EP 332 – Connecting the Unconnected: Empowering Communities and Driving Economic Growth – Mea Thompson – Unconnected (dot) Org

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):

Michael Waitze 0:08
Hi. This is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia Tech Podcast. Mea Thompson, a co-Founder and the CCO of Unconnected.org is with us today. Mea, thank you so much for coming to the show. How are you doing, by the way?

Mea Thompson 0:23
Thank you for having me. I’m doing great things, Busy, but good.

Michael Waitze 0:27
Yeah, this. So the Japanese have a phrase, and it goes, it’s like a saying, and it goes something like this, hima yori isogashii hogai, which loosely translates as it’s better to be busy than to have so much too much free time.

Mea Thompson 0:42
That’s very, very true. Sometimes when you have too much free time, you think you’re busy

Michael Waitze 0:48
and you make busy work for yourself anyway. Let’s give our listeners some background.

Mea Thompson 0:52
If you if you don’t mind, sure. So hi everyone, and that is tuning in. My name is Mea Thompson, like Michael said, I’m working in the digital equity space. I’m a bit of a technology nerd from background, so I’ve been working in the telco space now for is it 15 years? It’s a long time calling in from a very sunny day here in Sweden, in Gothenburg,

Michael Waitze 1:21
are you Swedish?

Mea Thompson 1:23
I am I am Swedish.

Michael Waitze 1:25
I love it. Can you tell me what a technology nerd is?

Mea Thompson 1:30
Well, it’s one of those people that in the right conference is really, really cool, but in normal life, they’re a bit nerdy. You asked me, people think I’m cool. You asked me,

Michael Waitze 1:43
before we started recording, why I was laughing. I don’t know. Maybe you should just do stand up as well on the side, if you have any free time, for some reason you seem quite funny. Yeah. I mean, look, I’ve been a technology nerd my whole life, and I would just kind of define it as like, technology is just infused in every single part of my life, and every time I see something new, I remember when I saw my first trs 80. You’re too young to know what that is, but they started putting computers in my high school that had tape drives on them. And I was like, this is going to change my life. So I’ve been doing this kind of thing forever. Anyway,

Mea Thompson 2:11
no, but I think I got it from my dad as well, because when he was alive, he was even a more techno than I was. So if there is a way for him to turn the TV on from his phone or from something else, even though it took 10 times as long to get that TV to turn on, instead of him using the actual remote do it. So maybe that’s where I got it from. I think your dad and I

Michael Waitze 2:33
would have been really good friends. I think I’ve done the same thing to my daughter, by the way. So fair enough.

Mea Thompson 2:38
Drives you nuts.

Michael Waitze 2:39
So talk to me a little bit about what is unconnected.org So again, people can just get some frame of reference,

Mea Thompson 2:46
sure. So unconnected.org We are a charity, and we’re focused on bridging the digital divide around the globe. Basically provide a billion people with access to meaningful technology or access to the internet, and we’re doing that on a global scale. We’re running projects in 17 countries, learning as we go, and we’re getting more and more partners on board. So that’s our focus, to get more people, mainly kids and students, into technology early.

Michael Waitze 3:18
I want to talk about the significance of getting people like bridging this digital divide. I do think it’s really important. And I know that when I was in college, and I look at this from a really long term view, but I know that when I was in college, I went to college with a bunch of really rich kids, and I was really poor, and in 1985 or 1986 I can’t remember, must have been 1986 and one of the kids showed up with like an IBM at and another kid had a Mac, and I was just like, it’s so like, I had a typewriter and I had to borrow it from somebody. Do you know what I mean? And it really changed the way I looked at this access to tech. And that was almost 40 years ago, right? And that was in Connecticut in the United States, which was also a very rich state. Maybe you can talk a little bit about who the target people are, what the difference it makes in their lives, and how like having access and not having access changes the way that, like their entire lives, actually.

