A Dog Called Diversity
A Dog Called Diversity
Supported Decision Making .....with Erika Butters
Erika Butters is revolutionising disability rights through technology that puts decision-making power back where it belongs—with the individual.
Her platform Volition serves as a digital preference bank where people with disabilities can document, store, and share their likes, dislikes, and support needs, addressing a profound human rights issue that everyone deserves to make their own decisions, regardless of cognitive ability.
Erika walks us through the concept of supported decision-making, explaining how current legal frameworks often strip decision-making rights from people with intellectual disabilities. Rather than accepting this situation, she demonstrates how technology can bridge communication gaps by capturing preferences expressed through vocalizations, body language, and other non-verbal cues.
By giving individuals control over how their information is shared, Volition enhances what Māori culture calls "mana"—a person's standing, value, and inherent dignity. In a world where disabled people are often disempowered, this technology returns agency to those who need it most.
Visit volition.org.nz to learn more about this innovative platform that's changing how we think about decision-making, disability, and dignity.
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Welcome to A Dog Called Diversity, and I was actually reflecting this morning on today's guest and I think she is the first guest I've had on the podcast who is using technology to create inclusion, to give people more power in their lives, and I think that's super cool and I'm a bit surprised I haven't had someone before. But welcome to the podcast, erica Butters. How are you today?
Speaker 2:Ah, thank you for having me. I'm doing very well. Yeah, we discussed a little bit before we started recording that there's a few tasks that we mentally had to get done early in the morning that I had set myself and I had achieved. So I'm feeling good.
Speaker 1:Yes, the mental load we all have to deal with. I wondered, erica, if you might start by just telling us a little bit about yourself. We are going to get into your um, your app and your technology, which is such a cool uh piece of tech, um. But like a bit about you, like where did you grow up and I guess what? What you were interested, I guess before you came to be working in tech and I guess inclusion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So I was actually born in the US and I moved here when I was I was four, just about to turn five, and so I don't really have an accent now, because I was just at that age where I went into the school system and that accent just got sucked out of me, whereas my older siblings, who are just a few years older than me, they still have some remnants of their accent. So that's really interesting. And I've lived in New Zealand, I would say, the majority of my life. I have dual citizenship I'm a Kiwi and a US citizen, and I now live in in Wellington, which is the capital city of New Zealand, and it is the windiest city in the world. It's a pretty cool claim to fame. And I happen to live on the top of a hill which gets beautiful sun, beautiful views and a whole lot of wind. So I experienced that wind firsthand, and my professional background is that I actually stayed.
Speaker 2:I trained at university in English and history, so nothing at all related to the field of work that I'm doing now. But I chose what to study based off of some advice from my older sibling, who said what do you want to have in your head when you are older, what do you want to know? And I thought I would love to know the history of the world and good literature. So that's what I studied, which gave me a lot of opportunity for writing and reading and critical thinking and assessment. And then after university, I briefly worked in the education sector at the Teachers' Council, and then I prioritised being at home with my kids for nine years while they were young and I was raising them before their school age.
Speaker 2:And then, when I re-entered the workforce, I worked at an organization called the Personal Advocacy and Safeguarding Adults Trust, which is a mouthful and a half, but it is an organization that does exactly what it says in its name.
Speaker 2:It provides advocacy and safeguarding and support for decision-making for anyone in New Zealand, but predominantly the learning disability community. And it was in that space that I fell in love with supported decision-making, and I was the director of that organization for eight years and then observed the opportunity to push supported decision-making a little bit further. And I can explain what supported decision-making a little bit further. And I can explain what supported decision-making is shortly, because I realized that, even though each of the individual words are familiar, when strung together in a clump like that. They might not be as familiar, but I observed the opportunity to use technology to nudge that along even further and equip more people to give it a try. Technology to nudge that along even further and equip more people to give it a try. And so that is the background that led me to then start Volition, which we'll talk about later too.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love, I love all that. And there was there were a couple of things in there, I think. Firstly, I want to pick up on your degree and critical thinking. I worked for a CEO who I was in a HR role and he once said to me Lisa, I want everyone in the organization, everyone that we recruit, to have a degree. And I was like, really, you want the receptionist to have a degree, you want, you know, admin people? And he was like, yes, and he was like, let me explain why. And it was all about critical thinking. He wanted people in his business who could think critically, who could find the answers to things, who could work stuff out, and so I thought that was great advice of your siblings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think my sibling also at the time is because I was very conflicted. I had three different potential things pulling me that I was interested in and they were all very, very different. So one of them was pursuing dance and being a dancer, the second was going into radiology and then the third was English and history and very, very different disciplines as well as fields of domains of knowledge. And, yeah, I decided that I wouldn't be able to continue dancing when I was older easily, and I wouldn't be able to or I wouldn't have as much fun doing radiography or sonography when I was older, but I would continue to and always be interested in history and good books.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fair enough, tell us a bit about what supported decision-making is, and I suspect you're probably one of, the probably New Zealand's and maybe in the world's, one of one of the experts in this space. So what does that mean? Supported decision making?
