Zeal Education Trust – Bridging the Digital Divide
Established in 1998, nationwide youth organisation Zeal Education Trust (Zeal) believes every young New Zealander deserves to belong, be accepted on their terms, and have an equitable chance to thrive. It provides safe, inclusive, local and online spaces where young people can explore and develop their strengths through various programmes and workshops. One of the many ways Zeal supports young people is by helping them to overcome the digital divide through its Tech Café project.
In this innovative setting, they learn to refurbish donated laptops or desktop PCs and also get to keep the device as part of the tech club programme. Zeal partners with schools in West Auckland where as many as 33% of ākonga (learners) do not have access to a device at home to learn, do homework, and thrive on their own terms. These numbers increase to 36% and 49% without devices for rangatahi Māori and Pasifika young people respectively. During COVID-19 Lockdowns, 59% of those with devices were sharing them with siblings.
Besides learning how to bring obsolete hardware back to life, taking part in this programme teaches young people the skills to thrive in the digital world, and how to learn and earn online, make friends, and overcome challenges. Importantly, Tech Café is led by young people with Zeal youth workers supporting them to use their digital superpowers to achieve their goals, whether that’s building a gaming suite for their community or starting their own businesses.
“One of the biggest wins so far have been the number of schools keen to get on board with our mid-year refurbish-a-thon. This is a chance for students who might not be able to commit to our in-school tech clubs to learn laptop refurbishing in a smaller timeframe, and still get to take home their own device they worked on, which has been donated by one of Zeal’s generous device donors.
Every fortnight, having the team from Hau Tutū Trust (Zeal Tech Café partners) in our space to collab on our e-sports meets feels like a win. These guys bring such good vibes and the sound of young people working as a team is such a joy! We’ve also been able to secure some more resources from a local trust which means our e-sports rig can be a permanent setup at our afternoon hangs space, which means dozens of rangatahi getting their hands on technology every day,” says Chris Winder, Digital Director – Zeal.
Besides having a strong youth development approach embedded into its delivery, Tech Café reduces tonnes of E-waste by diverting devices and parts from landfill. Donated devices and parts are sourced locally, thus reducing the transportation carbon footprint. Any devices that can’t be upcycled are salvaged and used for parts, and any parts not used are recycled. But it hasn’t all been plain sailing.
“Our two greatest constraints are our capacity to facilitate our programmes and our access to donated devices. We’ve been able to overcome a lot of the facilitation constraints by consulting with our partner schools on how we could make as big an impact as possible with limited facilitation hours. We’ve found that if we hold our mid-year refurbishment expo at Zeal at the end of term rather than during school holidays, we’ll be able to more than double our number of parent and teacher support, enabling more rangatahi to take part in a given day.
We’ve also been fortunate to bring in additional resource, so we can hire four rangatahi who’ve taken part in our programme as device technicians! This means we’ll be able to pre-screen more devices, visit more donors, and have more facilitators on the ground. In addition to this, these rangatahi get hands-on work experience in tech from a young age.
We’ve been fortunate to get offers of support through contacts at the J R McKenzie Trust, meaning we’ve got organisations out there campaigning on our behalf to collect devices for Zeal Tech Café. We’ve also just had a big device shipment from our friends at Recycle a Device, who share our belief that all rangatahi should have access to the online world to learn, earn and thrive,” says Chris.
Zeal has some ambitious plans for the future where Tech Café is concerned.
“We’ve got some big prep work still to do so we’re set up to win at our mid-year refurbishment expo. We’ve also got some exciting activations brewing with our project partner, Hau Tutū trust, so that our expo participants get some fun exposure to the tech world in between refurbishing their devices.
This is a year of building but also making bolder moves towards our digital equity goals. Last year, we worked alongside over 100 rangatahi, who all took home devices they’d helped refurbish. This year, we want to more than double that through the addition of Zeal Tech Café. Through trying some new things and being ambitious with the scale of our expo, we’re hopeful we can smash these goals out of the park!”
While Zeal’s focus is on championing rangatahi who have limited access to devices, internet, and tech opportunities, they strive to ensure their spaces are inclusive, and that they uphold the mana of all rangatahi who take part in the tech programmes, especially those without digital access. The expectation is that Tech Café and the wider tech programmes will contribute to overcoming digital disconnection, build resilience among rangatahi to navigate the long-term wellbeing impacts of COVID-19, tackle inequity in the tech sector, and empower rangatahi to innovate and lead change on systemic environmental issues.