There’s a lot of great training, sharing and networking that happens in human services.
But so much of the information and networking stays in the room.
The Toronto South Local Immigration Partnership is running a series of workshops with local service providers to help them better serve vulnerable newcomers. Part of their workshop model is to ask participants to take the workshop back to their agencies and present a 10 minute summary of what they learned. They make it easy by providing a shortened slide deck of presentation materials.
It’s a great model. It means one person can share with potentially dozens more in their agency. Taking it even further would be to share the materials online for even more people to access.
I recently presented at their workshop focused on innovative outreach approaches and thought I’d share my presentation here. Doing this is also a way to model how we can share our work more broadly. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time. If you go to my workshop page you’ll see a pretty common theme of presentations. None were recorded, but have a fair bit of overlapping information (always with context-specific differences depending on the audience, etc.).
I’ve wanted to record my presentations for some time, and doing it this way, using my smartphone to record the audio and then syncing up with the video seemed to be a low tech way to go. And it worked!
This workshop focused on how to effectively outreach to vulnerable newcomers.
The overall goals of the morning were:
- Explore ways of finding and effectively outreaching to vulnerable newcomers
- Learn about various outreach tools, including social media
- Learn about creative outreach strategies that work
- Explore the role of community engagement in outreach
- Create an outreach plan
My piece of the morning looked at how technology can help with that outreach.
I recorded the audio of my presentation, and have synced that up with my slides to create a video you can watch of the presentation (39 minutes). Let me know in the comments below if you find it useful!
Workshop resources
Here are a number of workshop resources from the session, including slides, documents and links to additional reading and resources.
Presentation slides (for download and embedded for quick viewing): Outreach to newcomers – focus on technology – Marco Campana at Toronto South LIP outreach workshop – July 2018 (PDF)
You may be interested in reading articles and podcast episodes on my site related to providing service online.
For immigration source country statistics, and a good overall global and country-by-country perspective of internet, mobile, social and messaging app usage, We are Social’s Global Digital 2018 report is a must read.
Looking to pitch a technology idea at your agency? Let the Nonprofit Service Canvas be your guide.
Here are some useful starting points to continue your learning:
- Beth Kanter
- NonProfit MarCommunity
- TechSoup Canada – make sure your charity has an account with them to access tech donations and the Google Ad Grants program
- TechSoup
- CanadaHelps
- Idealware
- NetSquared
- Wild Apricot
- NTEN
- Buffer
Additional documents (all in PDF format):
- Case Study – From Phones to Facebook – How to Engage Youth on the Front Lines of Social Media
- Case Study – Using Technology to Help Voices Be Heard 2 – webinars
- Web_2 0_Planning_Worksheet – template
- Technology as a tool to serve your clients – session worksheets
- Canadian Association of Social Workers – Social Media Use and Social Work Practice
- NASW, ASWB, CSWE ,& CSWA Standards for Technology in Social Work Practice
- Unleashing Innovation Using Everyday Technology to Improve Nonprofit Services
Practical online service resources and guidelines for staff and clients:
- Sample newcomer services privacy & security guidelines (PDF)
- Smart phone ACCEPTABLE USE guidelines – draft sample guidelines (PDF)
- Safety Privacy Guideline for clients – mobile apps for service (PDF)
Civic Tech (potential volunteers and resources to help with tech)
- Civic Tech Toronto
- Catchafire – connects you with passionate, pro bono professionals looking to donate their skills through 1-hour phone calls and/or fully fledged projects.
- Hashtagcharity – connects social entrepreneurs and tech professionals to work together on high-impact technology projects.