In person AI safety workshops to empower rural communities
Hosting in person workshops on AI usage ethically in remote/rural communities, and not only bridge the awareness gap in safe usage but also give opportunities to utilise such tools to empower traditionally disadvantaged populaces
Hosting in person workshops on AI usage ethically in remote/rural communities, and not only bridge the awareness gap in safe usage but also give opportunities to utilise such tools to empower traditionally disadvantaged populaces
Project Details
Updated 07/12/26 · Edited by org-
What will we do?
We will continue hosting in person/online workshops and create interactive educational tutorials and materials that encourage ethical AI usage in general society, and ultimately promote responsible user end precautions as an accepted consensus. (more detailed in our main project here)
This will specifically focus upon travelling to rural and remote communities to host in person workshops and seminars on responsible usage, specifically in Australia where such areas have over 7 million in population and contribute over 60% of export income, yet face disadvantaged outcomes in education, healthcare and infrastructure, sectors where AI can play a massive role in improving benefits.
We believe this deserves an initative of it's own as these schools and communities are sectors where AI wield immense potential in learning outcomes such as distance based learning or critical industries such as agriculture, but are overlooked when it comes to equipping them to understand potential safety risks or their perceptions and feedback upon changing trends in AI.
We thus hope to apply our previous experience in hosting said workshops within metropolitan areas and empower remote schools that traditionally are allocated less funding and resources the potential to utilise AI technologies responsibly in bridging the education gap.
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Who is involved?
This will specifically involve our delivery team of around 3 educators and 1 person on trend collection who will travel to said schools and communities, liaise with local schools and gauge their awareness on trends within AI technologies, their understanding on the implications of AI, before going through a full day workshop on both the potentials and risks that could arise from negligent usage. -
Our concrete output
Our output is that we empower overlooked remote communities to adopt ethical AI usage as a common consensus, and ensure an adequate understanding of risks in applying such technologies to their relevant sectors such as agriculture and prevent negligent harm from irresponsible use. Furthermore, rural and remote schools would also be more effective in utilising AI responsibly to improve equality education outcomes to overcome structural deficiencies such as a lack of funding, rather than spending their already limited resources to achieve that on their own.
Theory of Impact
Updated 07/17/26 · By grantmaking.ai(This carries some overlap with our aforementioned previous project which you can read here)
Our workshops will increased overall societal awareness on the importance of ethical considerations and responsible usage when it comes to AI, particularly in already overlooked and disadvantaged areas. These communities will thus be better equipped to harness these tools for good in overcoming previous inequality due to their location.
- By fostering responsible AI usage in schools, we also hope to inspire attendees of our workshops to be exposed to the field of AIS and in the future empower their community voice and opinions rather than be relegated as passive users of such technologies.
- In the long term, we also hope to cultivate any promising attendees with an interest or talent in AIS, and help them overcome any difficulties due to their remoteness by sponsoring them the opportunity to travel and connect with professionals within the field.
People
Updated 07/17/26 · By grantmaking.aiTeam Member
Funding Details
- Jul 30, 2026
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- Dependent on the amount of communities we can reach with the funding
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Hi Justin,
Where are you at so far with your existing work? I've seen the website for Persicaria, and your network of volunteers. Have you already drafted the outreach packages? Do you already have model school curriculum etc? Have you already held some outreach events with your different target groups - with schools, communities etc?
If you've already done some of these things, it would make your application stronger if you can present some of these results. If you are still working on the first stages (developing your materials, piloting your materials), I'd suggest getting this done so you get some quick feedback rounds in before you have the extra logistics and costs of taking your outreach to rural areas.
Hello Mark,
Currently we have a quite consolidated curriculum for the school target group (which was where we started!). We current base it by grade wise (7-8, 9-10, 11-12) so the level of material corresponds to the respective comprehension and understanding of that respective grade. Outreach for schools is much more easier as state and national guidelines already encourage ethical usage as a basis, and since most (I think all of which we have contacted?) schools don't have a dedicated program to raise awareness so they are happy for us to pop by. Community wise I'd say is a bit more of a challenge. Granted we don't have the money for advertisement, our other streams mainly just go by word of mouth and we would run an online one or go to a particular suburb's public space if we can.
Results wise, we have collected the data in post workshop surveys (which I will link an example here) and are working on integrating the feedback we have into newer iterations of the workshop material we give. Given the changing capability of models I'd say this will keep us busy on updating our material whenever anything major changes. I'd say our more general community stuff is a bit more first stage as youve mentioned, but we do have individual lesson slides for scenarios such as issues arising from personal use (i.e on the consequences of using deepfakes of your friends). At the end of the day, we do feel that it is really is very experimental here since each person has their own situation or usage patterns, and currently we only have the time and effort to make materials that promote general responsible usage (such as our presentation here). We will plan on making more dedicated streams such as to specific businesses as well but it just boils down to the loop of creating the material, consulting with people in those industries, presenting and then updating based on feedback.
I appreciate how you've taken the time to raise some very good questions here and hopefully I've given you a bigger picture!