Mea Thompson 4:09
And it’s it’s crazy when you start to think about it. So normally, if I talk at conferences or to people, I always ask the question about, you know, who can you remember the last time that you didn’t have your phone on for 24 hours? Yeah, like, when was the last time you were completely unconnected? And no one can really, really remember, and we have this challenge within unconnected called hashtag and connect 24 which means that we’re challenging people to disconnect from the internet for 24 hours and tell us about their experiences, and you don’t realize how not addicted, but, yeah, reliant you are on technology. So whether you going to do you going to transfer some money, you going to check the bus times. You going to see, you know, check the news, chat with a friend, work, everything happens online. So when we speak to the community. Communities, because we work with so many different types of kind of sectors. So let’s say connect refugees. It’s like, imagine the impact on a family to be connected or not have the access to connectivity as you are displaced. Yeah, we worked some, some, some time on the on the Ukrainian border, connecting all the families that flew across into Romania. And that was just a huge eye opener to see that people were running as they come across the the border crossing. It was freezing. It was snowing. It was just miserable. Those families they were running past all the stands, with the food, with the clothes, with the kids toys, just to be able to come and charge up their phone, get a SIM in there, call back to their family. But that’s people that’s used to having technology, right? But then on the other side, the communities that we work with, they’ve never experienced technology in their life, so this is the first time that we’re bringing in access to technology into these communities. And of course, that’s a completely different adjustment period, but also creating some really, really impressive impact stories. Do

Michael Waitze 6:14
they know it’s missing? Do you know what I mean? In other words, if you’ve never seen a smartphone, if you don’t know that the internet is out there, if you don’t know you’re missing something. Like, I just wonder what it’s like when they finally get it and realize they have access to just like all the world’s information at their fingerprints and also all of these services that they’ve never had access to before. Like, do they know it’s not there?

Mea Thompson 6:36
Most people do know, obviously. So the biggest barriers to digital inclusion would be both coverage that we talk about that there is no coverage into rural parts of the world, but mainly affordability, so they know it’s there. They just can’t afford it. They can’t afford the hardware. They can’t afford access to the connectivity as such. Some projects we work in Malawi, which are really interesting, where we go in and we connect up schools to connectivity for the first time. So the whole idea behind unconnected is about building out telecommunication infrastructure from the communities into their communities. So basically, we provide the entrepreneurs within the communities with everything they might need to build out telecommunication infrastructure, which means that we know that the uptake is going to be a lot better, right? Instead of us going there, deploying towers and saying, you know, now you should use this. It’s from the communities within and i know i And within these networks, you always provide free connectivity to the schools, which is super important, especially looking at female students, because in these communities, the female students are the one that’s most likely to drop out early to go and start a family. They get pregnant, they get married. So we bring the connectivity in, we bring the hardware in, we bring the software in. And obviously important to talk about digital safety and security. So I zoomed into one of these classes once the first in Malawi. In Malawi Tell me. So I was pulling in from Sweden, right? And they turned on the computer, and suddenly they saw my face on this screen. And I was excited, because it doesn’t matter how many schools you connect, I always get just as excited. So I was like, Hi, how’s everyone doing? And obviously, first they freaked out a little bit because suddenly it was this blonde girl on the other side of the screen, you know, talking about, and I was sharing my screen showing, you know, this is Malawi, this is Sweden. And we start talking about, you know, what do you like to eat? What kind of music do you like? What kind of dances do you do? And we had a great conversation. And then I asked them, What do you want to do when you grow up, right? Like, what’s your dream thinking, you know, maybe I had my marketing hat on, thinking they’re going to say they want to be scientists or they want to be doctors. And they all looked at me, and they were like, We want to be soldiers.

Michael Waitze 9:05
Wow, why?

Mea Thompson 9:09
And then I kind of stopped, and I was like, can I talk about this? Can I talk about the fact that we as an organization go in and connect up these communities with all these kids wanting to become soldiers. And then I thought, that’s exactly what we need to talk about, because what we’re doing here is that we are bringing in ways of widening the horizon for these communities, for these kids, to enable them the opportunity to become whatever they want to be, with the access of digital education and the resources. It’s so interesting,

