The Datacom Advisory team last month held a series of workshops for New Zealand youth charity, VOYCE Whakarongo Mai (Voice of the Young and Care Experience). The workshops are an extension of our well established #ThinkSmash workshop format, focussed on developing a Lean Digital Strategy. The goal is to empower VOYCE to expand their care into an increasingly digital youth audience.
VOYCE Whakarongo Mai, a Non-Government Organisation (NGO), stands for Voice of the Young and Care Experienced. Their mission is to empower children and young people in foster care to be heard and ensure their voices are kept at the centre of all the decisions that are made about them. They provide independent connection and advocacy services for young people in care working directly with youth, families and caregivers.
"We approached Datacom for help in developing a Lean Digital Strategy and Roadmap that creates an enduring, accessible and practical digital mark that can be easily utilised across the organisation. Previous work is this area had us [VOYCE] struggling to translate and implement recommendations into results. - Dr Ainsleigh Cribb-Su'a - Chief Executive, VOYCE
VOYCE is a relatively new organisation, launched in April 2017 and is majority funded by New Zealand's government and philanthropy. VOYCE has an aggressive target to open at least 5 other branches around NZ by end of this financial year.
To achieve this mission, VOYCE needed a digital strategy that enabled a strong digital connection between children and young people to Kaiwhakamana (advocacy practitioners), the Youth Council, community support, other trusted adults, and the government.
VOYCE reached out to our Datacom Advisory services to help them develop a Lean Digital Strategy and Roadmap that creates a long-term, scalable and practical digital footprint that can be easily replicated across all branches. Previous consulting work around this had resulted in VOYCE struggling to translate and practically implement the recommendations into outcomes.
This situation is typical of many Datacom clients and the Advisory team have created a lean workshop service offering.
The team delivers a Lean Digital Strategy in just a few days, that comprehensively covers digitisation opportunities across all areas of an organisation, from its value proposition and customer journey, through to service/product innovation and core foundation (internal operations).
Our Management Consulting team, led by Rowan Teh and his team members Janese Porter and Saketh Vishnubhotla, went to task running a Lean Digital Strategy workshop with the VOYCE team. As part of this process, they conducted industry research to provide insights of what other digital opportunities were being embraced in the Voluntary sector.
They found that Digital platforms have been relied upon not only to share information, but to deliver counselling services and collaborate with caregivers and other agencies.
Technologies such as digital fundraising, online chats, live casts of events, case management, and mobility provide significant value to charities.
"We have participated in workshops with The Datacom Advisory team and it has been a learning experience for everyone, including myself. For the rest of the year, the primary focus is around building our digital foundation in order to digitally reach out to the 6300 Tamariki Atawhai in care around the country."
Dr Ainsleigh Cribb-Su'a - Chief Executive, VOYCE​
The Lean Digital Strategy framework is guided by an overarching mission statement "To provide a safe and secure digital environment for care-experienced youth". This statement joins the sentiments of VOYCE's objective of being an independent and safe entity for youth enabled by a digital environment.
To achieve this mission, VOYCE needs strategic pillars around their collaboration platforms, information management, branch operations and reporting and analytics.
Each one of these pillars has a number of initiatives to implement, which form their roadmap.
For the rest of the year, the focus is on building this digital foundation to operationalise the targeted number of branches that need to be stood-up. Additionally, to raise the profile of VOYCE and connect with children and young people in care. This framework has been produced with multi-colours that are used by VOYCE in their brand to represent the individual and collective voices of children in care.
"We are so very grateful for the tangible and relatively simple roadmap, recommendations and solution developments that Rowan and the team have availed for us."
Dr Ainsleigh Cribb-Su'a - Chief Executive, VOYCE