The Digital Messaging for Settlement and Integration (DMSI) project is all about connecting newcomers with the information they need to successfully settle in Canada, when and where they need it. As a communications and mobilization organization, the team at Refugee 613 knew that traditional means of communicating information (websites, brochures) often don’t reach those most in need, which pushed us to explore new and better ways of sharing information. The DMSI project was a three year exploration of new ways to connect with newcomers using inexpensive, popular digital messaging platforms. The core principle of this project was to ‘go where the audience is’ to reach community members in places where they are already communicating and sharing information.
It started on WhatsApp with the Refugee 613 Welcomes You to Ottawa project.
According to Refugee 613, they have "run a successful digital messaging group called Refugee 613 Welcomes You to Ottawa since 2017. Originally on WhatsApp and now on Telegram, this group now serves more than 300 people in Ottawa. It provides trusted information and referrals about settlement services and support information in Arabic, Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 5 pm. Refugee 613 built on the success of that group in 2018, and with financial investment from the Department of Immi-graiton, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, launched a national project to explore other ways of using digital messaging to build more welcoming communities. The DMSI (Digital Messaging for Settlement and Integration) project included research about how digital messaging is already being used in Canada to support newcomers, an evaluation of our WhatsApp group, and four new pilots so we could understand and share with others the full power of digital messaging for different purposes in newcomer settlement and integration."
Refugee 613 Welcomes You to Ottawa: WhatsApp Group for Arabic-Speaking Newcomers and Refugee
The project has since moved over to Telegram, which more robust group admin functionality, as well as capacity for larger groups (WhatsApp limits groups to 256 members). Refugee613 received funding to evaluate their approach, work with other settlement organizations to pilot innovative approaches to using digital messaging in service delivery, and to share their learning. The Digital Messaging for Settlement and Integration (DMSI) project recently hosted a national conference to share and continue the learning.
As part of that conference, they released a toolkit: Using Digital Messaging to Support Newcomer Communities - A Toolkit for Individuals and Organizations.
This toolkit provides information about how to use digital messaging to help newcomers settle a new country. The work has taken in place in Canada, but many of these lessons learned are applicable anywhere that immigrants are arriving.
Useful information in the toolkit includes:
The toolkit also provides sample checklists, policies, guidelines and tools that can help you set up and run your service with confidence.
Background
Refugee 613 has produced several multilingual videos to help ensure language is not a barrier to getting accurate, trustworthy information during COVID-19. These videos were produced in collaboration with Ottawa Public Health.
The videos were posted on August 19, 2020, and contain guidance specific to Ottawa, Ontario.
They are short, text-based videos in 11 languages that explain the current guidance around mask-wearing (each link takes you to the YouTube video for that language):
Access the playlist of videos below and on YouTube.
Additional information
During COVID-19 it has been clear that access to authoritative, timely, trusted, and accurate multilingual information is essential. It has also been lacking. During this time, Refugee 613 has been experimenting with different formats to meet a variety of audience needs and production methods.
To help everyone in the community stay safe and healthy, they encourage you to share these videos with the people who need to see them, through your organization, your social media and your personal digital networks. You can copy and paste video links into your WhatsApp or Telegram group, or post the link to the videos on Facebook.
The videos were posted on August 19, 2020, and contain guidance specific to Ottawa, Ontario. However much of it applies to other jurisdictions as well.
The creators encourage you to watch the video yourself and see if it would be helpful and accurate in your community.
For more information
If you would like to develop your own videos on mask-wearing by adapting theirs, their team would be happy to share with you the scripts for all 11 videos as well as background documentation and production advice. If you would like translations of copy for sharing on social media, they are also willing to share the text. Contact them for more information.
(learn more about the project and how it benefits newcomers, and immigrant and refugee-serving agencies, in the above recorded Cities of Migration webinar)
The Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria's (ICA) We Speak Translate project started in April 2017 and ran until early 2019. The project was a first of its kind collaboration between Google Translate and the Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria (ICA). The project aimed to address language barriers to newcomer integration.
The project involved free in-person and webinar based 45 minute training sessions on how to use the Google Translate application, for community stakeholders, organizations, business and institutions. Participating businesses were provided with training and We Speak Translate decals and stickers to display. The symbol on the decals and stickers was used as to identify a place of business where Google Translate was being used and as a sign of welcome for non-English speakers.
From April 2017 – January 2019 over 2600 community members and stakeholders received Google Translate training through the We Speak Translate project.
Project info from the Cities of Migration site (no longer running):
"Building digital capacity in human service nonprofits can be challenging. Clients tend to be more tech savvy and demand technology-mediate services. Forward looking agencies are looking more closely at how they use technology as a tool in resettlement and integration.
Many organizations connect with local volunteers or civic tech groups in their communities to accomplish amazing things with technology, on a small scale. Longpre decided to go big. She reached out with her idea to use Google Translate both as an integration tool and a symbol for inclusive and diverse communities. Google liked the idea and the partnership was born.
