Foundation Communities Uses a Support-Based Approach to Solving Austin’s Housing Crisis

“I’m ready to conquer it all. This is my stepping stone and I’m ready to do what’s needed to become successful.” That’s how Brionna Watters, a single mother of two, describes her outlook on life since recently becoming a resident of Foundation Communities through the organization’s Children’s HOME Initiative (CHI) for families who are homeless or at-risk of becoming homeless.


The mission of Foundation Communities is “creating housing where families succeed.” That’s what the Austin, Texas, based nonprofit has been doing since it was founded in 1990. And thanks to decades of steady growth, it now owns and manages 26 affordable apartment communities in Austin and North Texas—19 for families and seven for single adults. Seven more affordable communities are currently in the construction or planning stages. When the construction is complete, Foundation Communities will be home to more than 8,000 people, many of whom will have come directly out of homelessness.

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CHI client Brionna Watters and case manager James Ortiz pose with Brionna’s new laptop at a Foundation Communities property. 


But affordable housing is just part of the story. Over the years, Foundation Communities has also expanded its portfolio of supportive services for its residents and lower-income Central Texans. This includes educational programs like: onsite Learning Centers that provide afterschool and summer enrichment for children and higher education opportunities; financial stability programs such as free tax preparation, affordable health insurance enrollment and financial coaching; and health initiatives such as free healthy food pantries and exercise programs. All these opportunities are made possible because of the power and reliability of digital connectivity. 


“We don’t want to just provide a cheap apartment,” said Foundation Communities Executive Director Walter Moreau. “We want to provide great communities where people are proud of where they live and have opportunities right at their doorstep.” 


Foundation Communities resident Robert Rangel enjoys a book and his support animal Tony at a Foundation Communities property


As a part of that holistic support model, Brionna Watters’ family is one of those receiving a free computer from Foundation Communities which was made possible through a grant from Google Fiber, as a part of its digital inclusion efforts to increase communication and learning opportunities for lower-income Americans. Watters says for her family, the timing couldn’t be better. “I plan on going to college for real estate,” said Watters. “So, I was actually going to have to purchase a laptop.”


Each resident at Foundation Communities’ M Station Apartments also has access to high-speed internet service provided byGoogle Fiber to ensure they have internet connectivity to achieve their online goals.


James Ortiz knows firsthand how transformative Foundation Communities’ affordable housing + supportive services model can be — and how vital it is to have access to programs and resources online. His parents divorced when he was nine years old which made the family’s economic hardships even worse. Ortiz says it was very fortunate that his mother was able to get herself, him and his sister into a Foundation Communities apartment, which provided much needed stability. After graduating from college, Ortiz immediately sought employment with Foundation Communities. Now, he works as a case manager in the CHI program helping families like his overcome their struggles. 


“In this role, I have been able to work directly with a number of families, in a collaborative process that fosters individual and family growth,” said Ortiz. While this role has its challenges, the rewards I garner from the work are immeasurable.”


You can learn more about Foundation Communities and its Children’s HOME Initiative at https://foundcom.org/housing/at-risk-homeless-families/.


Posted by Norris Deajon, Communications and Marketing Manager for Foundation Communities

Notes from Google Play: growing for the next decade

Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Vice President of Play Partnerships

Hello everyone,

This year, Google Play celebrated our first decade of partnering with your businesses. So whether you just launched your first app or game, or have been with us since the beginning, thank you for joining us — and more than 2.5 billion users — on this journey.

2022 was a year of uncertainty, with challenges to the global economy leaving many people and businesses looking for ways to adapt to difficult circumstances. But despite these difficult circumstances, your apps and games continued to help people manage, live and enjoy their lives.

We launched #WeArePlay this year to document your stories from around the world and showcase how your apps and games are improving people’s lives.One of my favorites is from brothers Kennedy and Duke, who use their ambition to help small businesses with their finance needs to create Kippa, and are now helping to empower entrepreneurs all across Africa.

In the US, Andrew Glantz used his passion to support local communities to create GiftAMeal, a fantastic app which encourages restaurant customers to take photos of their meal, following which a meal is given to someone at a local food bank. Andrew estimates that 500 restaurants have donated over 1 million meals to date, which is an amazing achievement. We’re excited to continue spotlighting your stories from all over the world throughout next year.

In the mobile-first world we live in today, it is clear to see the impact of the experiences you build on people's lives, and it inspires my team every day.


Helping you grow your businesses more efficiently

In uncertain economic times, we know it’s important to keep your costs low, improve your outcomes, and stay productive. That’s why we recently made a number of enhancements to help you acquire and re-engage your users more efficiently, and shared actionable best practices through our app growth series.

