$114,000 Funding Awarded To Community And Business Thanks To Dunedin’s Gig Win

For Release Friday 20 May 2016

Four Dunedin community groups and two startup businesses are receiving funding with the announcement of two grant rounds: GigCity Community Fund and the GigStart Fund.

The GigCity Community Fund

The GigCity Community Fund is open to Dunedin community organisations using fast broadband infrastructure and UFB to enhance the development and implementation of community, learning and workforce opportunities in the city. The $500,000 fund was provided by Chorus as part of Dunedin’s prize for winning Gigatown.

The latest funding round this week allocated $74,596.00 to four city groups. They are:

• Methodist Mission $25,576. The funding will help develop Virtual Reality Education to deliver engaging programmes for high needs adult and youth learners.

• Logan Park High School working with Frederic Dichtel, Dr Romain Garby and Dr Alice Harang $20,000. To develop Te Kaiwhakamaori, an English to Māori translation app to help learn Te Reo Māori.

• Otago Polytechnic $20,000. This will be used to develop an online digital literacy programme which in partnership with Dunedin business will help employees become familiar with digital technology.

• New Zealand Python User Group $9,020.00. The money will assist in developing a series of Minecraft programming workshops to be held during the Kiwi Pycon Conference in Dunedin this September.

Allocation of these funds brings the total awarded to Dunedin community groups to $142,596 - with more than $350,000 to be allocated for community projects using the Gig and UFB. The next round of GigCity Community Funding opens in August 2016.

GigStart Funding

Following Dunedin’s Gigatown win, the GigStart Fund was created to provide a launch pad for new-to-market UFB-led service concepts in Dunedin. Funded by Chorus and Nokia (previously Alcatel-Lucent) the fund is $200,000 of which $167,000 has been awarded over three rounds.

The latest funding round allocated $40,000 to two start up ventures in the city. They are:

• Such Crowd $20,000. SuchCrowd is a crowd-sourcing platform for events that allows event planners to test demand before confirming events. The platform allows people to register interest and they are only charged for tickets if there’s enough interest.

• Pitri Dish $20,000. Petri Dish is a shared office space at 8 Stafford Street. Owners, Jason and Kate Lindsey have developed a shared space for tech and creative media start-ups, small businesses and individuals. Members receive access to Gigabit UFB and a central data room, which includes a system that allows large amounts of data to be moved around the world at speed.

The Gig-Start Fund was judged by StartUp Dunedin represented by Nigel Bamford

Emily Cooper and Jason Leong with Kim Stewart from Chorus. The fourth and final round of the Gig-Start Fund will open later this year with $33,000 available.

EDITORS NOTE

The GigCity Community Fund has allocated $142,596 since the fund began. In addition to the grants listed in the release above the first round of GigCity Community Funds was:

• $20,000 for St Barnabas Trust to develop an app to manage Meals on Wheels delivery

• $6,000 for Urban Dream Brokerage to help revitalise vacant shop fronts

• $22,000 for the Malcam Charitable Trust for a Mozilla Hive, a digital community to connect and engage with youth

• $20,000 for Dunedin’s Gasworks Museum to extend its IT education for teenagers and children

GigStart Funding has allocated $167,000 since the fund began. In addition to the grants listed in the release above the prior rounds of GigStart funding were:

• $20,000 Jack Pivac from Blue Twist - cloud based systems for the medical sector

• $20,000 Derek Morrison from Photo Toolbox Ltd - cloud based digital asset management system

• $20,000 Greg Fahey from Bison - cloud based data management system for the logistics sector,

• $12,000 ResponseAbility to develop a programme to help with on-site hazard identification and health and safety management

• $15,000 Learning with a Difference to develop an animated learning programme to help children with dyslexia

• $20,000 Adventure Media Works to develop an online service for the photographic community

ENDS

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