In fact, some of you didn’t wait for the starting gun. Zoe Pascoe from Linwood Library took the honours with the first CIENA signup on 20 December, closely followed by Lisa Dam from Glenfield Library with sign ups on 22 and 30 December.
There are advantages in being first off the block – it helps us identify gaps in our processes so we can fix these before the floodgates open.
New CIENA Referral form
The CIENA Referral form has been updated and can be downloaded from the Stepping UP website:

Please do not use the old printed forms as these refer to the programme terminating on 31 December 2024.
Jump Profile Form
This has now been updated with some new options:

Note there are now two CIENA options, one we have called CIENA Standard and the other CIENA Hono Mai. Most partners will be choosing the CIENA Standard option. Hono Mai is a special programme being managed by the Greater Christchurch Schools Network (GCSN). This is only for families with children at Christchurch schools who have been referred by GCSN to a nearby Jump partner to collect their modems.
Email Confirmation
When families sign up for the CIENA Plan, their Jump account will initially be a standard Jump one (with the start-up 35GB data). When the Profile form is completed together with a signed Referral Form, their account will be changed to the CIENA plan with the first monthly allocation of 210GB. They will receive an email notification when their account has been re-provisioned from Standard Skinny Jump to CIENA; this will normally take a few days, hopefully before families have used their first 35GB. Please make sure that you use the parent’s email on both the Jump Profile form and the Referral Form, so that they receive this notification and any future communications about the CIENA programme.
Good news stories
Partners frequently report how appreciative families are to receive this free internet service. We would like to share these good news stories with the Skinny Jump team and CIENA, the programme sponsor. Please let Sue Kini know if you any special stories about what difference the support from CIENA is making (sue@diaa.nz).
Families who change their minds
From time to time, families on the CIENA Plan ask to switch back to Standard Jump. The main reason appears to be that parents lose some of the control over family internet usage. With a monthly top-up of 210GB on the first day of each calendar month some families can reach this data cap before the end of the month and then they lose their internet connection until the start of the following month. While the data allowance is similar to Standard Jump (6 top-ups of 35GB = 210GB),some families prefer to ration this by only topping up when a parent approves this. We ask CIENA partners to alert families to this situation when signing them up, but reassure them that they can switch back to Standard Jump if necessary. The only downside in doing this is that they will not be able to change their minds again and re-sign for CIENA in the future.