It’s Not About You

IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO THIS

One of the things Faith in Families Foundation does as one of numerous services offered to other foun-dations and trusts in New Zealand in the realm of ICT development is to improve the perception of the public as it relates to their persona. It is an im-portant aspect of effective communications and it starts with such basic things as writing and pub-lishing good copy in a consistent way.   

Skilled content developers are the Ninja’s of the Web. They are adept at merg-ing into the background, blending with the page and concealing their where-abouts. Those that really understand copywriting for search engine optimisation are almost ethereal. A good web content writer barely even exists in the eyes of readers.

Take the case of some recent work done by Faith in Families Foundation for the Awhi Foundation chaired by Sam Chapman, a well-known and respected expert in holistic transformation development for high-need low-support individuals, whānau and communities. While still as a work-in-progress at present, consider-ing the volume of material and breadth of work required to complete a new branding image and communications strategy, the Awhi Foundation is now able to utilise new ‘touch points’ on the Web to get its core messages read and its presence felt through The Chapman Chronicles website, it’s Chapman Chroni-cles Community Page and the Sam Chapman’s Facebook Page which, barely two months ago, it didn’t have.

Of course, it also helps to have around the valuable expertise and assistance of Faith in Families Foundation’s ICT partner and advisers Digital Summit Limited to assist it with the intricacies and complexities of website design and develop-ment execution and the seamless integration of Social Media magic that now give all these three touch points their special user-centric touch and feel ex-perience.      

On the Web, search engines are all about relevance. But these engines are not artificial intelligence. Rather, they are readers. They read massive amounts of information in a blink of an eye finding the most relevant information they can in order to supply search users with what they really need. 

Text is search engine food. So you have to feed them with good quality content. Over time, your website will be rewarded with better and faster indexing. It doesn’t mean, however, that you have to fill each page of your website with thousands of words either. Quality of content, more than quantity, is the main consideration. 

Content developers exist to deliver the very best, the cleanest, most useful and most meaningful search returns on user queries. They are not just good copywriters but are well-read, well-travelled and also experienced at managing brand profiles as they are in using the latest available tools on the Web at their disposal to deliver their output. 

Relevant search engine returns equals increased exposure that leads to a reader’s awareness, interest, desire and action. It is a valuable currency held in esteem by search engines. Developing relevant content is about creating care-fully crafted copy for a target customer, group or constituency. 

HAVE A JOB TO DO

Once content is published on your website the copy MUST engage. It must inform, it must interest, entertain and most of all, through appropriate calls to action, it must work to modify the behaviour of persons reading it. 

Your website copy isn’t just there to fill up space – it has a job to do. It’s there to get stuff done for you. Loud, in-your-face or overtly hard-selling copy fails. Why? People abhor feeling like they’re being pushed. They immediately see the warning signals and find ways to avoid intrusive sales pitches – usually by leaving the offending site immediately. That applies to search engines too. 

The mark of good content developers is that they first take a number of steps back to figure out exactly what your audience is like and what these people want to see on your website before you think about what the search engines want to see.

The audience is more important. They are the ones that are going to interact with you in one or other ways, not search engines. Search engines are just there to display only the information you supply in the best possible light. 

Development of relevant content for the Web isn’t about trying to force yourself on others. It’s all about the reader – the only reason why copy even exists. It’s their needs, their interests, desires and motivations that really good con-tent works at to engage. 

A creative content developer entertains and empathises using wit, some wis-dom and civility. They influence without detection. It’s almost as if they’re not there. 

Creating great content is no magic trick. It’s just good writing.

Karl Quirino
Co-Founder-Faith in Families

  

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The Bounce Back Factor

“It is more common to plan for success
than planning for failure”
Bernie Ogilvy 

THE FRAGILITY OF PEOPLE

Two years ago last April, it seemed like the whole of New Zealand was gripped and affected by the deaths of six young Elim Christian High school students and one of their teachers. During a field outing, they all had become trapped by rapidly rising waters which swept them away in a flooded gorge. 

Two years on from that horrible tragedy the Elim Christian school community is regarded, and will always now be known in the minds of many, as a community which has in its DNA great resolve and fortitude. In other words, this particular community has that bounce back quality. In using a biblical analogy, they ’can weather the storms.’ 