Michael Waitze 9:44
if you don’t mind me jumping a little bit. So I listen to a guy named Lawrence O’Donnell. He’s on TV sometimes, and he runs something called the kind fund, and they provide desks to schools in Malawi. So I’ve heard about this. And in particular, he’s focused, as you have mentioned, on the female students. Because. Are, frankly, just making it easier for them to learn is a disincentive for them to leave the classroom and do the things that you said, get married, go have kids and stuff like that. But I’m a strong believer, and again, tell me where I’m wrong, because I’m almost never right. That you can only become something that you see. So if everybody around you is a soldier, almost by definition, that’s what you want to do, because that’s what adults do. So it’s cool to be able to expose them to doctors, scientists, astronauts, race car drivers, whatever it is they can aspire to be something other than the only thing that they’ve known up until now. Do you see that happening? Do you see them changing over time?

Mea Thompson 10:37
We do. Absolutely we do. And one thing that I see even more clearly sometimes, yeah, is mindset of the teachers in these classes. Because, like the kids, they want to be what’s in front of them, right? My son is seven. He wants to be the next Ronaldo or Missy or MBA, or, I can’t pronounce them, because that’s what he sees all the time and talks with his friends. But what we see in these schools is that the teachers, mostly women, when we give them the opportunity to teach their class with all these new methods of teaching, access to technology, that’s where we really can see that motivation, and it’s through those teachers, a lot of it flows down to the kids in the ground with the right tools. That’s

Michael Waitze 11:27
kind of amazing. I hadn’t thought about it from the teacher’s perspective, but you’re right. It would be hard for them to teach things that they don’t have access to as well, particularly if they don’t have, like, physical textbooks, but once they do have access to the computers and the technology and the connectivity, they can pretty much teach the kids anything now, like almost in a way like the curriculums can change too, no,

Mea Thompson 11:51
yeah. And one of the most important things that we need to teach the teacher, to teach the class, yeah, is around Internet safety, for sure, because it’s a huge responsibility on us as an organization to bring this type of technology into these communities for the first time, right? So it’s a big part of what we’re doing, making sure to keep them safe online. Yeah, I

Michael Waitze 12:12
mean, in a way, like if you live in a small town in upstate New York, you’re probably always leaving the keys to your car in your car, and you’re probably also leaving the door to your house unlocked. And if you do that, when you move into New York City, you can have a lot of other problems, because you’ve never been exposed to that kind of crime. And I don’t think online is any different than offline at all. Can I ask you about this? How hard is it to run a charity, particularly when if I look at the website and all the people that are involved here, it’s not everybody’s only job, like you have another completely full time job, and so does everybody else who’s doing this. How do you balance that? How hard is it to run a charity? Just walk me through that a little

Mea Thompson 12:52
bit. Yeah, well, I think, from my side, I’m super fortunate because I’ve got a full time Well, I wouldn’t say it’s full time, but I’m working as a telecom consultant, which makes me really get my nerdy side to flourish and work with really, really exciting startups and get that motivation from them to kind of accelerate technology in a different way. But I would say that, like the charity space is hard, is really, really hard. And even though we have fantastic partners in this sense, who can fund some of our projects, and the idea on our side is that we only want to be able to fund the projects once, and then the longevity and the kind of self sustainability within the projects is going to spread automatically. So we only fund and I’ll talk about that more in a sense, but if, like, because people want to donate money to you, right? Yep, if you donate money to a charity, you do it because you see that they are doing something good, correct? Yeah. But you want that money to reach the end users, yeah, I

Michael Waitze 13:55
don’t want to. I don’t want to go to the admin of the charity. I want to go directly to the school in Malawi. Basically, is that what you’re saying 100%

Mea Thompson 14:01
and I’m the same when I give money. I want this money to flow directly through. But how are we supposed to get these charities to grow and to get the people that I work with their brilliant minds? How am I supposed to keep them full time if I can’t compensate them so they can pay for their mortgage, etc? Yeah, so it’s but there are, like, GSR foundation out there, for example, they provide you grants which is not limited to the project, but that grant is for the charity itself to grow, and that, I think those type of organizations should be celebrated, because that is how we really can accelerate the foundations and the charities work to be able to support the end users, and the growth is

