I am using my smart phone to write this article, an Apple iPhone to be exact. I recently had a conversation with a friend who is very anti-tech. She has a podcast where she talks about well-being and mental health. Her latest podcast is all about how ‘tech’ can destroy and harm peoples wellbeing if used unwisely. I listened to it and although I agreed with some points, I thought it was a bit one sided, ‘What about all the good technology can do for the world?’ I asked her. 

I teach a kid-friendly level of digital design and tech to primary school-age kids. I am very pro STEAM, I’ve seen the good tech can do at an educational level. I’ve seen the benefits and skill development it brings. I’ve seen how learning about innovation can motivate and inspire young people giving them job and career opportunities. But her comments made me look deeper, and it got me thinking.

Then, while watching the news one day, I encountered the Freedom Project and discovered a side of the tech industry that is unconscionable. The FP showed that the practices used by big tech companies, like Apple and Microsoft, to make the parts for this smartphone I’m using, have a life-threatening cost to the children who live in places like the Congo. Forced by abject poverty into a kind of modern day child slavery, they are paid a pittance to dig in mud for cobalt that in turn is processed to make batteries that run smart phones, and other gadgets, tech innovations these young children may never ever have the chance to see, let alone use.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The tech giant’s could set up factories for adults to safely do the extracting  and processing, paying them a fair wage, and then they could use some of the profits to send the children of these workers to school, teaching them to be the next tech innovators or at least get work in their factories. It’s so short sighted - greed over common human decency and common sense. 

I am going to donate to, and support The Freedom Project (https://www.thefreedomproject.org) to fight modern slavery in all its forms. I’ll make sure young people I mentor realise the good and bad side of the tech industry so they can be the catalyst for change in times to come, so as they grow, children the same age as those being used to dig for cobalt in the Congo, demand change so it becomes a thing of the past.

So, after weeks and weeks of homeschooling, I finally have more time to write about the experience, and as I thought, the optimism of the first few weeks didn’t last. Things got tougher once the ‘novelty’ wore off.

It was hard enough having to become ‘teacher’ because a virus was making the world a strange, unsafe place, and then George Floyd was murdered in America, the Black Lives Matter movement grew, and suddenly I had to introduce the concept of racism, murder, white privilege and justice to a six-year-old.’

I found help from his school who sent out great information about this delicate subject, help from YouTube videos, and found age-appropriate books that explained race and inequality in ways a little kid would understand and not get frightened by.

I would have preferred not to have to talk about such hateful things to my child at all, but I also know he needs to know at least a little bit about what the world has in store for him - especially as a young black boy.

I want the Stop and Search of young, innocent, law-abiding, intelligent young black boys and men in the UK to stop so my son doesn’t have to endure it in 8 years time when he reaches 14 (the age when many young black boys are first stopped).

Especially as I intend for him to do really well academically and have a good job, lifestyle, car and home – all of which are just a few reasons why many young black men are stopped by the police, time and time again, because they seem to equate, nice car = criminal.

I want to use my creative and digital skills, my workshops and mentoring knowledge, to help make that change in any way I can. There are new youth and digital media centres being set up across London to help give youngsters from deprived areas and BAME backgrounds, the new skills and employment chances they will need to escape poverty, and a lack of life chances made even worse because of the pandemic.

I intend to carry on mentoring kids aged 6 -12  and 12 - 21 in, maker-craft, tech, digital design and graphic design via virtual summer workshops across London and through my afterschool hubs, starting in September 2020.

Becoming ‘teacher’ at home has meant that when Oak National tells my son about Florence Nightingale, Shakleton and Edison, I can also teach him about Mary Seacole, Katherine Johnson, Alexander Mathews and Lewis Latimer, alongside them. So he knows that without these black contributors, many things like the light bulb, lifts and space travel might not have happened.

I really want to change the current school curriculum, so that black innovators are reflected in foundation subjects such as history, science and engineering. Many great black inventors, explorers and pioneers past and present have helped shape our world. And yet, their stories are never told. It’s time for that to change.

Inspirational black people past and present, to look up:

Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780), Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), Dr Shirley Thompson, Margaret Busby (1944-today), Malorie Blackman (1962-today), Professor Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent OBE, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE.

Week #1 of homeschooling my six-year-old son is done, so far he’s been taking everything in his stride and is enjoying being at home - but we’ll see how he feels in week #3!

He understands we have to stay home to stay safe from the Corona-Bug which is making people sick (Corona-Bug is the name we’ve been using to describe the virus to my son) and he knows that brainy scientists are trying to stop Corona-Bug in its tracks - KA-POW!

We’ve been keeping a ‘physical’ distance from everyone as instructed, but have had lots of ‘social' interaction with family, friends and the nation’s PE teacher, Joe Wicks! If someone had told me a few weeks ago I would be an ‘extra’ in this scary, real-life B movie, I'd have said ‘you’re having a laugh’ but these are strange times and this is no laughing matter.

Before the Corona-Bug reared its ugly tentacled head, I’d spent a year building trust with like-minded collaborators, parents, local schools, colleges and community organisations to bring art, maker-craft, digital design and 3D technology to children in Haringey.

Our kids live in a world where gadgets, computers, and smart technology are a part of their daily lives. The type of work they will be employed to do in the future will be very different from the traditional forms of employment their parents have been used to. 

Then finally, all our hard work came to fruition last October when we started our weekly Witty Ditty Kidz, after school tech hub in the local library, and local organisations began to listen to show lots of interest. A tech revolution had begun.

The irony is not lost on me that after years of trying to encourage communities to embrace future technology such as 3D printing and 3D digital design, the Coronavirus outbreak has made everyone kids and grown-ups alike, embrace tech innovation, more than ever before! 

Everyone has had to become more tech-savvy and now cross-collaboration -something my colleagues and I have been practising for ages by using our different design skills for one aim - is helping the NHS get the ventilators they so desperately need as engineers from different fields work together.

In mid-March, like so many others, I had to suspend our weekly hubs and with no work to speak of since, like so many other people, I’m now looking at ways to bring the kid's tech hubs online.

So watch this space.

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