Episode 19 - Global Stories 1 - AIME Mentoring, Australia
Transcript
Kirsty McIntosh 0:01
Hello and welcome to the Scottish Tech Army podcast. I'm Kirsty McIntosh and this is Episode 19. This week as promised, we are going global. This is the first in a periodic series of tech for good stories from around the globe. And I'm very happy to welcome from Australia. Brenden Newton from AIME Mentoring. Good morning Brenden.
Brenden Newton 0:23
It's lovely to be here in my evening over on the east coast of Australia, and I'm excited about your ingenuity and entrepreneurial kind of pathways. Let's enjoy this conversation.
Kirsty McIntosh 0:38
Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it very much. Yes, it is evening where you are, and it's six o'clock in the morning over here. So I'm looking out of a window, I can't see anything because it's pitch dark, but I'm sure it's well worth getting up for this morning. Brendan, can you tell us a little bit both about yourself and AIME? Mentoring, please, how you got to it and what it does?
Brenden Newton 1:00
Yeah, no problem. The way that I got into in involved with AIME is a couple of reasons. You know, I got really mentally ill when I was 19. I'm 36 now and suffered very badly from obsessive compulsive disorder. And it really stopped me I had to reassess who I was and how I did things really, that forced me to really refocus whatever I was going to do is to kind of be to connect with those who were vulnerable sort of, would be able to benefit from my attention, I suppose. It sounds like a bit of an egotistic pursuit. And that became a huge passion of mine. So when I travelled the world professionally as a bodybuilder, I pursued really intense big wave riding. And then I sort of finished up in my surfing career for a number of reasons, but then went back to education and found it very stiff in the education system, did a bunch of practicals back in schools and then I landed this education programme that was just free spirited and completely visceral in its sense of connection. I, I went and spoke to them as a keynote speaker and I saw the room it was it was alive with connection. And this was the AIME Mentoring programme. And after that, I didn't even do my teachers interview, which is kind of almost career suicide in some people's terms, but I just said, I'm going to work for these guys full stop. Thankfully, I went and told my life story to the CEO, and he called me back and said, 'Oh, we want you to take the boss's job, the manager's job'. And I said to him, I don't know if I can do that because I've never worked a full time job in my life, I've done about 35 part time jobs, I've mowed lawns, I've stacked rocks, I've worked in a cafe, I've washed dishes, I've done everything I possibly can. But I don't know how to operate in a structured scene, like running a mentoring programme from a pretty conventional institution and a university. And that's what the job was. So he said, oh no, I'll back you and I got into it. And I was thankful for that risk he took with me and I sort of tried to honour that by just throwing my life towards it and went through that, and the next two or three years was probably the most difficult, but I learned a lot of things, which is great. But now I've moved into a more direct skill set of mine, which is essentially meeting people and figuring out what makes them tick and plugging them into the social change ecosystem we've been able to manufacture. AIME particularly is an organisation that was begun by a nineteen year old eccentric kind of ambitious kid, Aboriginal guy who went into Sydney Uni, saw these white privilege and he's, you know, he was plugged in through a scholarship, an Aboriginal scholarship. And he was watching $200 bottles of vodka getting thrown over their shoulders on a Thursday night. And he knew that his mom's heritage came from, Aboriginal mission. Some of the worst educational outcomes in Australia are Aboriginal demographics. And he knew that disadvantage, that was very much a part of his story. And he was angry, he didn't like the idea of taking up this scholarship when, you know, there's probably other kids that were sort of more black or more disadvantaged, more, you know, more deserving. So he said, he's just gonna try to do everything he possibly can to change this narrative. And he started a mentoring programme, he walked into a school after hustling all these peers in the lecture theatres and said, we're going to go and run a mentoring programme and tell these kids that they're superheroes and that they can do whatever they want with their life and they can dream of a great career or a great idea and go and get it. So that kind of autonomy that tagline "everything is possible" or "imagine what's possible", he used to say to the kids. And that is I think, the core thread that runs as the DNA of the AIME Mentoring programme, which has now actually worked with 25,000 marginalised kids across six different countries, we've mobilised 10,000 volunteer mentors from universities to be trained and dedicate sort of between sort of one and three hours a week to be mentors and sit in this unlikely exchange of interaction with these kids. And the results are that the kids are making it through school tracked by KPMG audits that they, they're closing that 40% gap of educational attainment and then on average, we've seen 20,000 of them achieve those results, which is great, but more so these kids feel like they're alive, they can dream and do whatever they want.
