Empowering youth voices with Kieran Innes

Meet the Mancunian-10.3-Kieran Innes-transcript

Intro

[00:00:00] Hello, listeners, and welcome to Season 10 of the Meet the Mancunian podcast: social impact stories from Manchester. I'm your host, Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, offering you a warm Mancunian welcome.

[00:00:14] I'm delighted to bring you Season 10, where I celebrate social impact community heroes across Manchester. I hope, dear listener, you can learn from their life experiences, the challenges they have overcome, and their passion for their cause.

[00:00:30] My aim for the Meet the Mancunian podcast is to inspire you to live your life with purpose and impact, inspired by the stories my guests share every Tuesday throughout the season. You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or my website meetthemancunian.co.uk. Get ready for another season full of thought-provoking conversations and life changing stories.

Introduction and Guest Welcome

[00:00:57] Welcome to the third episode of Season 10 of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, social impact stories from Manchester.

[00:01:05] Passionate about giving the youth a voice, we hear from Kieran Innes, CEO, Tootoot, in this episode.

[00:01:13] In Kieran's own words.

[00:01:15] Kieran Innes: A big one is probably just reaching out to schools and colleges and universities nearby you. They are absolutely crying out for help and support. And if you've got something that you feel would be a benefit to their students, especially if that something is free, then they'll bite your arm off, from what I've seen.

[00:01:40] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much, Kieran, for taking the time today.

[00:01:43] Kieran Innes: Thank you for hosting me, Deepa.

[00:01:44] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: We're really excited to hear about everything that you're going to be talking about today.

Kieran's Early Inspiration

[00:01:48] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: What sparked your interest in working with the youth? Is there a defining moment?

[00:01:52] Kieran Innes: I guess, probably just the experience growing up. I grew up in a council estate in the northeast of England. All of the families around us didn't have very much. But what they did have was a fantastic community of each other around. And they would do absolutely everything in their power to help their neighbours, help their friends. And I guess my passion for what I do now was definitely catalysed during that period.

[00:02:19] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: These lived experiences are so rich informing our passions and purpose in the future.

Journey to Tootoot

[00:02:26] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: How did you get involved with Tootoot and what does it do?

[00:02:30] Kieran Innes: It's a very long story going all the way back to when I was in school. Everybody, I think has experienced either directly or they know somebody who has been affected by bullying, cyberbullying and other safeguarding worries and issues. And it was no different for myself and for Michael growing up. We either experienced it ourselves or we saw the effects of it in and around us with our friends and our family.

[00:02:59] I actually got into tech at a very early age. And from there, learned how to code, learned how to make websites, learned how to make apps and went out into the world. Instead of uni, I went out into industry. And just got a job and worked at an absolutely fantastic business where I learned an absolute ton of things.

[00:03:19] And my co-founder, Michael, he went off to university and he studied business. And in the final years of that degree, you have to come up with a bit of a project. You have to make a business plan. You have to make an idea.

Building the First MVP

[00:03:33] Kieran Innes: And Michael's idea was all around Tootoot and giving children a voice.

[00:03:37] He looked out at the market and realised there was a real gap and a need for giving children a safe, anonymous way to speak up directly to someone in their school who could do something about it.

[00:03:50] And as with all good third year business projects in the university, he thought this is actually a decent sounding idea. We should do something about that. And he knew me from school. So, he got back in contact and he shared it. I loved the idea. And in literally a weekend, we built an MVP, a minimum viable product that, that went on to become the world's first app and website for giving children a voice.

[00:04:19] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That is wonderful. And I love that it started as a student project. My student project during my MBA was a dog-themed fashion business. I got 40 people interested, but I didn't really go beyond that planning stage. So it's really great that you actually got it together.

[00:04:38] Kieran Innes: With the pet boom during COVID, you've probably got something in there. So if what you're doing right now, it doesn't work out, you could always moonlight as a dog fashionista.

[00:04:47] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I love it. And this is not about dogs fashion. It was about all of us having cups and merchandise, themed fashion. So fashion for humans who love dogs.

[00:04:58] Kieran Innes: I completely misunderstood that.