Going back three more years and further up the western hemisphere on the other side of the world, we’re reminded of the city of New Orleans’ confrontation with the full force of Hurricane Katrina. In its aftermath, we all witnessed that episode expose its surrounding communities to the vulnerability of its so-called ‘disaster plan’, or sheer lack of it. Its disaster and relief infrastructure, and importantly, the fragility of its own people were pried open for the entire world to see. It wouldn’t have been an abnormal event but for the fact this happened in the United States. 

Equally can also be said of the recent earthquake in Haiti, and more recently, the effects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast of Mexico which is now estimated to costing British Petroleum over US$ 30-billion in repairs and reparations. Couple that with the latest monsoon flooding disaster in Pakistan that has affected 3.2 million people and killed up to 1,500; it seems clear that countries and communities around the world need to have a greater sense of resolve to react and recover quickly – one based on preventative measures and those es-tablished to prepare for such tragic circumstances. 

BUILDING RESILIENCE 

Domestically, communities the world over are inc-reasingly having to deal with their own local issues and challenges in only the best way they can man-age, which isn’t much as we’ve seen. Whether it’s an unavoidable natural disaster, poverty, the clo-sure of an industry plant in their area, high unem-ployment, disengaged youth, poor housing, domes-tic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, child abuse, or just the overall breakdown of families and family connectedness, just to name a few. 

Building the resilience factor of communities is a natural consequence for any local or national government as it works in partnership with those communities towards achieving growth and development. Often, the measuring stick of suc-cess these agencies focus on is on economic and social outcomes – increased opportunities in the job market, growing business opportunities, availability of key resources in education, health and affordable housing, stronger family units, greater service support mechanisms and opportunities for young people. But a community’ resilience also thrives on the fact that they are actually adequately prepared to bounce back quickly from adverse situations and not only for when times are normal or good. 

TIMES OF DIFFICULTY AND STRESS 

Faith in Families Foundation is focused on building both its own operating ca-pabilities and relationships base with a clear eye towards assisting community development organisations and families build their own resilience capacities by ensuring that, a myriad of key resources are developed and accessible for them. This naturally involves a high level of social capital for communities concerned, be it at the local family level or amongst the collective, especially during times of difficulty and stress. As one of our associated partners, Sam Chapman, says often enough, “it’s not only about working from a ‘strengths’ base, but also from a ‘future’ base perspective.” 

The emphasis for us, therefore, is being proactive with all other parties we are in touch or do work with and continually planning, preparing, interacting and growing communities for the future, ones that help them identify and better handle the challenges they may face be it environmental, economic, social, political, or domestic. 

Communities who learn to become resilient are capable of bouncing back from adverse situations and, in doing so, builds upon their coping mechanisms and resolve to recover and move on. They do this by actively identifying, influencing and preparing for change, adverse or otherwise. When a situations are bad, as they often turn out to be at times, resilient communities can call upon a myriad of resources that prepares them to recover from most anything that comes their way. But, they first need to have it in place to be called upon when needed. 

This principle isn’t limited to provincial or national responses but also to indiv-idual households themselves – awareness of what community resources are av-ailable in times of emergencies; having an appropriate information and com-munication network infrastructure in place; developing community-based groups of people that spring to action when needs arise; practicing good budget planning and savings which can be called upon to meet unforeseen needs; parents investing more time in their children’s ongoing development and in preparation for times of emergencies; and, husbands and wives embracing every opportunity to discover for themselves what keys to use in strengthening their marriage thus enabling them to take on roles as partners in their wider community. 

I’m convinced that resilient and prepared individuals leads to resilient and prepared communities, provinces and nations. It’s a matter of just learning the principles and applying it to themselves. 

Community resiliency. Their survival and those of their loved ones depend on it. 

Submitted By: | Fred Astle | 08 August 2010 |

 

  

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Hope Never Dies

An essay on poverty and migration: Noel Bautista (Wellington, New Zealand)

WRAPPED AROUND A HUMAN TABLEAU

It wasn’t by choice, but neither was it completely by accident. 