Kirsty McIntosh 5:45
That's absolutely fascinating. Thank you very much, it's what? 16 years and since this AIME Mentoring programme started out, it's no time at all really, is it? For the amount that you've actually delivered? It's absolutely amazing.
Brenden Newton 5:57
Yeah, the funny the parallel to the 2005 is that, you know, when in a dorm room, he was sketching the ideas in 2004 it was the same period where, you know, Zuckerberg was sketching ideas about Facebook, in his college dorm room, and like, the parallel's, like uncanny so we were trying to walk that journey, you know,
Kirsty McIntosh 6:22
Yeah, fantastic. So how does technology fit into all of that, then? I mean, obviously, you go into schools, or that you're actually sort of physically in spaces, really, but how does tech sort of fit into that now?
Brenden Newton 6:35
I think storytelling moves people. And if you want to move 30,000 people, like we've sort of been able to do, storytelling has to be digital, as well as face to face. I mean, just talking to you now, I can see you on the internet. I think you probably couldn't be further away from me in the world right now, you're almost directly opposite times and there's a sense of connection. So that says to me, that there's potential for digital devices and platforms, be it Zoom, WhatsApp, whatever you want to use, and some more sophisticated ones that we can connect. And our whole movement is based off connecting the top 1% of the world, with those kids that, you know, potentially have only just got internet in the last six months in Kampala, Uganda, for example. So yes, we've used technology, we use it to tell stories to connect people. I can tell you about some case studies, but I suppose we'll get into that.
Kirsty McIntosh 7:41
Yeah. Tell me a little bit about Imagination TV, because - is that something that started after the pandemic started? Or was it just a coincidence that you were live streaming TV from from March this year?
Brenden Newton 7:56
Yeah, cool. So what has been a characteristic of our organisation, which has probably ruffled a few feathers, but also has been the reason we've been able to move so fast and affects so much change is we have a "yes, and" attitude. So like, that's one of the principles. It's like an acting principle, if you you know, some puts up a certain piece of narrative in a roleplay, you say yes, and and you add to it. So when COVID struck, we literally as leadership team will look at each other through a Zoom call going, you know, we were just setting up the best physical programme we ever had for 6000 students globally, and we were really excited about that. But yet, there was now social distancing, the uni shut down, all our stakeholders shut down. And we were looking at each other on a Zoom call going, what are we going to do? And Jack said, Well, why don't we start a TV show? Livestream it to YouTube, get the best mentors in the world and all these kids, we've got currently got commission notes from and lob them on to a TV show and have this eclectic engagement of mentoring, discovering, you know, some of the 18 values we've got, and, and then we sort of brought structure in later, but it was a series of like, conversations via Zoom over one hour, that was just like, yep, let's do this TV show. And from that, came 99 episodes, across 50 odd schools, you know, 200 mentors and 400 kids engaged from minority backgrounds. And it was like this every day, I remember having our our have producers' meeting and just, it was exciting. I was dropping my kids off at school and I'd pop on the Zoom at 9am and I knew at a 12pm show where it was going to go live and we were hustling kids on there and you know, putting different mentors from different areas. We had prime ministers and you know, the Mandela family and a few other big hitter mentors and it was fascinating, completely exciting. So I suppose a lot of people were frozen with fear or just didn't know what to do we always having the tone of my life and we managed to do the TV show and essentially, yeah, that's how we did our mentoring programme I suppose for the next three months while everyone was sort of figuring out what Coronavirus was.
Kirsty McIntosh 10:23
I don't think they figured that one out yet. So the TV's show's finished for the time being, obviously 99 episodes, that's quite extraordinary. I'm quite excited about getting to 20 episodes of my podcast. So 90 day live streams of TV is something to behold, it's fantastic. So what happens next? The world is a very different place than it was, pre March, how are you going to deliver your programmes from now on?
