PLATE: Serving fresh & edible labor market insights.

PLATE: an intuitive web-based-platform offering fresh edible labor-market insights to workforce development agencies - governments, education-institutions, NGOs and multilaterals - in lower middle income countries. PLATE underpins the quality and relevance of workforce (employment and entrepreneurship) programs ensuring youth have market-relevant skills and are equipped to competitively enter the workforce.

In emerging-economies labor-market-information is labor-intensive to attain, difficult to rely on, and results in costly, retrospective, and ineffective effective youth-workforce-development (YWFD) interventions.

Our proposed solution –PLATE– brings the ingredients of credible and reliable labor-market-information together and serves it in a way that’s easy to digest by YWFD program providers (Government, Education-institutions, NGOs and Multinationals).  By automating the aggregation of multiple data-sources and creating a user-centered-interface, information is real-time, easy-to-access and provides meaningful insights that improve the quality and impact of YWFD interventions. 

YWFD providers will be better equipped to interpret emerging trends and improve industry-relevance of their programs, ensuring initiatives are tailored and responsive as possible to develop a highly-skilled, adaptable workforce that meets meet specific growth and emerging industry and enterprise needs.

By accelerating the speed to access insights, PLATE offers an efficiency-dividend for YWFD providers. We believe that this efficiency dividend will allow cost-savings to be monetarized as part of the sustainability and scalability strategy.

The PLATE team are asking Solve for the start-up capital and expertise to support us refine the design and build-out a minimal-viable-product to test across Indonesia, now that we have secured investment for the development of the Indonesian feasibility-study and early-stage design.

The PLATE team holds both the aspiration and the footprint to replicate PLATE in other lower-middle income economies where labor-market-information is not accessible, affordable or automated; contextualizing and continuing to iterate the platform as we scale.

Through sourcing and serving real-time labor-market-information to end-users that design and deliver YWFD initiatives, PLATE has the potential to impact the lives of millions of young people – ensuring that they are adequately equipped to thrive in the workforce of the future.

Globally, Government, Educators, NGOs and Multinationals (G.E.N.M) investing in youth workforce development (YWFD) initiatives struggleto proactively respond to accelerating changes within the labor market.

Traditional Labor Market Information (LMI) gathering is time and labor intensive, often offering incomplete outdated data – resulting in YWFD programs being created on assumptions or retrospectively.

Consequently, young people coming through YWFD programs still lack market-relevant skills and feel ill equipped to transition competitively from learning to earning.

Strategies are needed to better help disadvantaged groups gain skills and market experience that is not just fit for purpose yesterday, but for today and tomorrow!

PLATE brings the LMI ingredients of ‘accurate’, ‘credible’ and ‘current’ (or ‘fresh’) together, prepares the insights so they are easy to digest, then serves it in a way that’s convenient and affordable for YWFD providers to access.

By automating the aggregation of multiple  formal and social data-sources, information will be real-time (RT) and provide meaningful insights that improve the quality and impact of YWFD return on investment in lower-middle income countries. 

PLATE is a web-based platform which YWFD agencies (G.E.N.M.) can access via a fee-for-service or subscription model. Expected outcomes include:

1. Improved accuracy of YWFD initiatives; youth will benefit from gaining market-relevant skills and entrepreneurial competencies, and improved market-linkages.

2. Improved efficiency of YWFD initiatives; G.E.N.M. access RT-LMI reducing time lags to source data, which can be outdated and unreliable due to protracted traditional LMI methods.

3. Improved cost-savings; G.E.N.M. experience cost-savings and efficiency dividends by being able to access RT-LMI at a low-cost, rather than investing in resource-intensive traditional LMI methods.