[00:05:00] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Shows you how much work I did and don't do that.

Challenges and Obstacles

[00:05:03] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: You said this is a world first, so it must be an obstacle you had to overcome in this journey. How do you overcome them? And what have they been?

[00:05:10] Kieran Innes: The first main obstacle was adoption. How do we actually go out there as two young people and have schools buy into this idea of investing into an app? Eight, nine years ago when we started, at a time when technology in a lot of schools, was in its infancy. And so we went on a bit of a journey with the schools in our local area.

[00:05:34] We were really fortunate to have great connections with the schools that we attended ourselves and great connections with businesses in the town. And our first kind of big break was that we managed to convince a business in the town to sponsor this. For the schools within the town to give them a voice and to give the schools a bit of a risk-free way financially to try this out. And with the school's help, we launched it and developed it alongside them.

[00:06:07] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I love that you've got a partnership going between schools, yourselves and business to work for the greater good. Absolutely. Power of collaboration, as they say.

[00:06:17] Kieran Innes: Exactly.

[00:06:18] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Which are the communities that really benefit the most from your work? Are there particular communities within school students that you're focused on?

[00:06:25] Kieran Innes: It's an interesting question because you'd think there would be. And we did as well when we first started, we thought for sure this is going to work way better in more impoverished places, perhaps, and maybe they were dealing with more issues. That was the kind of the assumption we had. It turned out to be wrong.

[00:06:43] What we've actually since found is that it has worked in all types of schools, primary schools, secondary schools, independent schools, international schools. Because at the end of the day, if you abstract what it is we do in giving children a voice. It's unlocking conversations that schools might otherwise not have had.

[00:07:02] I remember at the time we had a stat [statistic] at the very beginning of our lives. I suspect the stat is probably worse nowadays, but that stat at the time was that 39 percent of children wouldn't go to an adult and have a conversation face to face. And that meant that for a lot of schools, you're missing out on nearly half of the issues that are going on.

[00:07:24] Or what we've actually seen is you're dealing with issues when they become massive issues. And what we could have done is we could have unlocked that conversation when, whilst it is still an issue, it was a much smaller issue, if we'd just made it easier for children to speak up.

[00:07:39] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Love that. You said it's about finding issues at the start of it before it becomes something mammoth. And also 39 percent is a lot. That's one out of every three students potentially not speaking up and not being able to share what they're going through.

[00:07:57] Kieran Innes: Exactly.

Impact and Success Stories

[00:07:58] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: And when you think about the impact that you've made through Tootoot so far, what would you say over these last 8 or 9 years?

[00:08:03] Kieran Innes: It's been amazing on a macro and a micro level. On a macro level, of course, we've got amazing stats. Our reach has been absolutely unbelievable. And we couldn't have done it without the team that's helped us get there. We've worked with over 500 schools now. We've given a voice to over half a million children. The last time I looked, we've had over 50 000 messages sent on Tootoot whether it's the website or the app.

[00:08:32] We even were very lucky to work on a Department for Education funded programme alongside Internet Matters, and the Anti-Bullying Alliance where we gave a voice to 300 schools. And that was independently evaluated by the Department for Education. And we saw some tremendous impacts.

[00:08:48] We saw a 50 percent decrease in bullying and cyberbullying, for example. We saw a 66% increase in staff confidence in responding to reports. And we saw a 50% increase in the awareness of anti-bullying practice and policy within a school as well.

[00:09:05] On a macro level, it's been amazing. But on a micro level, it's the kind of day-to-day stories we hear back from the schools and about how this has made a real difference in children's lives that really make our day. They really do get the team going and get real buy in from our team. Because that's why we started it. We started it to give a voice to one child and make their lives in school a much better time.

[00:09:32] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Wonderful impact hearing about things like, just the reduction of bullying and cyberbullying, which is such a big concern. And the fact that the people in authority felt more confidence with how they could act on these things.

[00:09:47] This is quite an interesting field, perhaps not that many players in it. So, is there something that maybe people have misunderstood about this or about your industry that you'd like to talk about.

