and we had to adapt our
product
to it the challenge we have today is the
following
we know that online learning pure online
learning
is not enough and that
to be really successful with online
learning you need to have a community
around it you have to make the content
relevant
so that makes to localize it you need to
provide local support
we also know that we as karen cannot
open an office in every country
and that we cannot provide that local
offline support and that others maybe
can
and we also know if we want to achieve
the impact
that we want to achieve we need to work
together that’s why we decided to launch
the collective impact campus
we decided to open up our technology
to open up our platform for other ngos
so that they can run their own online
learning program
so that they can reach their communities
and manage their learners in a more
effective
and efficient way these partners bring
that understanding of the local context
and they bring that local support to the
table and we
provide them with a private space on our
platform and the tools and the support
what is needed
to digitalize their content
but collective impact campus is more
than just a platform
it’s also a collective of organizations
that want to work together
that want to work together by sharing
insights by sharing best practices by
maybe even sharing opportunities for
their learners and on top of that
we as kind want to enable them as well
to exchange
content and allow them to collaborate
together
so that more and more and more
programs get recognized
because if programs get recognized it
means that students
who graduate from these programs have
more opportunities
out there and that they can start or
continue
their climb on their mountain
i believe this is possible no i truly
believe this because technology
can do that technology is amazing
technology has created so many
opportunities has lowered so many
barriers
i mean let’s be honest without
technology i would not be standing here
in front of you today
and share you my ideas and technology
especially artificial intelligence will
only boost your society forward
in the next coming years and that’s why
it is super super crucial that we make
sure
that technology does not leave more
people behind
because i truly believe that if we all
actively and collectively work together
to create more access to content to
devices
to the internet at the same time teach
digital skills we can together
make sure that there’s a world where
more mountaineers
can find their own pathway on the
mountain of learning