Chris McDonald On Protecting Communication Human Rights Through Social Enterprise

Chris McDonald completed an undergraduate degree in Primary Education and Special Education at the University of Technology, Sydney in 2004. He also completed an honours thesis, focusing on the implementation of communication systems for adults with developmental disabilities at a group home that he was working in while studying. He also worked as a carer in a residential setting run by the Australian Quadriplegic Association. He was selected as a targeted graduate from university and commenced work at a school for children with developmental disabilities and autism in Sydney.

In 2007, he was promoted to assistant principal at a school for children with emotional disturbance and behavioural issues. In 2012, he co-launched a cross platform app for children with autism called PicSee in 2013, he was the co-creator and finalist in the Australasian OzApp Competition in Perth, with an app for individuals with dementia, which took out the people's choice award. After 20 years in the disability and education space, he is now launching a physical product called PicSeePal. This is a non-electronic speech therapy device, for individuals with complex communication needs. In parallel to the product launch is a social justice campaign. The likes of which have never been attempted.

Chris discusses the passion propelling PicSeePal's launch, and barriers faced by enterprises to successfully address social injustices and human rights issues.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - Could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your passion in social enterprise?

[Chris McDonald] - Absolutely. To be honest, a few years ago, I'd never actually heard of the term social enterprise. I started this whole thing because I had an idea that solved a big issue for people with communication disorders. It was this initial passion that kind of led into a feeling of responsibility, to get it to the market and to build this global team that I'm putting together to start making the biggest impact possible.

Developing this device has taken years and a lot of testing and a lot of prototypes. It's been a lot of fun.

I've really enjoyed it, and we've gotten it to a stage now where we're launching on StartSomeGood. I'm just super pumped about it. I've always had a passion for supporting people. It's, I guess, a personality trait that was intertwined with some circumstances during childhood. I believe that all humans as a collective, (also) individually, but as a collective especially, that we're capable of greatness.

I think that working in this space, if you have an idea that can help people, an idea like I've had, I think that there's a degree of obligation to try and make that happen so that everyone can benefit from it. The device is a communication device, and I mean its very basic form (provides) communication human rights, access to communications, and human rights.

It shouldn't be dependent on things like finances or geography, and our company PicSeePal aims to level this playing field out at a scale that's never been tried before. The democratisation of communication is our primary goal.

Well, that's a fantastic segue into our next question. As the founder of the PicSeePal, it would be amazing if you could give us a summary of the product and the approach you've taken to address these global communication injustices that you're speaking about.

Absolutely. So the device is essentially a plastic housing for paper visual supports, and using visual supports is best practice essentially with people with complex communication needs.

The PicSeePal is three pages, it's made of plastic, it's very much like a book about the size of an iPad, and into the PicSeePal you can insert any paper-based visuals you like, so it's dependent on who's using it. There might be photographs inside it, or images, and printed screenshots from different apps, things like that.

You can pretty much put anything you want into the PicSeePal, as long as it's paper based, because people around the world use a lot of variations of visual supports.

The device improves access to communication and it was made with this idea in mind that it would serve the same function and increase someone's ability to communicate whether or not they were living in Manhattan or whether they were living in Nairobi.

Whether they are in a school or whether they're in a hospital. It's just across settings, across ages and across abilities.

It's innovative in that way, because there's never actually been a low-tech system that's been brought to market that serves every single setting and individual. I guess we're excited about the innovation there. We're launching the physical product, which is the PicSeePal, but we're also launching on StartSomeGood, the social justice initiative. This is in response to the fact that there's millions of people around the world who don't have access, who have complex communication needs through a whole range of reasons, whether it's autism or dementia or they've been in some form of accident, that's taken away their ability to use speech.

But there's millions of these people around the world that don't have access to speech therapists or speech therapy, resources. That requires a solution and the PicSeePal is that solution.

Through our social justice campaign, it's essentially a system of (for) every PicSeePal that we sell, we're going to be giving one to one of our trusted partners, and we've got some fantastic people on board. The first partner that we had was the OIC Cambodia, which was founded by Weh Yeoh, who actually won the Australian Social Entrepreneur of the Year last year. In his words, he basically thinks that communication is one of the most overlooked rights in today's world.

So, we've partnered with them as we have with several other organisations around the world. That list continues to grow just because there is this huge need for meeting people's requirements with communication.

Well, that buy one, give one model absolutely fits in the social enterprise landscape. Looking to the future as well I would love to ask you, do you see any long-term opportunities not only for PicSeePal and obviously your social justice campaign StartSomeGood, but even other emerging social enterprises ventures?

Absolutely. I think we're hitting the space with the release of the physical product being the PicSeePal first. That's how we're entering the space, but we've also got in the background brewing a very hard and important online educational element, that's particularly targeted towards children and childhood development. We're going to be going cross language and things like that.

So, I think that as far as social enterprises in general go, I think local solutions are very good, but I think with something like this (globally), that's where we're dealing with the human right of communication. I think that the scope for the impact that can be had with physical resources and with online support is immense.

Our end game, my macro plan for this whole thing is to become the world's largest, the biggest global employer of individuals with disabilities.

I think that if that's the macro thesis on the company, reverse engineering from there is going to be easy because the intent behind becoming the biggest employer of people with disabilities, I think is a really important goal to have, and I think that it can really set the benchmark for what's possible with social enterprise.