Michael Waitze 14:48
this hard to raise money for. I mean, this seems to me to be something so fundamental to modern life, right? It’s almost like, would you help raise money for water? Or access to people in kind of underserved countries, because otherwise they’re going to die. I’m not saying they’re going to die sort of internet connectivity, but boy, their lives

Mea Thompson 15:06
going to be a lot harder, right? Yeah. And I love when you saying that, because that I can I can see that you get it, you understand what we’re doing, and most businesses do, yeah. Erasing money from us, from businesses, makes sense, both because we are, we are solving an issue that’s solvable number one, and if we’re when, sorry, when we are solving this issue that will have an impact on all the various industries across the globe. So there is not one industry out there that wouldn’t be or if it is for everyone that listening in, please, please send me a message, but that will be positively impacted by increased digital access. So I’m talking education, healthcare, insurance, commerce, you know, transportation, all these different industries have a joint benefit of doing this. So that’s why we’re getting a lot of support, because they believe in what we’re doing, and they can see the positive impact from it. However, B to C fundraising, that is a lot harder. Yeah, we’ve tried a few B to C fundraising saying, you know, let’s connect up this school, let’s connect up this community. And not everyone gets it, you know, they say. But why should we bring in social media into these communities? Why should we bring in Netflix and online gambling, which is also a relevant discussion, right? How do we bring really meaningful connectivity into these communities whilst supporting them to stay safe online?

Michael Waitze 16:41
Okay, I’m gonna have to ask you, how many hours a day you spend doing online gambling. Oh, 00, so same here. It was a rhetorical question, right? Because I knew the answer was going to be zero. And I guess Instagram there, yeah, but I bet you filter your Instagram in a way so that it’s not really toxic or corrosive. And I would, I would also venture to guess you’re not on Netflix every day. I think it’s a really kind of dystopian or negative answer to say, we don’t want to bring that in. But how about bringing in, like, online education? How about bringing in access to the fact that, like, they don’t even know the Eiffel Tower exists or that Big Ben exists? Like, I think the way it impacts, here’s the thing, I’ve lived outside of my home country for 34 years. Okay, I think I mentioned that to you during the prep call, and the stuff that I’ve learned about the rest of the world by being able to travel around the world has made me way more open minded and accepting of other things and other viewpoints and other foods and other cultures, and access to the internet as a substitute for being able to travel again opens you up to other ideas. And I think, sure, I understand there’s some toxicity, a lot of it on the internet, but like you, you get what you find at some level, 100%

Mea Thompson 17:55
and who are we to decide who should or who should not have access to technology. Who are we to decide that if you’re looking at the world and how digitized it is and how many works are being substituted by technology, which in many cases are great, but as we are doing that in this developed part of the world, like, why should we not include everyone in this to have the same opportunities and abilities that we have. That baffles me, because internet activity, it’s a it’s a human right, yeah, to have access to this source of information that I truly believe that,

Michael Waitze 18:36
yeah, it’s like saying we don’t want to bring any drugs into a specific place, including things like insulin and, you know, vaccinations, because access to drugs will then open up. It’s a gateway drug to other drugs that may be terribly bad for people. I don’t get it at all, and it’s baffling for me too. Sorry. Go ahead.

Mea Thompson 18:54
No no, no. And I just think, you know, if they say, well, these communities, they’ve been fine with our community, with access to technology for so long, but then suddenly, when you bring technology into those communities, you can see how the child mortality goes down, yeah. You can see how the GDP in the country goes up. You can see all these fantastic innovations coming out of these countries and the entrepreneurship it sparks, yeah. So to me, it’s not a question, it’s just, it’s But to answer your original question, it’s easier to fundraise from from organizations and businesses, because they really get it. Yeah.