My family lived in a depressed urban area in the Philippines more popularly known as a ‘squatter community’ twice in my so-called ‘life’. 

The first instance was in 1988 as head of a young family struggling to survive, foolishly avoiding the well-meaning ‘I-Told-You-So’s’ and assistance of re-latives. The second time was during the early 1990s as part of an immersion activity in fulfillment of a university course. 

I don’t deny these circumstances nor am I ashamed of it. They are all part of my conscious being. But neither do I wear it on my lapel of life experience as a badge of honor. 

There is nothing glamorous about poverty. It is a reality of hot, angry and dirty surroundings too overpowering to romanticize. I lived with that every day. 

All the clichés’ you hear about urban poor are true. Alcoholics starting their daily reunions at 8 in the morning; couples embroiled in shouting matches (some-times unfortunately degenerating into violence) within meters of your own shanty; intimidating gangs fighting over territory and the spoils of crime; and, the unlucky stray dog unfortunate enough being roasted over a spit for dinner. I beheld all these visual delights not unlike a morbidly watchable train wreck wrapped around a human tableau. 

A TENUOUS TENURE

Since then, life has improved somewhat for me, yet hardly forgetting those rough times. In these last few years, I’ve been fortunate to have come to New Zealand as a migrant worker, albeit under a tenuous tenure and at the mercy of the prevailing state-of-the-economy driven political winds. 

I draw from this experience when asked: why in the ointment of all these personal difficulties, did I choose to strike it out in a strange new land with all the uncertainties of keeping a job here and hoping to be qualified someday to apply for permanent residency. 

Please don’t misunderstand me. All things being equal, I would still like to return some day and grow old in my country of birth, the Philippines. It remains the only country I’ve known as home. But most of us guest workers now here in the Land of the Long White Cloud know deep in our gut (but are too prideful, naïve, or ignorant to admit), that it will take more than a generation of inspired political leadership for our compatriots back home to reach the Promised Land. 

In the meantime, you pocket your 30-pieces of silver (wherever you find it), disregard the perpetually disjointed feeling of being uprooted (and living in the statelessness-like status of limbo) to face all other strangely unfamiliar elements of being away and being unable for the moment to get back home and sift local gravel through your fingers once more and savour the breeze of one’s own sky. 

SCALDING SOULS IN PURGATORY

Knowledge of similar yearnings of other guest worker-migrants can but only alleviate my own misery –not unlike angels carrying pails of water to the parched mouths of scalding souls in purgatory. But this much I know. Against the barometer of the reality of utter poverty I faced back home I try to assess just how hard life is too for me in the land of my host country. The legislated minimum of NZ$ 12/hour, many of us here lament, can hardly feed or support the standard of living to which most New Zealanders are accustomed. 

In Philippine currency terms, this hourly wage projected to a day’s whole labour, can manage to support as much as three families’ basic needs back home – food, clothing and shelter for two parents and three children. Given this backdrop, it’s hard to be outraged about my lot in life here. 

In a similar vein, the locals here oftentimes ask me why people from less-developed Asian countries like to wrap the remnants of restaurant meals for consumption later, when such remains are usually viewed as table scraps not even fit to be eaten by their own pets. 

In response, I am reminded of a TV documentary about how whole communities of urban poor would wait for rubbish trucks to unload their nightly deliveries, from which would be sourced their much-needed sustenance. The contents, usually leftovers from fast food chain outlets like McDonalds, Burger King and KFC, might contain some rancid-smelling bags leftovers from a multitude of more well-off diners but as long as it fills hungry bellies, nobody complains. This might be unthinkable for most living in the First World, but it is a fact of life nevertheless for those living in poverty across the world. 

It comes to no surprise for an individual like me that many of my compatriots’ back home living in poverty share my quixotic dreams of finding their fortune at the end of the First World rainbow. After so many tries, many job-seekers have long since given up the ghost, and only a passport and visa provide redemption for years of de-humanizing deprivation. 

HOPE NEVER DIES

The promised paradigm of a better life abroad is eloquently simple and inviting; but, the formula is too efficient an argument against all the socio-eco-nomic dilemmas they face.

