I’m going to bring you ideas, initiatives and individuals doing interesting and unique things with technology in their human service work.
There are thousands of human and community service non profits that want and need to use technology, especially social media, in their service work. That’s what I’m interested in and am going to explore in this podcast.
In this episode, I spoke with Marc-André Séguin, an immigration lawyer with the firm Exeo, in Montreal. Earlier this year, Marc-André launched the first immigration chatbot in Canada. Immigration Virtual Assistant, or IVA, is a Facebook Messenger-based chatbot.
I asked Madison what it’s like to shift from a predominantly in-person service culture to an online-only service. She provides a refreshingly candid overview of some of the challenges they faced.
In March of this year, PeaceGeeks was one of the winners of the Google Impact Challenge. They took home $750,000 to bring their “Services Advisor” mobile app/system to Canada (previously used in Jordan with UNHCR) focused on connecting newcomers to Canada with services, including service tracking, etc.
In this episode, I talk with Heidi Fuentes, Online Services Program Manager at COSTI Immigrant Services. I learned a lot from Heidi about what it takes to move existing services online to meet the needs of clients who many never set foot in your offices. COSTI’s success is a great example for all human service organizations about what is possible, and desirable, when looking at online service. She shares many lessons and insights about what it took to make COSTI’s services successful.
In this episode, I’m talking with Joséphine Goube, Chief Executing Officer of Techfugees. In our conversation, I explore what Techfugees does and what they’re learned acting at the intersection of technology developers and human service providers. Joséphine shares a number of important insights for any civic techies or human service workers looking to collaborate to provide technology-based services or information solutions for refugees, and other vulnerable populations.
In this episode, I’m so excited to bring you Lawrence Murphy, a pioneer in cyber counselling in Canada. Together, we explorethe foundations of cyber counselling, what an organization really needs to think about before moving into this space, why it’s just as effective for clients (but, not all clients), and some future trends in online counselling/services.
Welcome to Episode 6 of the Technology in Human Services podcast! In this episode, I’m speaking with Fei Tang, who helped create and run CultureLink’s very successful Massive Open Online Course/Community (MOOC).
This episode is part 2 of a look at how the City of San Gabriel transformed its community outreach and engagement with local Chinese-language residents. In this episode, I speak to Walter Yu about how his simple idea became the foundation for the City of San Gabriel, and others, including local police departments, to change how they connected with Chinese-language residents.
In this episode, I explore the idea of going to where your audience is and connecting with them there. For most nonprofits, getting on social media tends to mean setting up a Facebook page, Twitter account, maybe LinkedIn and Instagram. Many do it even before figuring out if their audience or clients are there. But, what if the people you’re really trying to connect and engage with aren’t on those platforms? What if they’re not even speaking English (or your native language)?
In this episode, I wanted to explore the human service worker side of things. If we’re going to talk about technology in human services, we can’t leave the service agencies and workers out. To be aspirational is great. But, what does it take to make it work, practically, day to day?