Brenden Newton 10:49
I suppose, inspired by the effectiveness and accessibility of Imagination TV, which is the live stream show that we did, we sort of thought, well, what are we going to do going forward? And for the last four or five years, we've really been dreaming of just having a bit more impact and change the system a little bit more rather than operating within the system, kind of seeing a lot of kids enjoying the programme and getting into uni or whatever. And then a lot a lot of students at uni having a good time. But I saw us having greater capacity for change and mobilising more people, you know, there's kids in juvenile justice, there's CEOs and executives, there's different people from different areas in different countries that couldn't connect with us because they didn't have the structured mentoring programme agreement set up with us. So we thought, well, we want to solve that problem, we want to be able to plug people into what we're doing. And then also we had sort of tested and tried a bunch of different mechanisms for change. And some of them were Student Ambassadors ships Get, get a minority kid that has leadership capacity and, and get them on a specific ambassador, programme and, and send them send them off to change their world in 100 days and, and report on those findings. And we also tried and tested a co CEO programme where we had business executives, our CEO having a minority young kid or Aboriginal kid coming under their wing and learning the ropes of business and being in boardrooms and sitting with CEOs and fast tracking that skill set for them, and by extension, their family and demographic. And we also had teacher training, we were saying to teachers, Hey, how about teach with imagination, like, break the rules, you know so that we can actually open up the classroom walls and test out some of these ideas we feel could work, you know, we've tried in our mentoring programme. So there's all these different things beyond just mentoring High School marginalised kids, and so we thought, we want to reach the world. We've got intelligence in a couple of areas, we've tried and tested these programmes before, why don't we put it all under one umbrella and do a cheeky thing and say we're going to start a university because we kind of did a bit of research or figured out that maybe 3% of people access universities in developing countries. And we thought, Well, how about we stick it to that and say, we're going to start a university, we're just going to call it a university. We're going to try to sidestep some legals by putting it in a funny brackets and, and hopefully, someone doesn't file a lawsuit against this, but we're gonna start a university, and we're going to invite school kids, uni students, teachers, executives, and general citizens to come and learn from us and then go away and change the world. And that's what imagination universities and we've had 1415 applications come in.
Kirsty McIntosh 13:38
Gosh, is that just from the first of October?
Brenden Newton 13:40
Yeah, so the guy Eric Schmidt, who founded Google actually linked us into Hello World, which is this phenomenal kind of pursuit of mobilising minority kids. And they recruiting 20,000 this year marginalised young people to support them to live their dreams. And they said, you can have the top 1000 of them for Imagination University. So that's a good win for us, but also, like, pretty cool that we, yeah, get access to that. And we've also, you know, me as one of the recruitment leads at the organisation, I've just been hustling and bustling, trying to figure out who I can contact and, and then, you know, there's been some wonderful people that actually do want to make change and want to, I suppose rebel a bit, try something new and, and figure out how we can take 1% of the world that owns 50% of the world's wealth and connect them with kids in Kampala, or, you know, like break those rules and start to take down the red tape which perpetuates disadvantage. That's our ultimate goal.
Kirsty McIntosh 13:42
Yeah, I think actually one of the one of the lessons from the pandemic is, is the world is actually quite small place. Yeah. If you can, if you can push a pandemic around the globe in a couple of weeks and then you can do you know, you can do amazing things if if you if you take that that idea and as you say, push it around the globe. So you've already kind of put your toe in the water in terms of coming to Scotland with this programme. I know that you've that you've been talking about it here in Scotland, have you had any applications from over here yet?
Brenden Newton 15:13
Good question I don't think we have. So we did a keynote at the festival called Creative Bravery and they had a radical little programme that they set up to widen the concept of educators and education and use imagination. And I think their tagline was reimagining education. And, and that sort of appeal to man, I met them and I was like, yeah, we'll just connect him and do something. But I don't think we got too many applications from that maybe it was a bit of a foreign concept, we tend to use a brochure as a way of playing with words and drawing pitches and doing funny things like, and some people just don't get it. So maybe apply because it doesn't look legit.
Kirsty McIntosh 15:59
I loved it. To tell a story of how I find you is, and for the benefit of our listeners, Brenden sent me something and he sent me a connection request on LinkedIn. And, and I was completely sort of like captivated by all of your branding, actually, it was the thing that made me It made me look at the at the message sort of in the first place. And I just think it's really, really exciting what you're doing. So hopefully, we'll be able to, to push out the message that this isn't anything to be to be afraid of. And one of the things I wanted to kind of touch on with you actually, earlier on this week, I had the privilege of listening to a series of Scottish organisations, all who, whose client base if you like, suffer from digital exclusion for many and varied reasons. And I was wanting to ask you what that's like in in Australia in terms of the people that you're trying to reach? How easy is it for them to actually get on the internet? How easy is it for them to have devices and actually get access to all this amazing material that's available to them? Is this a Is this a big issue down in Australia? It's certainly a big issue for us here in Scotland.