Not even all the legal obstructions, time and dis-tance standing in the way of their goal of eman-cipating themselves from the grip of poverty and finally, the reality that even First World Eden’s must look after their own poor first, are enough to stop them from achieving their life-long dreams. 

On the other side of the devalued coin, people who have lived in poverty like me know only too well that, no matter how vicariously sumptuous a noche buena (Christmas) dinner might appear one back home, they are nevertheless still precariously only a few days removed from the most destitute and deprived of circumstances. 

While employed here in New Zealand, most migrant workers can manage to themselves a little more than the most basic necessities for children and loved ones. But take away their hard-earned minimum wage and their all-important J-O-B that provides for paying their living expenses here and the dreams of all their family members back home, what would you have? A future as bleak as it is opaque. 

Like them perhaps, whenever I ponder even the slightest thought of giving up and going back home, I merely look back at my poorer-than-poor days and realize that, when you have seen rock bottom, hope never dies.

  

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Fountainhead of Our Future

There was this little girl of six whose teacher said she hardly ever paid attention in class unless it was drawing lessons. One day, this girl was all by herself in the back of the classroom drawing. So the teacher approached her saying, “What are you drawing?” and the girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God”. The teacher then questioned her, “But nobody knows what God looks like?” To that, the girl said, “… well, they will in a minute”. 

MEETING THE CHALLENGES OF TOMORROW 

In a previous article we posted A Dysfunctional Education, we featured a video on Sir Ken Robinson who makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures rather than undermines creativity. He submits some well-founded arguments for changes in how we should think about our own intelligence and creativity and how we should educate our chil-dren and each other to meet the extraordinary challenges of living and working in the 21st century. 

To face our future, a country like New Zealand needs to celebrate and develop the diverse talents of all of its people, particularly our young. It needs to culti-vate creativity and innovation, systematically and with confidence. These are the real basics. But even more basic to all of them is a different view of human talent and ability, and of the real conditions in which people actually flourish.  

FOUNTAINHEAD OF OUR FUTURE 

We have observed that there is extraordinary evidence of human creativity – particularly in terms of the variety and range of it, but it is put in a place where we have no idea of what is going to happen next in terms of the future and how this may play out. 

Most of us believe that education is supposed to take us into this future but one which we can’t fully grasp. If you think about it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. But nobody has a clue even what our world would look like in 5 years time and yet, we’re meant to be educating them for it. 

A growing number of researchers and educators are now discovering that peo-ple, especially our young ones, construct new knowledge with particular ef-fectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personally-meaningful things. What’s important is whether they are constructing model airplanes or computer programs, they are actively engaged in creating something that is meaningful to themselves or to others around them. 

We can no longer deny the potential for our youth to impact vast numbers of other people in very real ways in their own communities. We will give you an example of that in a while. But, as older citizens, teachers, and parents, our mindsets must adapt to this new reality – and that is, we must learn to teach our youth to become self-sufficient learners if they are to fly free above the turmoil of the accelerating rate of change in our modern world. 

A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE 

Faith in Families’ contention is that all youth in our country today have tremendous talents and we need to provide them with rich opportunities for learning. We believe, however, that we may be squandering our future if we fail to recognise that creativity – which is a process of self-discovery and learning new things even if there are a few mis-takes being made along the way, is as important in education as literacy. We should treat it with the same status. If not, creativity’s importance in the education of our youth would be a terrible thing to waste. 

If you’re we’re not prepared to be wrong, we’ll never come up with anything original or innovative. By the time our children get to be adults most of them will lose that capacity. They become frightened of being wrong because we stig-matize their mistakes in schools, where they are being educated. So, we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of our creative capacities. We get ‘educated’ out of it. And guess what? Whether we like to admit it or not most companies, businesses and other institutions are run in much the same way. 

MEETING 21^st CENTURY NEEDS WITH 19^th CENTURY TOOLS 

So why is this? It’s because the primary focus in schools today is on methods of teaching – not motivations for learning. Each one of them has the same hier-archy of subjects. It doesn’t matter where you go. 