Speaker 2:yeah. So, as I mentioned before, each of the individual words are pretty familiar, but when strung together it's a concept or an approach that many people won't be familiar with. And and concept or an approach that many people won't be familiar with and supported. Decision making in its essence is offering whatever support is necessary to enable a person to make their own decisions that are recognized as legally valid before the law, and you might assume that that's a given, but it's actually not a given for many people.
Speaker 2:And in New Zealand and many countries around the world, we have laws that directly correlate a person's intellect, a person's cognitive functioning skills, with their legal capacity, with their ability to make decisions that the law recognises. And in New Zealand currently at least, if a person is viewed as having less cognitive skills, less decision-making skills, then that directly maps onto them having fewer legal decision-making rights, and that might be seen in the form of guardianship or property management or other forms of what we call substitute decision making, where somebody else is given a legal mandate and authority to make decisions on behalf of the person. And when they're given those rights to make decisions on behalf of the person, that actually, in effect, removes some of the rights from the person themselves, and so supported decision making is acknowledging that actually, every person has the right to make decisions in their own life. This is a human right, an unalienable human right that the United Nations has confirmed in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, should be extended to everyone, including those that might be considered as having quite significant intellectual disabilities and they might not communicate in verbal or intentional ways, but they still have a right to make their own decisions that are viewed as valid before the law.
Speaker 2:And so how do we do that? How do we get somebody that might have quite acute and severe disability that is impacting their decision-making skills and their communication of those skills? How do we get them to a point where they can make decisions that are valid before the law? And that's what supported decision making is and that's where it comes in to provide whatever support is appropriate and proportionate for the person so that they can exercise that legal capacity, they can make their own decisions, and that the foundation of all of it is being able to honour a person's will and preferences, because everyone has preferences that we're expressing all the time, every day, whether we're expressing them verbally or not, and if we can use those preferences as the building blocks of decisions, and that might mean supporters acting and observing and interpreting and responding to those preferences, then that, in effect, is supporting a person to make the decision that they otherwise would have if they were able to communicate it themselves. Right.
Speaker 1:Oh, there's so much going through my head. I guess one of the questions I have is if someone is severely intellectually, uh, disabled, um, and they might be non-verbal, then like how do we understand what decisions are right for them? And I guess I mean ethically ethics comes into this as well about making right decisions for people, and I guess it's on a spectrum of you know how intellectually impaired you might be, and how do we make decisions for those, about those people, for those people, how do we understand what they want? I mean, do you have any examples, maybe that?
Speaker 2:would? Yeah, I do. I do have some examples and I'm just going to add one more uh phrase to the ones who just said about how we make decisions about those people, for those people. I'm going to add the phrase how we make decisions with those people, because that's actually what supported decision making is about is making decisions with the people, and thank you, and it's. It is tricky, like if it's a continuum, right, we have people that can make decisions wholly independently, um, but even that's a little bit of a misnomer, because somebody that has their full intellectual capacity will still be getting support from Google or from their doctor or from their neighbor and husband to make decisions all the time, but that's what we do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're always consulting and we're always looking for information and for support to help us to understand how we should move forward. It's normal, it's part of every day's life for everyone to access and seek support to make their decisions. But as we move along the continuum, what that support looks like will change, because if you have fewer decision-making skills or if you have less mental capacity now I'm gonna. There's a few words that mean the same thing mental capacity um cognition. Decision-making skills, um comprehension capacity intellectual capacity.