Understanding the Market

[00:09:59] Kieran Innes: I'm not sure if there's a an inherent misunderstanding. You're absolutely right. There aren't many people doing what we do. There is only a very small handful. And I think what that comes down to is just the challenging landscape of the industry.

[00:10:12] That when you're working with schools, and I work with schools very closely as a trustee of a multi academy trust. They're in an unenviable position of having to find a lot of savings every single year of having to make a lot of great investments and hope that the investments pay off, but they have limited resources to do that. And so the risk profile for that is higher.

[00:10:38] And I think what that kind of adds up to from a, a platform point of view or a business's point of view is that it might not seem like it's a lucrative market to get into, for example, and that might put people off where we came from in that was tying it back to our mission. It doesn't matter in a way about the pound coin, it matters more about how do we give more children a voice.

[00:11:03] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: What's your top tip for somebody trying to make an impact in the community and especially to work with schools and students?

[00:11:12] Kieran Innes: A big one is probably just reaching out to schools and colleges and universities nearby you. They are absolutely crying out for help and support. And if you've got something that you feel would be a benefit to their students, especially if that something is free, then they'll bite your arm off, from what I've seen.

[00:11:37] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I think a little bit of an underlining on the free, isn't it? Because that partnership that you were able to do with business made offering a service an option for schools, which perhaps didn't have the funding to pay for this.

[00:11:51] Kieran Innes: Exactly.

Future Developments

[00:11:52] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It's an opportunity for you to talk about anything I haven't asked you about anything else you'd like to share about Tootoot?

[00:11:58] Kieran Innes: We are continually developing and improving to make schools lives easier. A big one of that is introducing things to make the IT manager's life easier. Every year, they've got to upload new students and make sure that students move up to the next year group and what not. So we've been bringing in a lot of stuff recently around making that super slick. So that it almost happens in the background. They don't have to think about it.

[00:12:22] And then similarly, despite it being anonymous the real beauty of Tootoot is we can guarantee that it is definitely a child in your school. So it's not being abused by somebody outside of the school, putting in perhaps a fake report.

[00:12:36] And we do that by giving the children accounts to log in. And that's one of the things we've noticed is that's caused a bit of friction and getting people to use it. Because if you're dealing with younger children, they're less likely to remember a username and password, for example. And so we've been bringing in things to make that dead easy.

[00:12:54] I touched on earlier that when we started schools were in their infancy on a tech adoption level. Over the course of the last eight years, that has accelerated. COVID helped to accelerate a lot more as well. And now we have technologies like single sign on that we've implemented. And that just makes a one click affair for it for a child to get access and to be able to speak and that is mega important for us.

[00:13:18] Because whenever you add any friction between the child thinking I should say something about this and then the child going to actually say something about it, that friction leads to drop off. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about a safeguarding app or whether we are Amazon talking about e commerce. If you put friction in front of somebody, they're not going to finish the thing you want them to do.

[00:13:39] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Absolutely important point about reducing friction and making it easier for students regardless of their age to to use the app, especially at a time when they want to complain.

Signature Questions

[00:13:51] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I'm now going to move to the signature questions I ask all my guests.

[00:13:54] So the first one is what makes Manchester a unique place for social impact work?

[00:14:00] Kieran Innes: It's a melting pot of cultures. Everybody that I think I've ever met in Manchester in and around Tootoot and Strive and the work we do, have done nothing but give more than they take from you. And I think that is the same in business and as it is in community work.

[00:14:20] And it's to me, no shock that if I can see that every single day when running and growing this side of things that works its way down and filters its way down on a grassroots level into people helping out and wanting to make their communities better.

[00:14:39] There's also a massive pride in Manchester and I say Manchester loosely there. When you think about all of the boroughs, everybody has pride in their boroughs. Just today I was in Wigan, speaking to a lot of construction businesses. And they spoke so passionately about the work that they do in Wigan, and they spoke so passionately about the people in Wigan. And I think you see that echoed throughout all of the boroughs of Greater Manchester because I think people just want to help people.

[00:15:08] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Mancunians are definitely a wonderful bunch and definitely look after their own and like to do it differently as well, isn't it?

