Steve Bear - Alvie

Elaine Wziontek 0:02

With information on the latest developments in assistive technology and initiatives from the studios of 2RPH in Sydney and around the country on the radio reading network of Australia, we bring you Ablequest. So Steve, welcome to the program, and congratulations on being highly recommended in the recent national disability Awards for Excellence in innovation. And I understand that was for an app called Alvie. So what does Alvie do?

Steve Bear 0:34

Firstly, thank you for having me. Yeah, it was a an honour to be nominated and receiving the highly commended award. Alvie is an app that we designed and built to help the people with a disability market find friends and form lifelong friendship.

Elaine Wziontek 0:56

So it's not a dating app.

Steve Bear 0:58

It is not a dating app. That's absolutely not. We're all about friendship, the reduction of loneliness and social isolation that is prevalent in society in general, but definitely very prevalent in the world of people with a disability,

Elaine Wziontek 1:14

So it's harder for them to make friends.

Steve Bear 1:17

Absolutely. I mean, the challenges that people with a disability face every day are countless, and it's quite widely known that over 35% of people with a disability actively avoid situation, and when you add that in with the day-to-day discrimination that they face, these challenges all add up to just wanting to keep to themselves, and that forms social isolation.

Elaine Wziontek 1:46

So how did the idea originate? Do you have a background in disability?

Steve Bear 1:51

No, no formal background in disability. In the early 2000 I started up a camp here on the Gold Coast, in conjunction with the Sandy Foundation, and we ran a camp for seven years, and we had 50 kids aged between five and 13 for four days and three nights on a camp. And that gave me a real life experience of what people with disabilities face every day.

Elaine Wziontek 2:22

And were the high school students sort of running that or being buddies to the people with disabilities? How did it work? 

Steve Bear 2:28

Yeah. So we teamed one camper, that's the child with a disability, with one companion being a year 11 student, boys and girls. We had boys and girls in two private schools on the Gold Coast with boarding facilities. So those companions, those year 11 students, had to look after behaviour, feeding, saving bedding and entertainment for four days and three nights.

Elaine Wziontek 2:57

Was that in school holidays? Was it school holidays? 

Steve Bear 3:01

absolutely, so it was... we had training throughout the year to bring them up to speed on what they were going to face the challenges how to deal with those challenges to ensure the safety of our campus. We also had nine RM nurses that volunteered their time for the four days and three nights, and each companion was not allowed to be more than one arm's length away from their camp, for the entire period of the camp.

Elaine Wziontek 3:29

Oh, really, that's... very close relationship, then, they would have developed. 

Steve Bear 3:33

absolutely, it was a great relationship, and they formed a friendship over that four days. But one of the things that was highlighted to me is as soon as the camp was over, the campers didn't stay in touch with any of the other campers, the other 49 campers on the camp or their companion. So they went home surrounded by family again, but no real connection, long lasting connection was made. So these kids, these campers were begging to come back year after year, and we saw that... excitement when they eventually were allowed to come back, but we also understood and experienced the loneliness in between camps that they felt on a day-to-day basis.

Elaine Wziontek 4:16

Could they have reached out though through Facebook? 

Steve Bear 4:20

They could reach out through any form of social media that they chose. The feedback we had from the parents and carers of these kids was they don't feel safe on broad stream social media, so there's no safety factors built into any of those apps. So... and they're a very vulnerable subsection of our society.

Elaine Wziontek 4:44

I see. And tell us about the name Alvie. What does that mean?

Steve Bear 4:49

So we search quite wide to come up with a short, easy to remember name, and Alvie, in Old English, stands for wise and noble friend. So we thought that was quite apt for our app and easy to remember. And as we all know, in today's society, we like short names that we can type into our phones and our computers, rather than large monologs.

Elaine Wziontek 5:18

So you mentioned safety, and I'm sure there are concerns about safety with this app, as there are with any other apps with teenagers.

Steve Bear 5:26

Absolutely, as you'd be fully aware, the federal government, at the moment, is going through a process of banning social media for kids under the age of 16, and we started to design and build Alby. My primary focus was the safety of our members. So to join Alvie, every single member must have a police check completed. They must provide one piece, additional piece of photo identification. If you're under the age of 18, you must have a support worker or a carer or parent attached to your account. 

And we've... extended a lot of investment into the AI to ensure that we can pick up on anything inappropriate. You can't share photos. Any swearing will be detected and notified. Asking for money, again, as I say, very vulnerable section of our society that are taken for fraud quite often. So if you ask for money, ask for a phone number and address, it's all alerted so that everybody is aware of the person's character and what they're trying to achieve.