Speaker 2:These are all the same, yeah, the same thing. But if you have less of that as you move along the continuum, then the support that you get might not be you doing some googling about it. It might be that you have a supporter alongside who's teasing things out with you and discussing them. And as we move even further along that continuum, to that pointy end where there's somebody that might have profound intellectual disability and they don't communicate verbally or in intentional ways, then their support is all about observing, acknowledging, interpreting and then acting on expressions of preference. And this is where I can give you an example. So there's an Australian researcher. She's based at Deakin University, her name is Jo Watson and I would actually credit her as being one of the absolute world's leading academics and leaders in the field of supported decision making, and she has focused her research and her practice entirely on that pointy end, because she's wanting to evidence that actually, human rights are for all humans and and we need to evidence how this human right to have your own legal capacity how does that work for the people at that end, and her and her team did some research with some individuals that have profound intellectual disability and she shared an example in a YouTube video that anybody can look up. It's a TED style talk from Jo Watson. It's awesome. But she shared an example of somebody named Tom and Tom would use some vocalizations and he would have specific body posturing and positions and eye movements that at first, if you're new meeting Tom, you might not understand what those are meaning and what they're communicating. But as you spend more time with him and those that knew him well were able to interpret what those vocalizations, that post posturing and those eye movements were meaning, whether it was a positive, affirming thing or a negative, dissatisfied, uncomfortable kind of communication. And what this team did was they used videos to record Tom's expressions when presented with different things that he was responding to, so they could get a feeling and an idea of what he liked and what he didn't like. And through this process and through analysis, they came to have a really clear understanding that he liked the feeling of moving fast and having the wind on his face. He liked the movement.
Speaker 2:And so they're based in Melbourne and in Melbourne there's this tiny amusement park called Luna Park, and they decided that actually, if they knew that he had a preference to move fast and have the wind in his face. They were going to support him to make the decision to go to Luna Park and when they got there they supported him to spend his money on different rides and test them out. And then they watched him intently to see which of those expressions and vocalizations he was making was he enjoying it or was he not enjoying it? And there was one ride in particular that he just lit up and he made. All of the vocalizations and gestures that they had come to understand really meant that he was having the time of his life. And they were confident in that because they had come to know him well and they knew what his expressions of preference meant. And so they supported him to spend his money and get another ticket and go on again, and then again, and then again, and then again, as long as he kept on being happy.
Speaker 2:And I think, as Joe recalls it, that they were there till the end of the day, until the park closed. And so I'm not going to beat around the bush, because sometimes supported decision making is hard work and it takes a lot of time, in particular to invest in understanding what those expressions of preference might be. But when you understand it and when you're able to support a person to make the decision that they otherwise would have if they were able to communicate that outright to you, then that's a beautiful thing, because it's empowering that person to have autonomy in their life and to do what brings them joy and what fills their cup and that results in well-being. And's what supported decision making is about yeah, where?
Speaker 1:um, that was an awesome explanation. Thank you so much. Where did the idea for like to bring some technology and an app come from like was there, was? Was there an epiphany one day, or has it been something that's kind of been eating away at you for a little while? Where'd it come from?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there definitely was an epiphany, and I wish that I could say that the epiphany happened earlier, but there was. I'll tell you a little story. So I have for several years, many years, provided education and workshops and training about supported decision making. I want as many people as possible to learn about it and to start practicing it, and in these workshops, I would always advocate for keeping a record of people's preferences. Once you learn what somebody's preferences, you write it down. Whether and if it's yourself and you know what your preferences are, you write them down, and if you're supporting somebody else, you write them down. You document them so that if you need to swap out as a supporter and somebody else comes in, that there's that record there and we don't lose this knowledge. Because one of the perpetual challenges in the disability sector is there's really high turnover rates in the workforce and it means that people are starting from square one or repeating themselves, and that's frustrating for one, but it also means that support is not as effective as it could otherwise be, and so, anyway, I'd always advocate that people keep a record of preferences. And then I realized the epiphany moment was when I was realizing that these people that were attending the workshops, which were a mixture of disabled people, the decision makers themselves, family supporters and paid supporters. They would leave my workshop and go home and then twiddle their thumbs and think, okay, now how do I get about documenting this stuff? And in most cases that would be pen to paper.
Speaker 2:In many instances, for those that were trying to get a little bit more sophisticated, they might start like a Google Doc that they share with people, and that is excellent, very good doc that they share with people, and that's that is excellent, very good.
Speaker 2:But it's not as rich in and nuanced as we absolutely could achieve with the technology that we have available to us today. And so the epiphany, the light bulb moment, was realizing hang on a minute, why don't we build the platform? That is the place where people store all of this information, where they share this information and where they can explore it and and tease it out and grow this information and build these preferences into decisions. And so that was the, the beginning of the, the germ of the thought for what volition is, which I guess the simplest way to describe it now, with all of that context, is that Volition is a digital preference bank. It's a place to capture and store and share the things that are important to you, what you like, what you don't like and how you want to receive support. You can do that in collaboration with your supporters, and then you can control the sharing of that information with the people and the agencies that provide support.