There is a good reason for this. Most systems of education that are in place today were invented only in the 19^th century – ones that would meet the needs of industrialism. As such, the most useful subjects for work were placed at the top predicated on the entire idea of academic ability, thus shaping our view of intelligence today. As a result, the whole system is a protracted process of uni-versity entrance. As it is, we are addressing the needs of the 21^st century with 19^th century tools. 

Unfortunately, the consequence of holding on too dearly to this mindset is that it blithely discards the fact that many highly-talented, brilliant and creative young people think they’re not qualified for univ-ersity entrance largely because what they were interested in or good at, while being ‘educated’ in the lower levels of our school system, wasn’t val-ued or was actually stigmatised. 

As it is, many courses emphasize how and what teachers should teach, but seldom examine why their students might want to learn. What’s more, when the issue of motivation is addressed, the emphasis is often placed on extrinsic motivators and incentives, such as grades and prizes based on performance. 

But if you closely look outside of school, we can find many examples of young people learning – and learning exceptionally well, without explicit rewards. Youth who seem to have short attention spans in school often display great concentration on projects that they are truly interested in. And, they excel. 

Intelligence is diverse, dynamic, interactive and distinct. It will be even more so when you consider that in the next 50 years – with the combination of newer technologies and its transformational effect on work, demography and the huge explosion of population, more people worldwide will be graduating since the beginning of history but in a new era where the whole structure of education will be shifting beneath their feet. With that said, we need to start seriously thinking about changing tomorrow today. 

Why? It’s because suddenly, the educational degrees we’ve been taught to value as the ticket to get us ahead in life won’t perhaps be worth as much as anything by then. It will be age where intelligence will come from interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing and do things. It will be a new world where creative ideas that work, will be those more highly-esteemed (and sought after) at work.

NEXT PART: A Chap Named Sam

  

A Chap Named Sam

… continued from Fountainhead of Our Future 

GILLIAN’S STORY 

How do people discover their talent? Here’s one example. 

Gillian Lynne, a British ballerina, dancer, actor, theatre director, television director and choreogra-pher born in 1926 and noted for her popular thea-tre choreography associated with the iconic mu-sicals Cats and the current longest-running show in Broadway history, The Phantom of the Opera, was characterized by her teachers in school as hopeless student. So her school wrote her mother a letter saying that Gillian might have a learning disorder because she couldn’t sit still and was always fidgety. 

Some people today might say she had ADHD, but in the 1930s, the term wasn’t invented yet so it wasn’t an available ‘condition’ to label her with. Still, Gillian’s mother brought her to a specialist for diagnosis and once in his office Gillian was asked to sit on a chair while the specialist talked to her mother for half an hour or so asking what was happening to her in school. 

At the end of it, because Gillian was disturbing them not quite being able to sit still, the specialist brought her to an adjacent room and asked her to sit quietly in a chair beside a table that had a radio turned on to keep her entertained. But the minute he left the room, Gillian was on her feet, dancing and moving about. He turned back and observed her more closely for a few minutes then turned to her mother and said, “Mrs. Lynne, Jillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school!”. 

CONNECTIONS TO KNOWLEDGE 

Gillian’s story is an example how one can address the educational challenge of finding more novel ways that help youth make those connections to develop themselves more fully. In this case, it was just a simple act involving observation. Somebody else would have put her under medication and tell her to calm down. 

When youth care about what they are working on, the dynamic of teaching obviously changes. Rather than being “pushed” to learn, youth work on their own, and seek out ideas and advice. Youth are not only more motivated but they also develop deeper understandings and richer connections to knowledge. 

Closer to home, what Sam ‘Haami’ Chapman does is an excellent example and one based on unflinching trust and faith in people. For over 40 years he has more than ploughed the field of developing communities; he has sown a harvest field of hope! He consistently sees beyond the rubble of homelessness, a child’s, a parent, a husband and a wife’s love deficit, an adolescent’s disdain for school, and the intimidation of the gang patch. 

Instead, this 2010 New Zealander of the Year award recipient sees families living in their own homes, a child finally getting that hug and loving attention from dad, a husband unafraid in taking on the true mantle of manhood; just simply loving his wife, an adolescent loving the idea of learning and the mar-ginalised accepted for who they are underneath the rough exterior. 