For example, you now can create up to 50 Custom Store Listings to appeal to specific segments of people, so you can communicate what’s great about your app in ways that are relevant to each audience. I am also excited to see the impact of Churned-user Custom Store Listings in the new year; these will tell a more customized story to people who uninstalled your apps or games, and help you bring them back. You can be one of the first to try this new feature by expressing your interest here.

For select titles, another efficient way to engage with new and existing users is by utilizing Promotional content cards, which games have been using for a while. This is a great way to reach users on Google Play with offers, launches, and events. For example, Three Kingdoms Tactics used the cards for exposure on all major events like pre-registration, new version release, and new season. The cards released during their first anniversary event in Hong Kong SAR and Taiwan increased their game’s exposure in the Play Store by 35%.

We are also excited to see apps starting to use the cards. Live streaming service Twitch has run almost 200 Promotional content campaigns this year, generating 36 million unique viewers and over 50 thousand app installs from the cards. It is wonderful to see these results.

On average, businesses using Promotional content cards drive +3.6% increase in revenue and a +5.1% increase in 28 daily active users versus similar titles that don’t. By measuring your success with the new reporting dashboard, you’ll see that the opportunities for optimization are huge. If you're one of the thousands of titles that already use Promotional Content, look for messages in your Play Console Inbox to find out more. We're looking to expand access to even more apps and games next year.


Helping you enter new markets

One great way to find new users is to go global. For mobile games, mature markets like Western Europe show a good growth rate, but the global growth rate is even higher thanks to the number of mobile gamers growing in emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, India, and the Middle East & Africa. An increasing number of apps and games are monetizing successfully across emerging markets — for example, Türkiye has seen a ~70% increase in consumer spend on apps this year, and a ~50% increase for games.

For those considering entering new markets, local payments and monetization tools can help you increase buyer conversion, engagement, and retention. This year we launched strategic guidance in Play Console, which brings you a number of insights including peerset comparisons and per-country breakdowns. These can help you quickly identify growth opportunities, like what markets are underperforming and where you are a market leader. For more best practices for entering new markets, check out our Google Play Academy courses, with more coming soon.


Supporting you to find users on more devices

As we look to the future for your business growth, it is not only about reaching people in more markets, but also about reaching people on more devices. Users are increasingly investing in connected devices beyond their phones. Just this year, the number of active non-mobile Android devices has grown by almost 30%. That’s why it’s more important than ever to be able to meet your users where they are, whatever their device.

Supporting multi-platform gaming has been a major investment this year. We expanded Google Play Games to PCs as a beta experience across more markets around the world, gathering your feedback and improving the product to better fit the needs of your players around the world. Our greater aim is to help you to meet players where they are, and give them access to their games on as many devices as possible.

Many of you are already creating amazing experiences across multi-form factors, such as wearables and foldables. Strava is one great example of how building these experiences can boost engagement. They tapped into Google’s APIs, libraries and Android tools to take the app experience to the next level for people who have invested in a wearable, and found that wearable users also had 30% more active days than those who did not use a wearable.

Keeping the ecosystem safe

We know how hard you work to build and grow these amazing apps. As you scale your businesses, we are also committed to helping you better understand the policies that keep the ecosystem safe for people everywhere. Recent policies to help you navigate trust and safety on Google Play include expanding the Developer Helpline program to help navigate policy compliance issues, and launching a Strike Removal program to help compliance and deeper education on commonly misunderstood policy areas.


Rallying together into 2023

To maximize your success during periods of change, we need to rally together. We were so excited to celebrate 100,000 followers this year on our Google Play Business Community Twitter channel, and welcome you to follow our community spaces on Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with your peers and build knowledge.

Take care of yourselves and each other — and happy holidays from our team to yours.


Purnima Kochikar,
Vice President, Google Play Partnerships

Updates to Google’s Services in Czechia in Light of the Czech Transposition of the European Copyright Directive

The European Copyright Directive, which is being implemented by countries in the European Union, gives new rights to news publishers online while ensuring that consumers can continue to freely access information through online platforms. The Directive allows search engines such as Google to freely link to and use "very short extracts" of press publishers' content. The law also creates new rights for publishers when longer previews of their content are displayed online - but without defining what exactly a very short extract or a longer preview is.

Updates to Google’s Services in Czechia in Light of the Czech Transposition of the European Copyright Directive

The European Copyright Directive, which is being implemented by countries in the European Union, gives new rights to news publishers online while ensuring that consumers can continue to freely access information through online platforms. The Directive allows search engines such as Google to freely link to and use "very short extracts" of press publishers' content. The law also creates new rights for publishers when longer previews of their content are displayed online - but without defining what exactly a very short extract or a longer preview is.