Speaker 1:Cool, that's so cool. Yeah, tell me a bit about the journey of developing the platform, because it's one thing to have a great idea and you had a great idea, but then what was the process of what you can access now? What the, what the?
Speaker 2:you know, the platform that people can use yeah, and you will have already picked up from my background and introduction that, of the many different things that I was interested in, uh, software development was not one of them.
Speaker 1:No, I didn't see that in there.
Speaker 2:No, no, and so my I was working as the director of a charity, an advocacy, and I was like, how do I go about doing this? So I approached an extended family member who was a software developer and I asked for some pointers on you know where do I even get started here? And he recommended that I go through an exploration phase, or a discovery phase, with a local development agency, not so much because we were committing to do the whole process with the agency, but because for me, as being brand new to this domain, that it would help me to open up my thinking and to consider the things that I might not have already considered, to identify my own assumptions. And so I went through that discovery phase, which was really it was very comprehensive. It took about six weeks working with this agency and teasing everything out, and I was able to identify a lot of my assumptions. We were then able to quote and scope out what does this project, what does the build look like, and it was cost prohibitive. It was between nine hundred thousand and a million dollars is what was originally quoted to me as what. What it would take to build a fully accessible digital preference bank that has a back end, that can connect in and integrate with different providers platforms, and I was like, well, you can imagine what I was like. I was shaking in my boots. I thought how on, how on earth am I going to be able to do this? Yeah, um, and so from there, we did not accept that quote, we did not move forward with the development agency there, but I was undeterred because I firmly believe that technology will be used to solve all the challenges and problems that we experience as the human family, including this one, and so I was like it's going to happen someday, it's inevitable, so I just need to keep working at it to see if I can be the one to find the way.
Speaker 2:And so I taught myself. I didn't teach myself how to code, but I taught myself how to use some of the no code or low code development platforms that are out there in the world. The specific one that I used was called Bubbleio, and if you think about how anyone can build a website these days, it's a democratized process because you can have a visual interface and drag and drop things, and it's it's very accessible now, and that same format can apply to app building, and this is a couple of years ago, before we had ai in the mix, which is democratizing it even further. But I taught myself how to use one of these platforms and I built out a fully functional proof of concept that was actually, in hindsight, more comprehensive than it probably needed to be, but I put that in front of a few people to just get some feedback and gut reactions. Am I on the right track? Is this a thing that will be valuable? Testing my assumptions and the feedback was yeah, actually, this would be awesome, and I there's a lot more to do to improve the accessibility of it, but it would be awesome to use, and that was the signal that I needed to continue, and so, from there, I went through a business development course.
Speaker 2:I resigned from my other job, I decided I needed to go all in and I had a philosophy of talking to everyone, because either I'd meet somebody that would help me or they would be able to introduce me to somebody else that would help me.
Speaker 2:And by taking that approach, I was connected with an awesome software developer who became our lead solutions architect and technical co-founder, who built out the solution based off of my initial proof of concept.
Speaker 2:So we now have, like our own robust code base because initially I had thought that maybe I'd be able to start using my proof of concept with real people and real data, but I quickly learned that I wouldn't be able to start using my proof of concept with real people and real data.
Speaker 2:But I quickly learned that I wouldn't be able to because the data that we're collecting is sensitive and personal and there's additional layers of privacy and security obligations that we must meet when it's health and disability data that we couldn't meet when we were using that third party platform. We couldn't meet when we were using that third party platform. So that brings us to where we are now, which we have a progressive web app which is live and out there that is being used. That is a digital preference bank as I initially envisioned it, but it's a little bit peered back from what I the first proof of concept, because we're trying to lean in very deeply into that core functionality of documenting and sharing preferences and once we've nailed that, which we're still working on, we're still listening and learning from our users. But once we've nailed that, then we'll expand out with the many other possibilities of how we can use this platform to enhance people's self-determination who.
Speaker 1:I would love to know who's using it now, like, who are the kind of users that you've got in there using it and where do you see the app going? I know, when we we spoke previously, I was really interested about in works, in workplaces. How could be used in workplaces? Because there's a lot of, I think, reticence in people declaring, uh, if they have a disability in a recruitment process or, um, you know, yeah, I'd love to know where you see, like, do you see it being able to be used in organizations? But, yeah, what's it being used for now and where do you want to take it?
