auDA is pleased to announce the 2024 Community Grant Program has awarded 15 grants to projects to improve the utility of the internet and promote digital inclusion to enhance the benefits of the internet to the wider community.
Each project will receive $40,000 in funding to deliver benefits to one or more of the following cohorts:
- Rural, regional and remote Australians
- Australians living with a disability
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
- Older Australians (65 years+)
- Young Australians (12-24 years).
Chair of auDA’s Public Benefit Program Committee Sandra Davey said, “auDA is pleased to fund 15 exceptional projects that will deliver meaningful impact, including initiatives to provide tools to help farmers act on climate change, support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage, improve the health and wellbeing of young people, and increase digital inclusion for people with disability.”
auDA CEO Dr Bruce Tonkin said, “auDA’s Community Grant Program promotes digital inclusion that enhances the benefits of the internet to the wider community. I congratulate the teams leading this year’s projects, which span digital access to healthcare, climate-resilient farming and education initiatives for regional, rural and remote students.”
The 2024 auDA Community Grant Program projects are:
- Communication platform for remote learning in disadvantaged communities, Deakin University, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment
- Research to unmask harmful digital marketing to young people, Deakin University, Faculty of Health
- Climate Smart Farming Toolkit, Farmers for Climate Action Limited
- IndigiSTEMM Jila HUB education platform, Flinders University
- Digital forums to support digital literacy in older Australians, RMIT
- Erub Mer Living First Language Digital Hack-a-thon Camp, The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation Limited
- Cool.org AI: Teacher Feature Differentiation Tool, Cool Australia Limited as The Trustee For The Cool Australia Trust
- The BRIGHTEST project: Hep-B test result online tool, The Westmead Institute for Medical Research
- Digital Dilly Bag - First Nations data sovereignty, Tranby Aboriginal Co-operative Limited
- Digital inclusion measurement through Seedkit, University of Melbourne, Melbourne Social Equity Institute
- ENACT: Roadmap for cognitive-friendly technology, University of Queensland
- BEeT for Youth: online treatment for binge eating in young people, University of Sydney
- Westlake Collection: cultural resurgence through online archives, University of Tasmania
- Digital inclusion for Australians living with disability, University of the Sunshine Coast in collaboration with Electronic Frontiers Australia
- Raising the Game Portal employment opportunities for neurodivergent youth, Employment Options Inc trading as Youth Options.
The Community Grant Program is managed by auDA and funded by the auDA Foundation. To date, the Program has awarded over $5 million in funding to projects that enable more Australians to access the social and economic value of the internet. The successful projects were formally announced last night at an event in Melbourne to celebrate the 2024 grant round.
ENDS
Note to media:
Projects for auDA’s 2024 Community Grant Program are set out below.
Project name | Project outline | Beneficiary groups and locations | Organisation |
Reliable haptic communication platform for remote learning in disadvantaged communities | Develop a robust internet communication platform to support immersive, remote learning for secondary students in rural, regional and First Nations communities, and enable students to interact with urban university laboratories supporting reliable access to quality physics education. | Rural, regional and remote Australians, Victoria | Deakin University, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment |
Unmasking the dark side of harmful digital marketing | Enable a detailed understanding of how the gambling, alcohol, vaping, tobacco and junk food industries are using persuasive appeals, engagement and interaction techniques and peer or influencer strategies to promote their products and services online. | Young Australians (12-24 years), Victoria | Deakin University, Faculty of Health |
Climate Smart Farming Toolkit | Provide a systematic approach through the Climate Smart Farming Toolkit for farmers to engage with climate-smart farming practices. The toolkit will bring information together into a searchable database with written, audio and visual information for improved accessibility. | Rural, regional and remote Australians, Victoria | Farmers for Climate Action Limited |
IndigiSTEMM Jila HUB | Develop a self-determined education platform to help address persistent disparities in education and STEMM engagement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Northern Territory. | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, South Australia/NT | Flinders University |
Digital forums for older Australians: Engaging virtual communities for social support and digital health literacy | Enhance digital inclusion among seniors by developing innovative digital tools and healthy aging content that increases digital and health literacy and fosters meaningful social connections among older Australians. | Older Australians (65 years+), Victoria | RMIT |
Erub Mer Living First Language Digital Hack-a-thon Camp | Enable local language revitalisation, maintenance and teaching through collaborative development, in the format of a Hack-a-thon camp, of interactive digital resources in Erub Mer language for First Nations people in the Torres Strait. | Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples, Torres Strait | The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation |
Cool.org AI: Teacher Feature (Differentiation Tool) | Use a generative AI model trained on Cool.org’s digital library of more than 3,000 curriculum-aligned, evidence-based lessons to enable educators to create new resources that address varied learning styles and needs of students within their classrooms. | Rural, regional and remote Australians, National | The Trustee For The Cool Australia Trust |
The BRIGHTEST project (Blood Result Interpreter, Getting Hep-B Tests into Everyday Simple Terms) | Develop an online tool that provides an interpretation of people's Hepatitis B lab results in simple-to-understand language. This public webtool will provide patient-oriented information based on test results and answer commonly asked questions. | Rural, regional and remote Australians, NSW | The Westmead Institute for Medical Research |
Digital Dilly Bag - First Nations data sovereignty | Capture and store the vital stories of Indigenous Elders for the benefit of current and future generations before they are lost. The project focuses on Indigenous data sovereignty and creates a safe digital data hub for the storage and preservation of Indigenous digital audio-visual stories in a culturally sensitive manner. | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, NSW | Tranby Aboriginal Co-operative Ltd |
Advancing measurement of digital inclusion by social enterprises through Seedkit | Build the capacity of social enterprises and for-purpose organisations to measure and communicate their digital inclusion impacts by extending the functionality and resources of the Seedkit digital social innovation platform (seedkit.com.au). | All priority groups, All Australians, National | University of Melbourne – Melbourne Social Equity Institute |
Enhancing Navigation and Access to Cognitive-Friendly Technology (ENACT) | Improve healthcare outcomes by optimising the uptake of technology for individuals with cognitive impairment by developing a roadmap for creating cognitive-friendly technology to enable designers and researchers to build systems that are usable and acceptable. | Australians living with disability, Queensland | University of Queensland |
BEeT for Youth: A co-designed adaptation of a proven online CBT treatment for binge eating in young people | Develop and test an innovative, co-designed, gamified adaptation of an adult online intervention for eating disorders (EDs) for children and young adolescents. Conduct a pilot evaluation testing the effectiveness of the online program for people aged 12-24 years. | Young Australians (12-24 years), NSW | InsideOut Institute for Eating Disorders, University of Sydney and Sydney Local Health District |
Supporting cultural resurgence through online archives: the Westlake Collection | Develop a culturally safe online space where Palawa (or Pakana/Tasmanian Aboriginal) can access and explore key documentary heritage materials in support of language reconstruction and cultural resurgence. | Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples, Tasmania | University of Tasmania |
Securing Digital Inclusion for Australians living with Disability | Employ user-centred design and co-design methods, working directly with people with disability end-users, developers and security and disability support experts to assess the security and privacy of mobile apps used for accessibility to advance digital inclusion. | Australians living with disability, Queensland | University of the Sunshine Coast (in collaboration with Electronic Frontiers Australia) |
Raising the Game Portal | Create an online portal to administer Raising the Game, a social enterprise that will enable neurodivergent young people to apply their skills and knowledge to providing Quality Assurance and other testing for the online games industry. | Young Australians (12-24 years), South Australia | Youth Options |