Elaine Wziontek 6:37

So when you say there are co-accounts with carers and parents, does that mean the carers and the parents can can read what they say, or it's still private?

Steve Bear 6:47

No, no, we do look after our members' privacy. So the co-account owner - and each member can have up to five co-accounts - all they do is receive the alert so they can't see the normal conversation that's going on day after day with each member, but they do get notified immediately if anything inappropriate. 

Elaine Wziontek 7:11

And what about bullying? Can that happen with this app?

Steve Bear 7:15

Well, bullying, unfortunately, can happen anywhere in society. Our AI picks up on any bullying, and at Alvie, all our Alvie administrators have a zero tolerance of bullying, and that is taken immediate action via Alvie. We don't even wait for support workers or co-account owners to lodge a complaint or a member to lodge a complaint. We immediately get notified of that bullying, and we take immediate action.

Elaine Wziontek 7:44

So when somebody's been on your app, can you talk to us about the benefits that you've seen, that you've been aware of from when before they use the app and now that they're using it?

Steve Bear 7:56

Well, I couldn't tell you the number of emails that we've received, primarily from parents that have notified us that their child, our member, is as happy as they've ever been. So there's multiple benefits that have come out of it. So there's happiness, there's increased confidence. Alvie is a lot about capacity building, so that our members are building capacity via conversation, which leads to the friendships, which leads to happiness, which leads to the confidence to go out in public and be part of the greater community. And we've had a lot of people that their self esteem has gone so far up that they're starting to apply for jobs in the market as well.

Elaine Wziontek 8:41

That's terrific, isn't it? It's really good news to be able to create that awareness, and I don't know, make people happier through self esteem and self confidence. How do you match people? Is there some sort of computer program that I like stamp collecting, or I... like Taylor Swift? Or, you know, I'll be matched with somebody else? 

Steve Bear 9:02

That's exactly the way it works. So when you fill out your registration, we do ask you. Takes about five minutes. We get quite detailed in the information we request. And that is why it is quite obvious we are not a dating app. We are trying to match you with people with common interests and hobbies as you have. So we match on gender, on age brackets, on location, and then all the way down to your interest and hobbies - so... and we go quite detailed there. So if I was to pick on sport, you might put down, I like sport. You may say I like the NRL, and you may say I'm a Roosters supporter. So all the way down to that level, we're matching people so that they have something in common before they even say hello. 

And a lot of the feedback we get from people is how the connections happened immediate, and they don't quite understand the reason why, and it's because the detail. Behind the matching is so specific that they start a conversation without realising that they knew what the other person liked. 

Elaine Wziontek  10:08

Anyway, Steve, that sounds you really got onto something there. So do you have contact now with people with disabilities, apart from this app?

Steve Bear 10:17

I do a little bit of part time volunteering with disabled surfing on the Gold Coast. I'm from the Gold Coast, so every Sunday we go down and we get upwards of 80 participants that come down and go surfing every Sunday morning, which is fantastic, all different sorts of disabilities. There's no exclusion whatsoever. So, and I must say, we get over 100 volunteers every Sunday, which is fantastic. So the education and the acceptance throughout the community, which is one of the things I do love, is growing and growing every day. 

Elaine Wziontek 10:56

That's terrific. So how can we find out more about the app, and how can people get onto it? I imagine it's through the NDIS as well.

Steve Bear 11:05

Yes, it's funded through the NDIS. So all you anybody needs to do is go to www dot Alvie - A - L - V - I - E dot com dot A U... we offer a free seven day trial. You can jump on usually up to seven days. You can't match with friends because we don't ask you for a police check for the trial, but allow you to have a look around. We've got games on there. We play bingo four times a day, trivia three times a day. We have a billboard, community billboard for you to find local events, activities, concerts, and how accessible each one of those activities are. 

So yeah, you just jump on. Give it a go. If you like it. Sign up. You can pay through your NDIS. Alvie covers the cost of the police check if you don't already have one. So we help you along the way. We're here to answer any of your queries pretty much 16 hours a day. We man the phones and the online chat. So yeah, jump on, give it a go. 

Elaine Wziontek 12:08

Thank you for giving up some of your time, and that's a great start to the new year. A L V I E dot com, dot A U. And I've been speaking to the creator and founder of the Alvie platform, Steve Bear - thank you very much, Steve.

Steve Bear 12:28

Thanks very much for having me.

Elaine Wziontek 12:38

You have just been listening to Ablequest, a program that looks at developments in assistive technology. Thank you for listening, and goodbye to our next program.