Watch and Listen To Sam in this Inspiring Video 

 

Having to live for many years in Otara, Manukau City which Sam and his lovely wife Thelma rightfully calls their Oasis; they (with their four children and six grandchildren not too far behind) continue to be intrinsically connected not only to this community, but other communities at large. As founders of the Awhi Whānau Early Childhood Centre, board member of Clover Park Middle School, and Chairman of the Maori Christian Alliance; they are always gaining interest from key people, agencies and institutions not only in New Zealand but abroad also. 

When it comes to community development, Sam’s vision is reflected in his own words. “I see communities being able to dream and turn those dreams into reality.” So instead of dwelling on the failures of people’s lives, he helps them focus on success by looking at the type of life they want to live and what will make it happen. These words are amplified even more today in the area of education after he became the first chairperson of Clubhouse 274. 

VALUE AND RESPECT OF HARD WORK 

Clubhouse 274 is a place that encourages youth to work on projects related to their own interests. It does this by focusing on “constructionist” activities – ones that encourage young people to work as designers, inventors, and creators. It is dedicated to offering resources and opportunities to those who would not otherwise have access to them. It also aims to create a sense of community, where young people work together with one another supported and inspired by older mentors. 

Rather than playing games with computers and burning time away, young people at the Clubhouse learn hands-on to use professional software tools for design, exploration, and experimentation. They are encouraged to try for themselves what it’s virtually like to be an environmental architect or engineer, composer, new media communication specialist, digital journalist, scientific re-searcher, computer programmer, and a wide array of other professions that will help drive the modern 21^st century workplace. 

The young people in Clubhouse 274 learn how to express themselves through these tools. They learn not only the technical details, but the heur-istics of being a good designer – how to concept-ualise a project, how to make use of the materials available, how to persist and find alternatives when mistakes are made or when things go wrong, and how to view a project through the eyes of others. In short, they learn how to manage a com-plex project from start to finish. 

An extensive body of research undertaken by members of such prestigious institutions like the Computer Museum of Boston, the Science Museum of Min-nesota and the MIT Media Laboratory backs up Clubhouse 274’s activities. These studies show that adolescents learn most effectively when they are en-gaged in designing and creating projects, rather than memorizing facts or learning isolated skills out of context. 

But more importantly, that same research also highlights the importance of community involvement and how interpersonal relationships in those settings both aids and adds to the learning process. The result is that it enables these young people to become part of a community that values and respects their hard work. 

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE 

Our world today faces tremendous problems and challenges. We believe that our only hope for the future, especially for our youth, is to adopt a new construct of human ecology – one where we start reconstituting the conception of the richness of human capacity. 

For many generations past, our educational sys-tems mined our minds in much the way we have laid waste and strip-mined the Earth for a particular commodity. Continuing to do that won’t serve us anymore. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children. Everything now may depend on it. 

In this respect, Faith in Families is happy to be associated with Sam Chapman in these and other worthwhile endeavours by collaborating through synergistic approaches and initiatives and ones our Foundation has been bringing to light with the series of recent articles it has published in this website. 

As elders of our youth, we may not be around to see that future, but our child-ren will. 

Our job, is to help them make something of it.

RETURN | HOME

  

Related Articles in this Series: 

• Agents of Change
• Connected Communities
• On Empowering Our Youth
• Community Tech Centres-Part 1
• Community Tech Centres-Part 2
• Making Things Happen
• Looking At It This Way
• Digital Economies
• Mapping Your Communities
• Fountainhead of Our Youth
• A Chap Named Sam
• The Whāriki Project (to be published)

Mapping Your Community

“I’ve read both parts of [your] article On Empowering Our Youth and agree with you that there is new gold rush where mining raw human potential fueled with imagination through creative use of the Internet and the Web [can] become an economic development strategy [for which] countries like New Zealand can depend upon in the future. Maybe you can write about one or two concrete examples how this can happen for our own local communities ….”