Longpre says the “What’s In It For Me” is obvious for a resettlement organization. She says it’s also obvious for Google. Google’s ability to align a product with a broader mission, focused on integration and welcoming communities, is a tangible form of corporate social responsibility. We Speak Translate illustrates how their technology can have deeper impact."
Here is an overview:
A couple of years ago, my colleagues and I were spending over 150 hours a month on the phone trying to reach high school students in our program. Each time an event took place, or there was a change in our scheduling, we would have to notify several hundred teenagers by phone. The average call would take approximately 6 minutes. Of those 6 minutes, less than a minute was actually spent talking to the student. The other 5 minutes were spent doing one of the following:
We were doing this several times a month and it didn’t make sense – especially since we were relaying notification messages that did not require a response. The amount of time we spent trying to reach students significantly overshadowed the amount of time we actually spent talking to them.
Why not just send an email instead? Other program sites had tried this and the results were abysmal: the email open rates of students were approximately 10%. How do you send email to a demographic that doesn’t use email?
The answer is simple. You don’t. Whether you are a front line youth worker, a parent, or a social media marketer, the question remains the same: “How do you communicate so that teenagers will listen?”
Many of our students could often be seen using Facebook at their schools and community centres, yet using Facebook as a professional tool for communicating with students had not yet been given serious consideration in our organization.
Then, we developed a social media policy using the free tool at PolicyTool.net and a small pilot project was launched. Staff were provided with the option of creating a professional Facebook account account and the results were remarkable: within a year, there was 95% staff participation and we are now saving approximately 3,600 hours annually, the equivalent of two full-time staff positions.
I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to meet weekly with a small student advisory group and they have provided valuable feedback on our program and our various projects. The students are forthright in their assessments of how our organization is using social media and their insight has provided valuable information regarding their day-to-day use of technology.
Based on my experience, here are the six trends you need to know about engaging youth with social media:
The trends identified above are based on my experience of working with high-school aged youth who reside in economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods. I suspect these trends apply readily to many other communities in the United States and Canada. In order to get a more accurate picture of what is going on in your individual communities, just ask the youth around you. Assemble a group of youth on a regular basis and ask them what they do on a day-to-day basis with technology. It is also helpful to sign up for the social networks that they frequent and simply observe.
But let’s go a little more in-depth: What do youth think about online communications?
Let’s start with email. Youth generally consider email to be outdated. Some youth do not use email at all and this number has increased since Facebook started allowing accounts to be authenticated via a mobile phone. For youth who do have email accounts, the majority of youth check them infrequently, not more than once every few days days. Youth who check their email frequently report that they do so because they are receiving notices relating to school or volunteer placements. Students who may not be engaged in school or volunteer opportunities have less incentive to check emails regularly.
Youth attitudes towards email shift significantly when students are provisioned with a college or university email account. Since it is usually the primary and official means of communication with the college or university, youth report that they check it daily. However, personal accounts are still checked infrequently.
While all communication with schools and other organizations are conducted via email, nearly all communication with friends is conducted via Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, BBM, or iMessage. Students will typically only accept people into their networks that they know and trust, so it is important for youth workers to ensure that they have established a working relationship with students before communicating with them on social media channels.
When youth log into a computer, the first sites that are typically visited are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr. Email is mentioned only as an afterthought. Facebook is regarded as a “public” space where youth can hang out, chat and make plans with friends.
In contrast, Twitter is regarded as a more “personal” space. Twitter is used to see what is going on with friends and celebrities. Youth also report that it is used for venting and saying anything that may be bothering them or whatever they may be thinking about. It has been described as a “personal feelings page” that is “better than Facebook” because it provides more of a feeling of connectedness.
If youth have access to a smartphone, both Facebook and Twitter are accessed primarily on the mobile devices. Otherwise, access is conducted primarily on desktop and laptop computers. Mobile devices, especially smartphones, are favoured because they can do all these things without having to “go on the Internet”. For youth, the “traditional” way going on the Internet involves having to turn on a computer, log on, and stay in one place. Even a laptop is considered inconvenient when compared to a smartphone.
With a smartphone, youth can take whatever they are reading, searching, and/or tweeting. When considering youth-friendly spaces, wifi availability is important for students who may not be subscribed to data plans. If given the option, many students would prefer to use a smartphone over a standard cell phone without extended functionality. Currently, the favoured smartphones brands are Samsung, Blackberry, and the iPhone.
Text messaging is ubiquitous among students and, when presented with the opportunity, students appreciate receiving text message reminders of upcoming events. The ability to text pre-determined lists of people is now available on many cell phone plans, and websites such as Remind101.com are an indication that being able to reach students while protecting personal boundaries is an industry that is still nascent. FrontlineSMS can also be used by organizations with the technology capacity to implement an in-house text-messaging solution.
As a youth worker, it can be challenging to stay on top of rapidly shifting technology trends, but the efforts have been worthwhile. Utilizing social media has not only allowed our organization to better communicate and engage with our youth – it has also provided easier ways for our youth to communicate with us. The switch has allowed staff in our program to spend more time focusing on building more positive relationships with our youth and less time listening to busy signals.