Speaker 2:totally so, uh, of the current user base that we have, uh, because I should say we only launched it in March, so we're still just a few months in and we've we've got just under 300 users right now and we're working on leaning in and learning from them before we try and attract more users. But, of the current user base, there's a pretty even split between people that identify as being the decision maker themselves and people that are in a supporter role. I would say that the users that are in the supporter role are slightly more engaged. This is often people that might be parents or family members that are wanting to document all of the information that they've been carrying in their head now that there is a platform to do it, and so we've seen quite high engagement there and they're using it across a range of do it, and so we've seen quite high engagement there and they're using it across a range of of life domains and decisions. So everyday things food preferences, sensory preferences, relationship and communication preferences but then they're also we're trying to help scaffold them into using it for more significant things like advanced care planning, like medical decision making, like where you want to live things that we'd say are more lifestyle and life changing level preferences, and there's a bit of that happening so far, but I think this is part of the learning of what we can do to help scaffold that even further.
Speaker 2:And to your question about how, what is the possibility here for Volition to support employment and supported employment for those that are disabled or have care and support needs, and I think the opportunity here is huge. So I mentioned earlier that I was previously the director of a charity and I should say that Volition is intentionally not established as a charity. We're a social enterprise that is both for purpose and for profit, because we want to be able to scale Volition and scale this impact around the world, which means that we need to attract investors to do that, and one of the investors that we have is Workbridge New Zealand. So that is a disability employment support agency here in New Zealand that has a very keen interest in, obviously, supported employment and recruitment obviously supported employment and recruitment.
Speaker 2:But we will be working with Workbridge to try and build out the infrastructure within the app to support that proactive disclosure of care and support needs, to be able to support that conversation around what does reasonable accommodation look like for an individual and for a workplace and to try and front-load some of the matching that is necessary to determine if the candidate and the employer are a good fit, and so that's absolutely something that we are leaning into in the future, along with many other things. But we know that employment and meaningful work, or meaningful mahi is a te reo Māori word that we use to describe that in New Zealand that meaningful work is another core pillar of well-being, that being able to be engaged, to have that satisfaction and to have their contribution, and it's absolutely something that we want to be able to enable through Volition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm so excited about that part of your technology and the work you're doing because I've been in human resources roles and I've been in organisations where disability employment services, you know, want to employ people with the organisations I've been working with. But if you haven't worked in the space and if you don't know what meaningful work looks like, it's really challenging, and I've been in organisations where we've employed people with a disability, particularly intellectual disability. With a disability, particularly intellectual disability, and feeling really challenged that you might not be, we weren't doing anything meaningful, it wasn't a great fit, and so I think for people in organisations who want to do better work around disability, I think it'll be a game changer. I think it's so exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's certainly our hope. And because it is oriented to the person, the decision maker controlling the sharing of that information, it's also really I'll use another Te Reo Māori phrase it's also mana enhancing. So mana is this concept of a person's standing and their personal value and wealth and dignity, and when you're able to equip them with the tools to control that conversation and to have that agency that creates that sense of mana, of who they are and how they view themselves and how others view them too, yeah, I love the word mana, I think, and there's so many Maori words that kind of embody the meaning that they mean.
Speaker 1:I think. Yeah, so lovely, yeah For people listening. You know what, I guess. What support are you looking for? What could listeners do to support the work that you're doing?
Speaker 2:well, we are at the very I would still say we're at the very early stages of this and, as I mentioned, we're trying to lean in and learn from our early users, because we've had a lot of I think we've had some tire kickers, people that have popped in and had a look because they're curious, but they're not necessarily who we're trying to target and reach.
Speaker 2:And then we have had our engaged users and then we've also had some people that I think we are trying to target but we haven't been able to successfully engage them yet, and so we're wanting to learn why, what, what's missing for them, what's still too hard, and so, um, anyone that's listening, um, you're welcome to check it out and give us feedback and what, what it would take to improve it for you to be a usable platform to document preferences or to support somebody else to do so.
Speaker 2:And the I mentioned it's a progressive web app. One of the things that catches people often is that this is not in the app stores, or at least not yet, because we've taken trying to bring down those costs and we've built a progressive web app which is accessible on any device that can connect to the internet, but that means that it's not built natively for Android or ios, but you can use it on in of those devices. But the place that you find it is online using your preferred browser of choice at volitiontools. Um, so nice. Anyone that is listening and wants to give it a go? We would love that. Um, within the app, there's a an option to give us feedback that will will plug right through to us so that we can action the things that you tell us and your insights.