Brenden Newton 17:11
Yeah, it is a big issue. And I think we've got an opportunity to soften those communications to those people who may be foreign to jumping on Zoom and expressing themselves. Like that's hard. But you know, I'm having a good time with it now. But I've spent all year doing it like I'm so it's up to us who have that privilege, I suppose to reach out and cultivate a confidence in those people to use the systems. But then again, if they don't even have access to Wi Fi or device, that's another issue. We got 106 kids in Kampala. And they they clocked into our mentoring programme, wonderful kids, many of them from the slums like and our programme leader over there was telling me there's only six kids engaging in our digital provision of the programme imagination TV, and, and the sort of offset of that is, the spin off of that is we do imagination classrooms after, which is like online tutorials and mentoring. Only six kids could engage and what about the other 100? They don't have access to internet or device like, that's like, as far as I'm concerned, that's not good enough. Like we've got kids playing computer games all night in New York. And we've got kids that can't even get onto an educational programme in Kampala, which is, you know, a quarter for why around the world, it's like, we've got to change that. And we've got to take that responsibility and save, save, we can imagine new ways of distributing internet devices are figured it out, you know?
Kirsty McIntosh 18:44
Yeah. Yeah, I think I think that's very true. I mean, the connectivity issue is very big. I mean, we have a, you know, difficult geography in Scotland as well, which means that, you know, there are several communities within Scotland that don't have broadband connections. And it's not so much that you can't get devices that you actually can't get a connection because there's a mountain in the way and there's an unwillingness to invest in pushing that broadband out to everywhere that it needs to be. So it is a huge, huge problem. And it and it's one of enormous frustration actually, because, you know, as you say, the internet is our, you know, it's a goldmine of information, that's a goldmine of learning, it's a goldmine of, you know, connectivity with other human beings and it's just so frustrating that the very people who would benefit from that moves are the very people who sometimes just can't get anywhere, can't get anywhere near it. So you're writing so it's something that we should we should address directly and, and seek to fix? I think, so. Okay, so yeah, the university is off and running, which is absolutely fantastic. What other plans have you got for 2021 and beyond?
Brenden Newton 19:51
Yeah, so we're sort of refining the content. We've got six key content areas like that. We've filled out We've got someone to speak about in terms of a global setting. And they're mentoring imagination, building bridges, flipping the script of a narrative, particular narrative of someone's life and organising change. So the principles of organising change what's worked for us for, you know, 30,000 people over the last 15 years and, and then Hoodie Economics, which is something that we're drafting with, with a couple people at the moment. And that's around sort of different principles to an economic system, using kindness, using different methods to exchange currency, rather than just cash. So those key content areas are like, they're fascinating, you know, like, we've been going down rabbit holes with them and figuring out like, you know, what is the capacity for imagination beyond being a five year old, playing with Lego? Like, what? Maybe it's the answer to, I mean Einstein I think said imagination is more important than knowledge. And he was a pretty cool guy, achieved a few things. So I'm, like, how can we figure that out? And potentially make this legit, you know, imagination is not just a fluffy word, it's like, maybe we can solve the world's biggest problems with imagination, how can we make this a sophisticated space where we explore that, and we're going to do our best, I suppose through the uni. And as it kicks off in February 1 2021, and, and, and try to unpack these concepts in the in the best way we can. And then, and then go on a journey with those who sort of enrolled and that's kind of what we're doing. Um, it's gonna be interesting, there's gonna be lots of mistakes.
Kirsty McIntosh 21:43
But the best way to learn anyway,
Brenden Newton 21:45
We're just trying to have a go at the, you know, six key areas that we feel like they've got potential to really create new ways of doing things and then try to track the progress of that and have fun along the way with it, you know, play?