If you would like to share your experiences in engaging youth on the front lines, please feel free to share in the comments below! And if you are interested in learning more, please come out to my presentation at the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference, “OMG WTF: Engaging Youth on the Front Lines of Social Media”
(originally posted on the NTEN site)
This presentation was part of a pre-conference at the June 2019 International Metropolis Conference held in Ottawa.The topic of the day was: How Do We Know What’s Working? Measuring Settlement Outcomes for Individuals and Communities
Through presentations and table discussions, this hands-on, full-day event explored new strategies for measuring immigrants’ economic, social and civic-cultural outcomes at both the service delivery and community levels. The focus was on strategies for determining what works and what doesn’t, as well as new ways of measuring processes and change, attributing outcomes, and assessing community impact. Outcome measurement is not only a tool for ensuring accountability. It provided a basis for identifying promising practices that can be further developed and shared; allowed practitioners to identify practices that need improvement and suggested how to do so; and, at the community level, points to areas in need of particular attention.
In this presentation, ISSofBC's Kathy Sherrel outlined the journey her 350 person, 17 location, and 60 active program organization has been on that started in their settlement department around this concept of
outcomes measurement about two years ago.
Transcript (auto-generated by YouTube):
In this episode, I’m talking with Jason Shim, described by TechSoup as a Nonprofit Technology Rockstar. I definitely share that opinion. I’m so excited to bring his insights, energy and experience to all of you.
Listen here:
Jason’s a connector, an innovator with an insatiable curiosity. As you’ll find in this episode, he shares his experience, learning and knowledge freely, humbly, and with insight and analysis.
I wanted to talk to Jason for a number of reasons, which you can imagine from all that I just described. But, in 2012, he wrote a specific article that really caught my attention (original link is no longer available, this is a PDF of the original article). He shared his and his organization’s experience using Facebook as a tool to better communicate with the youth they serve. Not market to. Not solicit donations. Not for the Likes and Shares. But to serve them better. It’s always been a seminal article on the topic for me. There’s just not been enough written about it. So I wanted to catch up with him to see how it’s going, 4 years later, and to have him distill even more learning from his experience.
I had a lot of fun interviewing Jason. And also learned so much. On his LinkedIn profile Jason writes: “How can we harness technology to make a difference in the world? That’s the question I love to answer for organizations.” I think you’ll enjoy hearing how he’s been able to answer it for his own organization.
In a Technology in Human Services podcast episode, I spoke with Marc-André Séguin, an immigration lawyer with the firm Exeo, in Montreal. In 2017, Marc-André and his partner Francis Tourigny, launched the first immigration chatbot in Canada. Immigration Virtual Assistant, or IVA, is a Facebook Messenger-based chatbot.
Listen here:
Why IVA? Marc-André says he was interested in providing a different experience, to offer free information and make sure the information is accurate, updated, that the line of questioning would be proper and complete, and available to clients at any time.
It’s an interesting time in Artificial Intelligence and chatbots. You’ve probably interacted with chatbots in your personal life. There are examples of human service nonprofits using chatbots (see below), but they are fairly few. It’s an emerging field, with lots of potential and pitfalls.
My conversation with Marc-André was illuminating, both in terms of what you need to consider when creating a chatbot, and where they’re useful. This was a fun and informative conversation. I hope you find something useful in it.
According to Wikipedia “A chatbot (also known as a talkbot, chatterbot, Bot, IM bot, interactive agent, or Artificial Conversational Entity) is a computer program which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods.[1] Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, thereby passing the Turing test. Chatbots are typically used in dialog systems for various practical purposes including customer service or information acquisition. Some chatterbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems, but many simpler systems scan for keywords within the input, then pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a database.”
I think Marc-André put it best: “one thing that immigration law tends to lack is transparency. There are countless stories of people not being able to find the right information about what they need to come to Canada – even on government websites. Those can be very hard to navigate. Then you have private websites which may be incomplete or outdated, and would expose individuals to mistakes. Add to that a number of dishonest and sometimes fraudulent or unlicensed advisors into the mix and you find yourself with a great number of non-Canadian, vulnerable people essentially rolling the dice on how to proceed with the information they can manage to find.
And Canadian immigration authorities can be quite unforgiving, even with honest mistakes. So people may be at risk of making mistakes that could cost them their plans or their future.
That is why we came up with IVA: we wanted a tool that could help people navigate Canadian immigration to figure out if an option was good for them. By making information from the public domain more accessible, we believe that we could improve the level of transparency in the industry and benefit the general public. And we decided to keep it free so that as many people could use it. No matter whether they want to work with us or not in the end, we felt it was important to give people this tool to at least have a better clue of what is a viable option for them, and what is not.” (bold by me)
Marc-André’s IVA meets the CRAP test, so essential online, but especially in critical human services. The CRAP Test looks at four major areas:
When determining whether a website (or information) is credible or not, evaluate it on those four areas. Marc-André’s goal is to ensure that IVA continues to be clear in those areas, and useful to anyone seeking authoritative, up to date, accurate and timely information to help them make decisions about immigrating to Canada.
Some of the questions I asked Marc-André
Useful reads:
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