That's an incredible insight into basically the progression and the future of this social justice campaign that you're pursuing. I think also a very important thing that we should address as well is that you're actually a first-time entrepreneur for this project, and you've moved out of education.

You were in special needs education, so what are some challenges and barriers which you've experienced in this transition?

Absolutely. I have always been a little bit entrepreneurial, even as a little one. I was always mowing people's lawns and hustling in that respect, and I think the only reason I learned how to do algebra was so I could have the parents teach their kids how to do algebra. I don't think there was any real inherent enjoyment of algebra, but this is definitely my first crack at starting a global company.

Now I have been working in education in the disability space for 20 years, so I know who I'm working for. I feel like I'm working for that space and I know what is required to succeed in that space.

My main challenge has been around funding, and I've explored lots of different avenues with that as most people who are trying to get a start-up off the ground.

I've eventually just settled in a space where I just do it all myself, because I felt that I wanted to be in control of it in the early stages. I mean funding is a big thing, time is a big thing, and also sanity is a big thing. It's not a particularly easy thing to work a full-time job and make all of this stuff happen.

But having said all of that, I think that that when it comes to opportunities and when it comes to barriers that I think most of the time barriers and obstacles are very much opportunities and you need to pay attention to whatever it is that you think is holding you up. Sometimes it's actually a blessing.

When you look back on it an hour or a week later, you think of that obstacle because it made you slow down and it made you kind of reinvent what it was that you were doing at the time. I think that barriers are actually a good thing.

Absolutely. I think that having that ability to reflect on those barriers is so important for success, especially in this field of social enterprise, and I think you would agree.

You're also learning a lot. There's a lot of hats to wear when you're trying to do it. Everything from patenting to coming up with packaging, and drop shipping, and crowdfunding, accounting, marketing and creative, there's a lot of hats to wear and to not necessarily master, but you've got to touch base with everything so you can make sure that you're across the door.

Absolutely. What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently that are creating positive social change?

I think that I've got to mention our partners here, because by starting this, they actually fueled it from the beginning, especially a big shout out to the OIC Cambodia founded by Weh Yeoh.

They're amazing because of just that, I guess the scale of the issue that they tackled in Cambodia, where there was no speech therapy, and a population who very much needed that input.

And also Umbo which Weh Yeoh is also a founder of, and they're just completely ahead of the curve when it comes to things like telehealth and have really set a new precedent for being ahead of the game, when it came to COVID and things like that, they were already rolling out telehealth.

So, OIC Cambodia and Umbo. Global Symbols is a thing that is being put together by a guy called David Banes and EA Draffan. Definitely worth checking out. They've been a supporter of us from the beginning, and they're just an open source image platform. It's very international in nature. The Nika Project based out of California, they're across the entire world from Africa to Asia, to South America. Basically up-cycling old technology and giving it to people with communication disorders.

The Global Autism Project is amazing because they're just everywhere doing everything, and the last one I'll mention is Pencils of Promise. They've been around for a while based out of New York, and they've just got this amazing model that I very much look up to and hope one day to serve. I'd love to collaborate with them when we get a little bit bigger.

There's just an enormous amount of integrity in Pencils of promise. I think that they probably are a little bit underrated and not spoken about enough, with just what they're doing around the world.

Well, those are some fantastic initiatives you mentioned there, and for all the listeners, there will be some links in the article, and you'll be able to check all of those out afterwards. To finish off, I would love to ask what books would you recommend to our listeners?

So, I'm loving audio books. I consume so much, so many podcasts, but I'm easily addicted to listening to audio books, and actually a book that I had the physical copy of that I was given to many years ago by a colleague is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It's just a fantastic read, I really do think everyone should sink their teeth into that. And flowing on the whole stoicism theme, a book by Ryan Holiday called The Obstacle Is the Way is a really fantastic book. Highly recommend that definitely if you're trying to get into this space or you've got a start-up in mind. Obviously, I love children's books. I've worked in primary education for a long time, plus, I've got two little ones. So, the book We're Going On A Bear Hunt.

Now I reckon I've read that book 500 times, and just the other day, it was weird. I was saying to my wife that I'd never really thought about the meaning of that book. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that book, but it's very entrepreneurial I think.

Maybe I'm just way too much into it because I'm sleep deprived! But as the lead up, I feel like it's the story of a start-up, and every single obstacle they come to, like they come to mud, and then long grass and they come to snow storms and all of these things. Are you familiar with the book?

I am.

Well, I'm going to need your help on this because I like the mud one the best. I think the mud is very symbolic of what being an entrepreneur is about. They get to the mud and they can't go over the mud and they can't go under the mud. What did they have to do?

You have to go through it!

You have to go through the mud, and you have to go through everything. Then they get to the end and they're tiptoeing, and it's all coming to this climax and this bear is there that they were looking for in the first place, I'm not really quite sure why they get so surprised that it's there, but the bear doesn't exactly turn out to be what they think its going to be.

Then it chases them back to the house. I've even drawn a parallel to like working from home, I know that's really obscure! But I think with that book, there's a message in that book that’s not so much just for kids. I think we can all take a little bit out of that. I'd read it so many times, but I'd never really thought about what it was, what the message was.