Michael Waitze 19:33
I want to make another point, if you don’t mind, and then have you comment on it. I remember when Usain Bolt was in the Olympics, and they were like, the fastest man in the world, yeah. And I was like, it’s the fastest man we know about. But there could be some there could be some dude somewhere else who’s running way faster without training. We just don’t know about him, because he’s not on TV and he’s not in a place where he has access to getting to the Olympics. And I’ve always thought that, like, you know, maybe the cure for cancer is. In the brain of some girl, and I’m saying girl because, I mean a young lady in Malawi, we just don’t know it yet, because she hasn’t had access to the tools to do the research that would then unlock that information. So this idea of, let’s not give it to them, because they’ve been okay without it, is kind of counterbalanced. It’s kind of counterintuitive to me. It’s because, like, you don’t know what it’s going to unlock if you actually give them this information, and sure, information, and sure, there will be some toxicity, but the innovation that comes out of there, because of their lack of connectivity up until now, we don’t know what it’s going to do. It could be amazing. No,

Mea Thompson 20:33
yeah, and you just need to look at the stats, yeah. See the positive impact that access to technology has on communities. So it’s not really a question of such. You simply just need to look at the stats, and the stats speaks for themselves.

Michael Waitze 20:47
I was having a very and I’m gonna qualify this myself, so you don’t have to think it in your head and not say it. I was having a very bourgeois conversation today with my personal trainer, and the thing that I said to her was, like, my short term goals are kind of meaningless to me. I’m happy to have, like, short term targets. It’s the long term stuff that’s really important. I’ve got this very ambitious long term goal, both for my physical both my physical fitness. I just want to be a lot stronger, but also for my business that I want to run, like the biggest Integrated Media Company in Asia. So but what I do on a day to day basis is meant to facilitate that stuff. But maybe you can talk about this idea of moving from like short term fixes to long term ideas, and trying to balance those two things out.

Mea Thompson 21:31
Yeah, well, what we see in our line of work, because we work currently, we run projects in 17 countries simultaneously, so we’re getting a kind of good grasp. And we see, in many cases, when we go into these communities, there might be a computer center there already. It’s covered in dust. No one’s used it in years. Computers are broken, etc, etc, because someone had just like unconnected, a good idea back in the day of bringing connectivity into these communities, but it’s not sustainable over time. They set up this computer center they might cover the internet cost for the first three months. They did a big press release about this. You know, people said, you’re such a good company, and then it kind of went forgotten. Okay, so it was a good idea from the start. So how do we take that and make that self sustainable over time, and the only way for us to be able to do that is to provide the ownership of that and a way to make money from that to the community. Yeah, that’s what we’re doing. So what? Instead of just going in and taking money from companies and setting up computer centers, we are raising funds so we can procure, on a global level, everything that we need to build that community, Wi Fi networks within those communities, so we can bring down the wholesale cost from our side, whether it comes from hardware or connectivity, for example, then we can provide that to local entrepreneurs in these communities and say, Here is your startup kit to build your own telecommunication business within your community. We will help you to set it all up. We will help you to build it, but you will run and manage it and scale it. The only thing you need to do is to provide free connectivity to the school, and you need to sell this connectivity in a way that benefits the people in your community. So then these entrepreneurs, they take this box, imaginary box, build out the community network, sell by five vouchers to the community. Suddenly they kind of earn revenue from it. So they’re going to protect all this equipment. They’re going to scale it. It’s self sustainable over time. It’s all about catalyzing this entrepreneurial spirit that we see in the communities. Yeah. I mean,

Michael Waitze 23:45
this gets back to the old adage, right? If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach him how to fish, he can eat for his whole life, right? I mean, that’s kind of what you’re doing. That’s it, yeah. I like it. Do you have, like, success stories in some of these individual countries or individual communities where this is working?

Mea Thompson 24:00
Well, Oh, yes. Well, this could be a show by itself, but I’ll take a story that we did in Mexico. So we we provided connectivity into this small Isana Peninsula in Mexico. We brought in community centers. We set up these networks, like we always do. We put mentors in there, and then we kind of talk to there’s mainly Indigenous women living in this community. They were really excited about this. They used to sell their artisanal goods to all the tourists passing by in the communities. But after covid, there was not a lot of tourists anymore. So the the villagers were suffering because of this, um, so we built all this up. We did the training that we normally do, and then when we came back a while later to kind of check in and do because we always do the Impact Reporting, what we found is that these women in the communities, mainly women, actually, they’ve they. Really immersed themselves into the digital technologies they’ve taken online marketing courses, online design courses for free. We did teach them that they found that out themselves. Online courses in finance. Set up bank accounts, set up all these online shops, and they started exporting what they did in these villages, and the the difference that he make on the village itself, the school in that village, the medical center in that village, and then also the males that now had to help to do and learn how to do all this stuff. So it just turned into this huge productive sense, and it was purely because the access of technology. And that comes back again to what you said, Michael, about give someone a fish and you feed them for a day, but give them the tools how to fish, and they will keep full for a lifetime.