Tracking speed of platform to collect then prepare and serve the LMI through the platform; Feedback: How ‘forward facing’ and ‘proactive’ does PLATE enable in YWFD Programmers to be? - FRESH:

Real Time / Timely access to LMI

CX / UX feedback loop on the service and digestibility of the content and insights provided; Visibility of pivot in content for responsiveness to market insights - EDIBLE:

Consumer Experience (CX)

Demand side: Workforce adaptability to meet specific industry/enterprise needs (Trends over time compared year on year) ;Supply Side: End-User satisfaction with responsiveness of YWFD program offerings ; Ability for PLATE to monetarize value offered - GROWTH:

Social Return on Investment (SROI)

PLATE is disruptive to the traditional manual LMI data collection methods uRich text editorsing AI and machine-learning, to scrape online job-postings; collate data; and analyze and present this intel to those entrusted with the responsibility to build onramps to high growth industries for employment and entrepreneurial market spaces of the future.

PLATE will allow API connectivity to other parts of the workforce development digital ecosystem, such as to Learning Management Systems or end-user employment sites.

PLATE will also identify and collating unique, open-data-sources (e.g. Facebook) which will allow for insights to be gathered not only from the formal but also informal-labor-market.

PLATE was born through a HCD process led by WV under the auspice of the Global Center for Youth Employment. The concept was conceived by its end-user during a co-creation workshop - organisations invested in growing the workforce of the future.

PLATE is informed to date by ethnographic and market-research.  Using an agile development process the PLATE team will continue to work with end-users to develop and refine the platform and dashboard design for validation across Indonesia, that can then be contextualised and replicate in other lower-middle income economies where labor market information is not accessible, affordable or automated.

PLATE is a web-based-solution that offers a flexible graphical-user-interface, providing intuitive access to the end-user with RT-LMI.

PLATE will be available to G.E.N.M. both a fee-for-service and yearly-subscription. Price-points will be based on the size and type of the customer – small NGOs or education providers, for example, will be able to access PLATE at a reduced or subsidised costs.

PLATE’s business model will be informed by a market-research (in-progress) which investigates the efficiency dividend for our clients.  These end-users will inform the pricing strategy of Plate to ensure it is affordable and accessible.

Team PLATE is currently comprised of full-time staff working for World Vision and Plan, with pro-bono consulting from the Global Center for Youth Employment.

World Vision and Plan have committed to dedicating a percentage of various subject-matter-experts and technical staffs’ FTE to PLATEs Indonesian feasibility study and prototyping phases. A portion of the prize budget will be invested in hiring a local project-manager and English Indonesian speaking tech engineer developer. 

Ultimately the ‘candidate’ is key to unlocking the financial sustainability of this model, with Employers or emerging industries most likely to pay for access to the candidate and the ‘fresh’ insights that come from accurate LMI insights. PLATE has already started to explore how to monetarize APIs toward ensuring financial sustainability.

When PLATE goes to market, YWFD agencies (G.E.N.M) will pay a fee for service or yearly-subscription. This income will go towards the management and administration of Plate.

The big-data revolution is transforming the way in which LMI is sourced and served globally. While no RT-LMI platform currently exists in a lower-middle income countries, the market is moving swiftly especially given the advances in technology and value of consolidated Intel.  Keeping pace with technological capabilities, system upgrades and changes in industry information sharing regulations will be important.

A limiting-factor is a potential lack of reliable data-sources, however research suggests that there is increased investment in online-employment-portholes. In addition adapting the product for new markets (translation/language packs) will create lag-time, however can be overcome.  

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Across the globe, World Vision and Plan at are on the frontline; our organizations work with government, private-sector, education-institutions, communities and young people to co-create the eco-system and pathways young people need to safely and successfully integrate into in the workforce. We grasp realities and practicalities of this SOLVE challenge.

Not just resources but additional networks; not just visibility but the opportunity to demonstrate to iNGO peers that pre-competition spaces are possible to find even in resource constrained environments; and leverage – allowing us to combine our lived-experience and footprint with some of the best tech minds in the business. 

• World Vision Australia: Innovative Business Development; Social Entrepreneurship and Economic Development Unit
•  World Vision Indonesia: Economic Development Technical Unit; Grants Acquisition
•  Plan Asia Regional Office: Regional Digital Development
• Friend International
•  Global Center for Youth Employment

Burning Glass and Wanted