Kirsty McIntosh 22:06
I do. I was really captivated when we were talking earlier about you were saying that you could have a, I don't know, a mentor in Western Australia somewhere talking to somebody in, you know, can power sharing, you know, a meeting with somebody, an executive from New York, this kind of global diverse thinking, also sitting down sort of trying to dissolve a knotty problem. I'm just I think that's absolutely, absolutely fantastic. So how do you, how do you become a mentor? Firstly, if it's something that you're interested in, in mentoring through AIME Mentoring, what's the what's the process there? For those of those listeners who might be interested?
Brenden Newton 22:47
The mentor in right at the moment is not applicable to what we're doing. That's what we're recruiting for at the moment is those who want to jump in and learn those six key content areas and make change in their field. So that would be an application to Imagination University, you can go to AIMEMentoring.com and do that. That's probably the best inroad, there's lots of mentoring to be done on a monthly basis with those kind of tutorial groups throughout 2021. That's a fantastic way to flex a mentoring muscle there. But in terms of mentoring via the programme, we'll have positions available to mentor minority kids on a digital level come out probably March April next year. But um, yeah, at the moment, we're focused on filling this university and, and, and setting up through the channel of, of the university students, mainstream university students that sign on to Imagination University, they will be tasked with going out and running a mentoring programme locally, mobilising 100 volunteer mentors to connect with 100 minority young kids in a neighbouring High School. And that mentoring will happen given COVID restrictions at the time, either digitally or on campus. So there will be potential for the globe to plug into mentoring digitally in March, April next year, but our prerogative of the moment is to try to set up this union and essentially have a crack at changing the world.
Kirsty McIntosh 24:18
I like that I like the fact that you're, you're going straight to digital with it, you know, when just about every other education system is having to pivot around from physical delivery you're able to think of it sort of slightly differently, I think, because you're coming at it from a completely fresh perspective. I think it's, it sounds like an admirable thing to do and congratulations on it. I think it'll be really, really exciting. And I look forward to looking out for over here as well.
Brenden Newton 24:54
I just think like, there's probably a bit more digital sophistication that's worth noting like We've got Salesforce, who's partnering with us, and PwC and PwC and PwC Indigenous who are crafting what's called like Salesforce Trailhead, which are digital pathways for people to remain engaged with Imagination University throughout the 2021 experience. So, like it's not easy is it? You know, like actually getting people together I know what you're doing with with your work and you know, the work in Scotland and the way you've tried to connect a lot of people digitally with organisations, I think he said, You've got like 1000 volunteers connecting. Mobilising people without getting them in a hall for example, and doing some sort of a talk or, it's hard so we're trying to use people that are renowned for doing well at this you know, Facebook's incredible at it, you know, like Instagrams incredible at mobilising and connecting people but we're trying to, I suppose, retain a sense of continuity and purpose with Imagination University and we've sort of on boarded Salesforce to try to run that one of their products, which is Trailhead to try to connect in all these unlikely alliances from 20 different countries and take them on a journey. So I'm, you know, I'm slightly scared, slightly excited, slightly fascinated with how we can try to pull this off. Um, it's not going to be easy, but you know, that's, I suppose, maybe in 20 years time, like Salesforce trailhead is just like a Facebook and people just run their businesses off it, I don't know.
Kirsty McIntosh 26:43
it's good to think of it differently, actually, how do you apply all of that in an entirely different context. Well our founder here, Alistair Forbes has a brilliant quotation from Mario Andretti that he refers to frequently, where Mario Andretti said that "if everything feels like it's in control, you're not going fast enough". So it sounds to me like that's where you are at the moment.
Brenden Newton 27:06
That's interesting. Yeah, that's, that's fascinating. And, like, similar quote, would be like, you know, how failure applies to, and fear applies to, you know, how you do your life day to day like, you don't want too much fear and failure, but it's certainly a lovely place to dancing. I think it's the zone of proximal development, which was an education term that I learned at University, where, you know, you dance in that scary, uncomfortable space, and then hopefully, you know, that sort of stretches your ability to eventually make that space where you operate, and then continue to expand further.
Kirsty McIntosh 27:48
I like that. I like that a lot. That seems absolutely brilliant. Well, Brenden, listen, it's been really, really interesting talking to you. Thank you very much for your time today. And and I very much hope that we'll kind of keep in touch and watch to see how the university rolls out next year.
Brenden Newton 28:02
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for listening and like having time to let me express myself for a little bit.
Kirsty McIntosh 28:09
It's good. Thank you very much.