From a comment submitted by: Myers House – North Shore City, Auckland

 

BACK IN THE OLD DAYS 

The Map of Roger or ‘Tabula Rogeriana’ was a world map drawn for the Norman King Roger II of Sicily by a learned Andalusian geographer, carto-grapher and traveler of Arab descent by the name of Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154. In that map, al-Idrisi incorporated the knowledge of Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Far East gathered by Islamic merchants and explorers recorded on Islamic maps with information brought by Norman voyagers to create the most accurate map of the world in pre-modern times. 

The compilation of the Tabula Rogeriana by al-Idrisi marked the dawn of a new era in the history of mankind’s development. Not only was its historical inform-ation interesting, useful and valuable, but its descriptions of many parts of the then known Earth was authoritative. For three centuries geographers copied his maps without alteration and not until another 400 years later, when Samuel Baker (a British explorer and naturalist) and Henry Morton Stanley (the Welsh journalist and explorer), was the mechanical accuracy of al-Idrisi’s map sur-passed. 

So why are maps so useful to us? 

The simplest answer we can give you is that maps are a visual representation of an area – a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes. Although most commonly used to depict geography, maps may also represent any space, real or imagined, without regard to context or scale. 

BACK TO THE FUTURE 

The functionality of maps today have been greatly advanced by technologies which simplify the superimposition of spatially-located variables onto existing geographical maps allowing for more efficient analysis and better decision-making. 

From the last two decades of the 20^th century, the indispensable tool of cartographers has been the computer. Much of cartography today, especially at the data-gathering survey level, are driven by Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It is a system that captures, stores, analyses, manages, and presents data that are linked to location by skillful merging of cartography, statistical analysis, and database technology. 

To communicate spatial information effectively, GIS users make use of what’s called automatic label placement or ALP. It is also sometimes called text placement or name placement. ALP eases the process of creating interactive maps. It uses computer-aided methods of placing labels automatically on a map or chart all the while allowing users to zoom in or zoom out to increase or decrease scale without too much loss of visual integrity.

MAPS FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 

With GIS technologies, imagine now how Faith in Families and its technology partners can make it possible for a local community to collect and create their own customised community map, one that will contain detailed information of all their community assets and resources such as, to name a few: their schools, hospitals and clinics, pharmacies, historical sites, police stations, fire departments, libraries, repair shops, coffee shops, bakeries, dry cleaners, theaters and other enter-tainment establishments, dining outlets, food choice stores, shopping centres, parks and recreation areas, gardens and commons, internet cafes, other ser-vices, and even points of interest for tourists wanting to visit their community. 

Simply pointing and clicking on an interactive map on the Web can display the best a community can offer. What’s more, it’s a clever but subtle way to promote a community to anyone who has access to the Internet. This is not an insignificant statement because according to Internet World Stats, the number of people who can access the Internet is estimated to be about 1.8-billion people (26.6% of total) around the world and over 3.3-million people (79.7% of total) living in New Zealand! That’s certainly not small change, is it?

Liveable and vibrant communities are created by neighbours helping neighbours and Faith in Families believes community mapping is an excellent way to identify them, their assets, their networks and as well provide other opportun-ities which can help them develop further. 

By using data and web-based tools, any local community can virtually create for itself a visual display of where their community is and what it is all about. Web-based interactive asset mapping even allows young and older community mem-bers alike to sign-up and add their own thoughts and pictures … an online community involvement project! 

BY THE COMMUNITY FOR THE COMMUNITY 

Community mapping is a process carried out by the community for the community. Because of its poten-tial impact, it is now one project that Faith in Families is developing as a tool – one that aims to tap into and expand the breadth of knowledge, information, and experiences within communities in order grow their capacity to deal with a variety of issues and challenges while also enabling them to develop their own solutions and opportunities in ways they see fit. 

When local communities and their neighbourhoods carry out surveys of their own area and use that data to build an accurate representation of what their community actually looks like, in a way it keeps that information within their community and neighbourhoods. It’s like looking at yourself in the mirror every morning before breakfast and saying to yourself, “ … hmmm, I think I can do something good about that today.” 

By just doing something like that, it puts them in a much stronger position to represent themselves with NGOs, service providers, local, and national gov-ernment agencies in matters like funding support for community-based projects or provisioning of new services they lack or desire to have. Undertaking the very process itself creates a valuable and unique identity too.