Michael Waitze 25:53
I love this, and this is this argues completely against the contention that was made earlier, where if we give them access to the internet. They’re just gonna be on social media all day. It’s gonna get really toxic. Like these women just went right at it and said, Wait a second. We can do e commerce. We can export things. We’ve never been able to do that before. We were selling to people in the peninsula, and now we can sell to people all over the world. Like talk about changing the size of the market to which you have access. That’s an incredible story. I’d love to have them on the podcast. That would be a great story to tell, I

Mea Thompson 26:23
know, and that just shows that, you know, access to technology changes so many because imagine all the industries that is involved into that export. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 26:33
but I’ll Can I make a slightly deeper point that I think you were going to make too, but tell me again where I have this wrong. Some on the small peninsula suffered through covid, right? They were mostly selling whatever. They were selling to tourists that were there. So they have a proximity problem. I can only sell to people that are right next to me now. I can sell to people all over the world. But what’s the impact of that? At least the small impact is they can make more money, yay, right? That’s great. But the larger impact is maybe they have excess capital now, and that that little clinic on the peninsula can now turn into a much bigger and more sophisticated hospital. Maybe they can now buy an MRI or, like, get access to better cancer care. Like, it changes the whole lifestyle the people that are there. No, it’s more than just, like, we can make a few more dollars, yeah.

Mea Thompson 27:17
And it also changes the future, and this is where I’m talking about, you know, the rings on the water. It changes the future for those kids in that community now goes to school with access to digital education. It changes, like you said, the medical care that they provide in into that village, but also for villages around so it’s just about catalyzing that change, and as soon as you’re catalyzing it, then it will grow by itself. And that’s what we’re seeing, not just in Mexico and Malawi and Kenya, but in all the countries where we operate, is that you just need to ignite that, and as soon as you help to ignite it, and do it in a respectful and in good way, moral way, it will take care of itself, and that, that is what makes me really, really excited about this project. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 28:08
and also it changes the aspirations of the kids that are there, right? If they look at their moms, and I’m guessing most of these ladies, people that are doing it are moms, it also changes them from I want to be a soldier to I want to be an E commerce entrepreneur, like it’s just a completely different life? No,

Mea Thompson 28:25
yeah, no, it’s true. And I love what you said before, Michael about the importance of of travel and seeing the world. I because I left Sweden when I was 18 and I traveled. I went to travel to New Zealand, which is as far as you can get from Sweden, which my mom said several times before I left, but I had it wasn’t anything to do with them. And I travel. And then I worked and ran businesses in many locations. And in every one of those instances, the things that you learn about yourself, yeah, and about the people around you and how to adapt to different situation. It’s so valuable. So valuable.

Michael Waitze 29:08
Yeah, it less shines a light on them, and more shines a light on you. Like I didn’t know that about myself. Now I do. It’s either a great thing or I need to change that and fix that. Yeah,

Mea Thompson 29:19
I know. So instead of thinking people need to adapt to me, my way of living and who I am. You become very good at adapting to new situation and new personalities and see problems from different views. Yeah. I

Michael Waitze 29:32
mean, one of the things that I realized again, I lived in Japan for 20 something years, right? So that’s the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere in my whole life. Is that true? No, but I lived in Tokyo for longer than I’ve lived in any city my whole life. And you know, when foreigners would come over for a week or two, they would say, like, why don’t Japanese people just start using forks and knives? And because I’d been there for so long, that’s a true thing that people have actually said. And after being there for so long, you just thought the chopsticks are really sophisticated. Way. To eat. Maybe it’s not them, maybe it’s you, because they’ve been doing this for 1000s of years, like, let’s give them that at least. And you’re right. That’s the point you were trying to make. And I could not agree with you more.