Updates to Google’s Services in Czechia in Light of the Czech Transposition of the European Copyright Directive

The European Copyright Directive, which is being implemented by countries in the European Union, gives new rights to news publishers online while ensuring that consumers can continue to freely access information through online platforms. The Directive allows search engines such as Google to freely link to and use "very short extracts" of press publishers' content. The law also creates new rights for publishers when longer previews of their content are displayed online - but without defining what exactly a very short extract or a longer preview is.

2022 Google News key moments

For more than two decades we’ve worked with news media companies to strengthen quality journalism in Aotearoa and 2022 is no different. As the year draws to a close, we’re pausing to reflect on our efforts - to share key highlights and reflections from our ongoing partnerships.


We’re proud of the launch of News Showcase and have now signed agreements with 23 local news publications, including NZME’s national and regional titles like New Zealand Herald and Whanganui Chronicle, RNZ, BusinessDesk, Scoop Media, Crux Publishing, Newsroom, Pacific Media Network, Sun Media and Times Newspapers. These publishers and their respective mastheads represent a broad mix of audiences across New Zealand, from metropolitan to smaller, regional and ethnically diverse publications. 


Throughout the year, our Google News Initiative (GNI) projects focused on advancing quality journalism, strengthening publisher business models and empowering newsrooms through technological innovation. This year alone we’ve reached over 30 news organisations and hundreds of journalists through our programs. 



Advancing quality journalism 


Training Kiwi journalists

We partnered with Telum Media to deliver a series of 12 in-person digital skills workshops to equip journalists with tools they can use in daily reporting and data visualisation projects. This year, we’ve trained over 100 New Zealand journalists across 30 newsrooms throughout the country. 


In August we hosted the Te Rito Journalism Training Camp which saw 25 cadets representing multiple ethnicities, languages, and the rainbow and disability communities from all over the motu participate in training focused on digital skilling and fundamental principles of digital tools and reporting. As part of the Te Rito initiative, established by New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), Whakaata Māori, Discovery / Newshub and Pacific Media Network, with support from NZ On Air's Public Interest Journalism Fund, these cadets were selected to develop and bring diverse voices into the journalism and broadcasting industry. 


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Caption: News Lab Teaching Fellow session with Te Rito journalism cadets in August 2022.


Supporting media literacy for New Zealand’s students

News Lab also supports efforts to teach children what information sources they should (and shouldn’t) trust. Newshounds by Squiz Kids is  a new media literacy teaching resource for children between 8 and 12 years, supported by GNI and already launched in more than 500 schools in Australia and New Zealand. Teachers that have used the curriculum said students are highly engaged in the lessons and are more likely to think critically about the information they consume.


Supporting Election policy and misinformation tracking

The Policy New Zealand team’s aim is to make it easy to find out who’s running in local elections and what they stand for. This tool is critical to improving access to election information. We’ve supported their efforts for a number of years, including their latest iteration which provides journalists with a database for candidates’ key election policies, supporting their ability to track misinformation. It was utilised by a broad cross-section of media, from national outlets such as Stuff, TVNZ’s Breakfast and Newshub’s Three News, through to community and local news outlets.


Supporting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 

Through the News Equity Fund - a global commitment from Google to provide financial support and opportunities to news organisations that primarily serve underrepresented communities - four news publishers in New Zealand have received funding for projects that create original journalism for underrepresented audiences. Recipients include Lizard News, The News, Shepherdess and Pacific Media Network.



Strengthening and evolving publisher business models 


The GNI Digital Growth Program’s News Fundamentals Series 

Through the GNI Digital Growth Program, we’ve helped small and mid-sized news publishers in New Zealand and Australia to develop the capabilities required to accelerate the growth of their businesses online. This year, more than 240 participants from approximately 220 publishers across Australia and New Zealand took part. A link to the on-demand videos can be found here. 


GNI News Consumer Insights: Shift Program

The NCI Shift is a free, immersive two-month program developed to support the news industry on how to increase Reader Engagement and Reader Revenue (including contribution models where relevant). The program has provided actionable and personalised insights, data-driven strategies and recommendations through the use of custom audits, group discussions and peer-to-peer learning for a cohort of nine New Zealand digital news publishers.


We are also supporting innovation within the newsroom by partnering with Bastion Transform to create a framework for newsrooms to experiment. We are working with Business Desk NZ and Australian publishers The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and National Indigenous Times to finetune and implement the framework so journalists can prioritise, design, run and measure different opportunities they want to experiment with. 