Speaker 1:But that would be a huge help awesome, and is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you would like to talk about in terms of your, your business and how you're supporting people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that obviously my background is in the disability sector and so that's, I think, where the opportunity is the greatest to have an impact in this space, to be able to give people that self-determination or the tools for them to achieve it themselves. Able to give people that self-determination or the tools for them to achieve it themselves. But beyond that, we also absolutely recognize the opportunity for this approach for supported decision-making in general and for volition as a tool to be able to support many other population groups. So that includes older adults that might be experiencing dementia or cognitive decline. Older adults that might be experiencing dementia or cognitive decline. That includes people that experience mental illness and distress, that might have episodic periods of being well and unwell and they want to be able to capture and document in their own voice while they are well. What does good support look like for them when they're unwell and when they might not be able to tell you in the moment. We also see the opportunity for it being used with communities that are very transitional or migrant communities, where having that golden thread of your own story and your life and your hopes and your dreams and having a platform to be able to communicate that there's so much value there too. So I just want to acknowledge that in many ways this is a tool that can be for everyone and anyone. But if we start with that bigger scope we won't get very far. So we're starting with a niche, starting with the disability community and, within that, the learning disability or intellectual disability community, but definitely going wider and acknowledging that you have an international audience for your podcast, lisa, is probably also valuable to to explain Some of the language that I've used today.
Speaker 2:I've been talking about disabled people and that terminology can be uncomfortable for people. Some countries of the world specifically choose to use person-first language, so they would say a person with a disability. I was in Japan a couple of years ago and I was there about supported decision-making and talking with people and talking about disabled people and I could see them recoil because it was so uncomfortable for them because they use person-first language in Japan. But it's very intentional that we use what we call identity-first language in New Zealand and this is what we use at a community level and also at a government and policy level. And this is what we use at a community level and also at a government and policy level and the reason why we use that identity first language, that talking about a disabled person, is because we're claiming ownership of that term and acknowledging that, under the, the social model of disability, a person is disabled by the failure of systems and environments and societies to include them, to cater to their needs.
Speaker 2:And it's that external lack that is at fault for creating a disabling experience and the interaction of that with a person's impairments, rather than the person's deficits being at fault for creating a disabling experience. And so I just want to acknowledge that in case there's anyone that has listened that has recoiled a little bit and been like, oh, that's hard to hear. That explanation I think is valuable and important to acknowledge that ownership of actually disabled. People are disabled by the failure of our systems and our environments to enable them and that's what Volition is trying to do is be one of those tools in the system to help enable people so that disability disappears disappears.
Speaker 1:That was an excellent description of the difference between identity and and person. Um, I guess, centered descriptions. And, yeah, it's interesting, my son, uh, has albinism. Uh, which is a genetic condition which means he's vision impaired. That that's the main disability associated with that condition and that community, because when in, I guess, in the disability community there's lots of subgroups of people and communities that come together to support and in the albinism community it's very it's a person with albinism, not, yeah, albino, yeah, yeah, um, but I, I love your description as well because, um, yeah, it's, it's what's happening around you. It's the structures and the systems that are preventing you from being able to do things like other people can. So, yeah, they're both valid yep and I think I love that. That's where you from being able to do things like other people can.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, they're both valid. Yep, and I think I love that. That's where you've brought it back to that they're both valid and then what, whatever phrasing and language and terms, feel right to you, then that's what is right to you, so go with them yeah.
Speaker 1:Now, if people want to get in contact with you, erica, if they want to learn more about your technology and the work you're doing, or even invest, how do they get in contact?
Speaker 2:uh, so, um, I'll give you. I was going to give you two ways, but that's over complicating it. I'll just give you one way, which is to go to our website, which is volitionorgnz, and there you'll be able to find out how to contact us further. But just remember that one thing volitionorgnz, and you can learn more on our website as well as contact us through our website, and we're still a very small and nimble organization, so it will most likely be me that gets back in contact with you.
Speaker 1:Um, and I love, I love, love, love talking with people about our work and about supported decision making, so please do reach out awesome and I will put your website in the show notes and I could also put a few other links to get in contact with you. But yeah, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, erica. It's been um. I've learned so much and I know our listeners will have learned so much too.
Speaker 2:So thank you thank you, lisa pleasure.