For many community organisations, staying connected with vulnerable communities has been more important than ever during COVID-19. For Mission Australia, working with a transdisciplinary team of UTS students has helped them fast-track innovative approaches to reaching out to people in need of urgent support during the pandemic.

In their fourth year of study, students studying the award-winning Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation (BCII) participate in an Industry Innovation Project (IIP), taking the skills they have learnt over three years and applying them to a real-world challenge. Over one semester, BCII students work in small transdisciplinary teams to collaboratively develop ideas and strategies that tackle complex challenges set by industry partners.

But 2020 has seen an extra challenge for students: this year the Industry Innovation Project launched on the day COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic in March. With COVID-19 the complexity of the challenges increased and many projects pivoted immediately from their initial focus. Students were tasked with having to respond and adapt to their partner organisations’ shifting priorities.

The challenge

Participating as an industry partner in IIP for the first time in 2020 coincided with Mission Australia immediately needing to confront the impacts of COVID-19 on communities living in public housing, many of who were experiencing a food and pharmaceutical crisis and a retraction of support services.

For Mission Australia to remain active on the ground, the need for new communication channels was critical. The brief Mission Australia gave to their BCII students was to find a quick way to reach public housing tenants so that their immediate needs could be identified along with a supportive touchpoint that helped counter amplified experiences of isolation.

Mission Australia also wanted to be able to extend support by dedicating staff to make phone calls where levels of distress were high and action was needed. To fulfil this, recruited staff needed some additional resources to make phone calls.

The students' response

From day one, UTS BCII students, Jennifer (BCII and Comms), Rebecca (BCII and Design) and Kyra (BCII and Business) hit the ground running with Mission Australia. After participating in a full day induction, students sprang into action and started creating valuable resources in response to COVID-19. These included developing a script to guide employee interactions with tenants and designed a neighbourhood check-in card. These initiatives aimed to create a feedback loop on Mission Australia Housing (MAH) tenants’ well-being, assess their immediate needs during this isolation period and help foster stronger relationships between the tenant community.

Mission Australia’s neighbourly check-in cards were distributed throughout communities during the pandemic
Mission Australia’s neighbourly check-in cards were distributed throughout communities during the pandemic

“By developing the script as a group and adapting it in response to feedback from our Mission Australia contacts, we were able to create a resource that assessed the needs of tenants and helped to identify those in vulnerable positions. In doing so, we have helped to create a long-term resource that can be applied to a range of future situations

Jennifer, Rebecca and Kyra, BCII Students

Within days, the Mission Australia team posted out the check-in cards to tenants’ at Common Ground (a Mission Australia Housing residential site for low income earners and  long-term homeless) mailboxes and on their Instagram page to create a community campaign around national ‘Neighbourhood Day’ – an annual event designed to strengthen community connections and wellbeing.

The popular check-in cards are also available to be downloaded by the public on the Mission Australia website to promote a sense of connectivity to neighbours even through physical isolation and distancing.

Through our engagement with the students, we were able to evaluate and adjust the intervention model to be more universal by reducing barriers and risk; and Mission Australia launched it.

Kyle Wiebe, Community Development Officer, Mission Australia

Examples of the student team's work

BCII Students' IIP Project for Mission Australia

The IIP student team were incredibly agile in scanning the situation, working through confronting challenges, assimilating some of the core principles used in health communication and marrying them with their tacit understanding of creative practices and methods. The resulting work was picked up by Mission Australia and both initiatives were immediately put into action. The added benefit is that these resources can be used across a range of contexts into the future too.

Barbara Doran, UTS IIP tutor

Many thanks to the Mission Australia team who engaged with the students and supported their learning and congratulations to the student team (Jennifer, Rebecca and Kyra).