VIP Treatment

Hi everyone, I’ve had an amazing week, but first things first. We’ve finally broken the 1000 visits per month and in February 1018 people visited the site!!! Thank you all for your continued support, I guess it means I’m doing something right!

As you know, we won the HP Micro Economic Grant a few weeks ago, and last weekend the executives from HP came up to visit the NT and brought with them a media entourage. I was in the right place at the right time and managed to secure an invite to a few HP corporate social activities and it was an amazing experience with full VIP treatment.

On Monday I caught up with Grant Cleary from HP and Jack Hughes from the BEC to discuss our proposal. The photo above was quite a historic milestone for me as it represents the first real deal that I put together. Three key players coming together to change the world…albeit on a very small business scale.

Later on that afternoon I was invited to a Pre-Launch function at Sky City Casino as a guest of HP. They partnered with the Catholic Education Office and provided a new computer lab for St Francis Xavier school in the Daly River region. HP’s local technology partner - CSG installed the equipment in the school and another small but exciting technology company - SchoolKiT provided educational resources to train teachers in effectively delivering content to the kids using the new technology.

Now this sounds pretty straight forward. You take a multinational corporation with billions of dollars, pick a remote school, whack in some technology and watch the kids happily play. End of story. However when each of the key players stood up to talk about their role within the project you were faced with some pretty amazing stories about how things work in remote areas of the Northern Territory - a fact that we city folk often don’t think about.

First up we had Maj O’Neil, who is the Principal of St Francis Xavier. She spoke about the challenges of administering a a remote indigenous school. She mentioned how when she first drove into the Daily River Community the hospitality that she received from the locals was amazing. They were just so glad to see her even though they didn’t know her. They made her feel welcome right from the very minute she set foot in there. The second thing that she told us, which I found really interesting, was the intricacies involved in teaching two curriculums to indigenous kids. While the kids who attend the school learn about maths and science and the usual other subjects taught in western culture, they also learn about traditional Aboriginal culture like how to track and hunt.

Then we had Kyiha Harris from HP talk about choosing and implementing the technology. To her it wasn’t simply a case of grabbing some pcs and installing them. Kyiha said that HP had to carefully chose the equipment that would be deployed in the school because it had to withstand the unique environmental conditions of a remote location such as bugs, heat and dust. Also the region gets flooded quite often so the solution needed to be installed in a practical manner to ensure that flood waters would not ruin the equipment. In fact, while they were planning to get the equipment over to the school, the place had flooded and the only way to get it all in there was to transport it all via dinghy. When Grant told me this I couldn’t believe it, but sure enough he sent me a photo and it was quite an interesting sight!

The interesting thing about Kyiha’s stories were that she spoke with such passion and conviction about her experience that we all felt that she truly had no idea what she was getting into, but rose up to the challenge and worked hard to turn the dream of the entire project into reality. Inspirational stuff!

After a bit more mingling after the official speeches we were off to dinner at Buzz Cafe for a fantastic feed and great conversation - all expenses paid for by HP. I couldn’t believe that I was amongst such a great group of people, all because I was in the right place at right time a few months ago in Perth.

Even though I didn’t get a chance to visit the school for myself, it was a really great experience being a part of the entourage and listening to every ones stories. The whole project is something really special and the kids will definitely love the new technology. Cynthia Karena was one of the journalists who went to the school and this is the article that she wrote about her experience - “Attacking the great digital divide”.

One final point that I’d like to make is that while we sit in our offices, or classrooms or at home and run through the mundane tasks involved with our daily lives, there are people out there working hard to provide experiences to others that change the world. Something to think about for this week - “What is going on in the rest of the world while I sit here?”

Sincere thanks to Grant, Kyiha, Brad and all the other amazing people that I met that night for letting me share in the excitement. It was really great meeting you all and I look forward to working with you on our Technology Training Initiative over the next few months.

Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

AJ~

Author: AJ Kulatunga

Category:

Dream, Inspire, HP, St Francis Xavier, Changing the world