Mea Thompson 30:11
Yeah, no, true before,

Michael Waitze 30:13
before I let you go. Can you talk to me about, you know, because I think about, look, one of the great things about having a podcast, right, is that people all over the world can listen to it, so I’m not having the same amount of impact that you and unconnected is having at scale, but I can add a little bit, right? And if people are listening to this or thinking to themselves, how can I be involved? How can I support this? What kind of resources do I have that maybe I can add to this to make it better, what should they do?

Mea Thompson 30:44
Well, first of all, and this is not just related to unconnected, but related to every person listening in Yep, it’s really, think about how, what type of impact that you want to make. And I don’t want everyone to just come and support unconnected in that sense, but that there is, there is an impact that you can make, either within your line of work or what you are really passionate about, and you should follow that. That is how you make the best impact. Because if you truly working towards something that you believe in, whether it’s digital equality or lbtq rights or whatever it might be, you should go and do that. Yeah, if you believe in digital equality like I do, there is so much work to be done. We are, as I mentioned, we’re catalyzing all these communities right now and supporting them in the right way, but we always looking for companies that want to come in and adopt the schools that we are connecting. So by us catalyzing them with free connectivity, then we have fantastic sponsors that comes in and really kick out these schools with computers, etc, to kick them off. So that is something that any organization can help us to do. And that’s one thing. The other thing is that we’re always looking for more volunteers. So our whole organization is volunteer led, and we would not be anywhere today if we will send for our volunteers. Every single person within unconnected is a volunteer, including myself, and that is something that I’m super proud of, and that goes out to all the team, because they are the one that’s building these so we always need, need more support on the volunteer side. And

Michael Waitze 32:24
how do people get how do people get in touch with you?

Mea Thompson 32:28
Oh, you, I’m sure, in this, in this blurb for this podcast, you’ll add my email, or you just go to, I’m connected.org and you can reach it. Can

Michael Waitze 32:37
I ask you this just before again, just before I let you go, everybody’s volunteering, right? And you remember during the prep call, one of the things I said to you was, you know, educated people can be good at anything they do, but to be great at something, you really have to care. And I can tell that you care about this like I can feel it in the way you’re talking. This is not something trivial for you at all. What is the joy that you get and that the team gets at large, when things like that story you were telling in Mexico, and the stuff you’re talking about in Malawi, and I think you said in Kenya as well, when you see the positive impact, like, How great does it make the team feel?

Mea Thompson 33:16
But that is, that’s what keeps us going, like, that’s and I tell you I was before I started unconnected, or before we started unconnected, I was working with a startup, and I felt like it wasn’t, it wasn’t really the place where I wanted to be right now. And I worked day and night, 24/7 and I had my son. He was three at the time. Yeah, I had to work throughout summer, so I took him to my dad’s house because my dad was off, and I was saying, you know, you can help me watch my son during the day, so I can just keep working. And he looks at me and said, I can tell Mea that you’re not happy what you’re doing. You need to stop it like go and find your own impact, do what you want. The same night he passed away, and I was with him at the time, and I was Assa was trying to save him, as you do, but the last one is about to die, right? He said, just that, go and make your impact. And then, because he died before the ambulance and everyone came, and it was like a week after that that I was like, I quit that side up. And I said, You know what? There is an impact for everyone to do, and now, when I’m seeing where we are with this organization, and also the the support that we’re getting from all the volunteers and everyone that believes in what we believe in, like it’s such a heartwarming feeling, and I wish that more people got to experience that and not wait until that really pivotal point in your life where you make that decision. And every school that we connect brings that feeling right back about the impact

Michael Waitze 34:53
that is beautiful. Your father would definitely be proud. Mea Thompson, a co founder and the CCO of Unconnected.org. Thank you so much for doing that. I’d love to have more of the people that work with you come back on the show, and even some of the people whose lives you have impacted to come on the show to talk about the impact that having access to that technology and to connectivity has had on their lives as well, so everybody in the world can hear and understand the impact that you and the team are having. Thank you very much for doing this.

Mea Thompson 35:21
Thank you, Michael, thank you so much for having me.