Empowering news organisations through technological innovation 


12 projects joined the GNI Startups Boot Camp

In partnership with Fishburners we launched the first GNI Startups Boot Camp in Australia and New Zealand, a program designed to provide hands-on support and coaching to aspiring news entrepreneurs as they establish and grow a new independent journalism venture and set their business on the path to sustainability. Some of the projects that participated in the 2022 cohort includes Nak-Ed, one of New Zealand's first media brands dedicated to exploring the growing sexual wellness scene across marginalised communities. through in-depth, female led reporting.



Supporting new ideas as part of the Asia-Pacific GNI Innovation challenge 

This month we were also pleased to share that two Kiwi organisations, Scoop and Kīnga Voxpop, will receive support from the Asia-Pacific GNI Innovation Challenge. These projects focus on innovation to create a more sustainable and diverse news ecosystem.


We are pleased to partner with the New Zealand news industry, as we have done for many years, to ensure New Zealanders have access to relevant and useful information. 



Post content Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Country Director Google New Zealand

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap – December 9, 2022

New updates 

Unless otherwise indicated, the features below are fully launched or in the process of rolling out (rollouts should take no more than 15 business days to complete), launching to both Rapid and Scheduled Release at the same time (if not, each stage of rollout should take no more than 15 business days to complete), and available to all Google Workspace and G Suite customers. 




See collaborator avatars in the toolbar of apps on Android devices 
In continuation of our efforts to improve the Google Workspace experience on large screen Android devices, we’re moving collaborator avatars from the overflow menu into the app toolbar at the top of your Android tablets and mobile devices. 
widgets on android
Pin table headers when using pageless format on Google Docs 
When your Google Doc is set to the pageless format, you can now pin one or more table rows as header rows. When you scroll vertically past the top of the table, the headers will remain visible at the top of the window until you scroll to the bottom of the table. | Learn more. 
pinned headers
Easily share files in Google Meet chat on web 
Currently, when you share the link to a Google Drive file in Meet chat, you have to ensure the document is shared with those on the call, either proactively or reactively, on a separate screen. Starting this week, when sharing a file in Meet chat, you will now be prompted to update the file sharing permissions to reflect which meeting attendees you’d like to have access to a particular file, all within Meet. | Roll out to Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains began December 5, 2022 at an extended pace (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility). | Learn more. 


Warning banners for external email recipients on iOS devices
Beginning today, you'll see a warning banner when adding external recipients to an email on iOS. These warnings are already available for Gmail on the web and Android devices. Note that admins can turn these specific warning labels on or off for their organization. | Roll out to Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains began December 9, 2022 at an extended pace (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility). 


Improvements for using Miro in Google Meet
We've made two enhancements for the Miro experience within Google Meet:
  • Meeting participants will see a dialog invite instead of a chat message asking them to join a whiteboarding session.
  • Meeting hosts now have the option to end collaboration for the group as a whole. Alternatively, meeting participants will have the ability to leave the session individually.
We hope these improvements create a smoother collaborative experience when using Miro within Google Meet. | Learn more here and here.






Previous announcements


The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.



More ways to prevent data exfiltration on iOS devices 
In 2020, we released several data exfiltration protections for iOS devices. Today, we’re announcing the next set of enhancements for data exfiltration protections for iOS. We’re expanding these security controls to give admins more ways to protect sensitive company data on iOS devices. | Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise for Education, and Cloud Identity Premium customers only. | Learn more. 


New default setting for content managers to modify shared drives coming in February 2023 
Starting this week, admins will see a new shared drive setting that can be enabled or disabled to give content managers the ability to share folders in shared drives. In February 2023, all content managers will have the ability to share folders by default. If you’d like this feature to remain off for end users, disable the setting now. | Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Nonprofits, as well as legacy G Suite Business customers only. | Learn more. 


Create drop-down chips in Google Sheets 
We’ve added dropdown chips in Google Sheets, a custom formatting feature that is already available in Docs. They also enable you to easily indicate statuses or various project milestones outlined in your Sheet. | Learn more. 


Collaborate with colleagues in Google Slides through a new ‘Follow’ feature
We’re introducing a new ‘Follow’ feature that allows you to collaborate with colleagues in real-time on Google Slides. Simply, click on a collaborator’s avatar in the Slides toolbar to jump to whatever slide they are on, and continue to move with them as they navigate and make changes to a presentation. | Learn more.



Completed feature rollouts


The features below completed their rollouts to Rapid Release domains, Scheduled Release domains, or both in the past week. Please refer to the original blog post for additional details.


Rapid Release Domains:


Rapid and Scheduled Release Domains:




For a recap of announcements in the past six months, check out What’s new in Google Workspace (recent releases).