Lastly, it is a way for encouraging and empowering communities to take more action by themselves for themselves – ones that will skill up and build capacity for their own members. 

So there you have it, Mr. House. We end talking any more about it at this point lest more of the cat’s tail gets out of our bag!

  

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Digital Economies

MEASURING OUR PROGRESS

Every year since 2000, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has closely examined the development of information and communications technology (ICT) in over 60 of the world’s major economies, and eval-uated and ranked their relative digital progress. 

This benchmarking exercise has measured not only the availability and adoption of ICT (or “connectiv-ity”) in countries surveyed, but also development of the social, cultural and economic building blocks necessary for its effective use. More recently, it attempted to gauge the extent to which ICT and selected ICT-enabled services are being used, given that it is the use of technology which ultimately contributes to the overall economic progress of a country. 

Ten years ago, people and governments around the world believed this pro-gress to be a journey, one which when successfully completed would bring increasing efficiency and prosperity. The journey, however, required preparation – largely in the form of investment in network infrastructure, skills and regu-latory frameworks. The notion of preparation thus lent itself to the term “e-readiness”. 

WHERE WE STAND 

E-readiness is a measure of the quality of a country’s ICT infrastructure and the ability of its people, businesses and governments to use it to their benefit. When a country uses ICT to conduct more of its activities, the economy can become more transparent , efficient and keeps moving ahead. 

The past 2-1/2 years have brought severe shocks to economies and macro-economic structures of countries around the world, including New Zealand. But surprisingly, in contrast to the last major crisis of a decade ago, global confidence in ICT and the virtues of digital development remains intact. It continues to march on, and millions more people across the globe continue to be connected to and use broadband Internet and other advanced commu-nications technologies.  This trend, despite the challenging economic environ-ment, is teaching us something valuable and one that we should look into more closely.

For 2010, the EIU has again assessed the world’s largest economies on their ability to absorb information and communications technology (ICT) and use it for economic and social benefit. Seventy countries are now covered in its annual e-readiness rankings, the results being displayed below.

(click here for a larger version on PDF format)

USING AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY BETTER 

While most of the world has achieved “e-readiness” to one degree or another, this does not mean that every country has made equal progress in its digital preparation – far from it. Why? It’s because the challenges ahead for people and communities in countries like New Zealand, in our view, will now be in learning how to extract the maximum economic and other benefits from use of digital technologies. 

The goal of achieving uniform access to the Internet across a country’s popula-tion continues to elude many policymakers, including ours. While a rich ICT platform remains the key underpinning of any country’s digital economy aspira-tions, access must naturally be accompanied by usage and vice versa – these are the next two key ingredients. 

Usage can only increase in a society which values the benefits provided by the Internet. But educa-tion, both in terms of overall levels of formal learning as well as Internet literacy, proficiency and other technical skills, will be the primary driver for our economic, social and cultural progress in an increasingly connected digital world. 

Gaining access to information and connecting the dots between the supply of services and the de-mand for them will be difficult if people don’t know or understand how to use these new technologies afforded by the Internet and the Web. 

Therefore, as the characteristics turn from availability to greater usage of these technologies, the imperatives for countries like ours to extract the maximum economic and social benefits from the use of digital technology remain, and it would also be of help to measure our progress using these goal posts: 

• Establish ICT as a focal point of education, and ensure students at all levels learn how to use digital technology to their benefit and to those in their communities;
• Ensure that our communities have affordable access to the highest qua-lity fixed and wireless data and voice connections possible;
• Encourage and support greater innovation and entrepreneurship from our youth – ones which create the best chances for ICT-enabled change to filter through our communities and then to our economy;
• Make possible the wide-scale provision of practically everything online (ex. services, goods, information, etc.), which provide genuine utility to our citizens and businesses; and,
• Ensure that our legal regime avoids placing undue shackles on the use of these technologies while also providing adequate protection to peo-ple and organisations from its abuse. 

Finally, Faith in Families believes that by working in concert with business leaders, universities and other stakeholders, we can together create the con-ditions for the digital economy to take root staring with our youth at the local community level.

Time will judge whether we can move forward or not.

  

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