[00:15:16] If you could have dinner with any historical figure in Manchester, who would it be with and why?

[00:15:22] Kieran Innes: I think I'll give a bit of a cop out answer on this one. I'll not choose somebody historical; I'll choose somebody who's alive today. And that would probably be Andy Burnham. I just love what he's doing for the people of Manchester with the Good Employment Charter. I love what he's done with the Bee network and the expansion of that and making access to transport better.

[00:15:43] And I love what he's planning on doing with the upcoming landlord charter as well. Everything he seems to be doing is for the people of Manchester and for the betterment of them. I think if there was anybody, I'd love to have dinner with him.

[00:15:56] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Very popular in the podcast, but then that was a slightly different question that. But fair enough. Let you get away with it.

[00:16:02] If you were to create a social impact superhero, what powers would they have and what cause would they fight for?

[00:16:10] Kieran Innes: They would certainly have a massive power of empathy for sure. And they would have a massive personality trait around giving more than they get. The mission they would stand for it has to be aligned to what we do. It has to be about giving everybody a voice.

[00:16:24] So I would see them whizzing around Manchester with their cape. Making sure that everybody has a safe and easy way to speak up about any of the worries and concerns that they have in their world.

[00:16:35] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Love that.

[00:16:35] What's the most important life lesson you've learned so far?

[00:16:39] Kieran Innes: There's probably two of them. I think what one of them is way more of a life lesson because this was from before even the business, which is just give more than you get. When you give more, you will get more. I believe that in my bones. It's the reason that I never really say no to a favour when a friend asks.

[00:16:57] In terms of a business life lesson that stuck with me in the last kind of eight, nine years with Tootoot, it's any time you're starting a new business venture or a new community impact venture, you have a superpower of being able to change things and move fast. And that superpower is exacerbated when you just do, so make decisions fast, make changes fast, break things, learn from them, change again. And, just do.

[00:17:28] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I think both are really useful life lessons. I have a similar philosophy. I just think of it as pay it forward and making an impact in everything I do which is why the podcast is a social impact podcast amongst other things.

[00:17:43] How can interested people reach out to you and learn more? Where can they find you?

[00:17:46] Kieran Innes: Anybody who wants to reach out, they can find me on LinkedIn. They can find our website at toottoot.co uk. And every single year, schools, colleges, universities can get involved with an initiative we run in September called Pupil Voice Week.

[00:18:01] It's a free initiative. You don't have to pay anything to join in. It's about celebrating the power of using your voice. We provide you with amazing resources, assemblies that you can use with your children in lessons not just from us, but also from a great load of our partners that we work with. And it's just a great way to celebrate giving a voice?

[00:18:24] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Sounds great. And I'd love to include that. And of course, your link in the show notes.

[00:18:29] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: So thank you so much, Kieran. This has been such an interesting conversation about giving people a voice and doing this in a very empowering way.

[00:18:38] Kieran Innes: Thank you so much, Deepa, it's been amazing to speak to you today.

Outro

Kieran, I really enjoyed learning about giving the youth a voice today.

[00:18:44] Dear listener, thank you so much for listening to the third episode of the Meet the Mancunian Podcast Season 10. I hope today's episode has inspired you to make positive change wherever you live. Tune in every Tuesday for a new episode, or log on to meetthemancunion.co.uk to listen to all the episodes and learn more about my podcasting story.

[00:19:08] Next week on Tuesday, 11th March 2025, I speak to Mariana Vaszliyev about supporting Ukraine refugees.

[00:19:16] It's wonderful to hear from you, dear listener. You can share your story or send me a message on my website meetthemancunion.co.uk or on social media @MeettheMancunian on Instagram, Facebook and Blue Sky and @MeettheMancunianPodcast on YouTube.

[00:19:35] Thank you to my wonderful community of listeners. Remember your voice, your story, and your actions matter. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it, and let's inspire even more positive change.

[00:19:48] To a better, kinder world, and until next time, let's continue making Manchester and beyond a place of greater impact, compassion, and action. A place of greater impact, compassion, and action.