Enabling Youth Affected by Conflict with Online Tutoring

Paper Airplanes is a nonprofit startup using video technology to provide free one-on-one language and skills instruction to youth affected by conflict. Working predominantly in the Middle East with those affected by the Syrian conflict, our goal is to provide youth the tools they need to pursue education and employment.

Youth unemployment reaches up to 30% in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, the top relocation destinations for Syrian youth. Further, according to a study detailing workforce preparedness across the world, over 58% of jobs in Turkey are left vacant due to an unprepared workforce, with a 17% increase from 2012 to 2013. As economies become increasingly globalized and technologically supported, youth must be able to meet these growing labor gaps. For those affected by conflict, the barriers to jobs, education, and required skills are even higher. We are working to provide free, personalized skills training through Skype to minimize these barriers.

Only 1% of college-aged refugees are currently enrolled in university, compared to 34% worldwide. Coupled with high rates of unemployment in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Europe, conflict-affected youth are not getting the proper training or opportunities they need to enter the legal workforce. While in Jordan and Lebanon these problems are coupled with legal barriers, major skills and language gaps prevent displaced youth from accessing employment even without legal barriers. Yet research has shown that language skills can increase access to higher education and improve marketability; it has also shown that investing in refugees improves the host economy.

Our target outcomes are to help at least 2,000 youth acquire language skills usable in work or university settings, help 100 youth gain vocational training usable in the workforce, and help 50 youth gain employment or access to universities previously unattainable. Our primary beneficiaries will be youth affected by conflict located predominantly in the Middle East region who are unable to access courses due to geographical, time or financial constraints. Ultimately, we hope to increase the number of employed youth affected by conflict as well as those able to matriculate to university.

Use final language exam to measure language acquisition - Help at least 1,000 youth affected by conflict acquire language skills usable in work or university settings

Use final exam or project to measure skill acquisition; track number of course participants - Help at least 200 youth affected by conflict gain vocational training and skills usable for the workforce

Disseminate 6 month and one year surveys to graduates after course completion through email, WhatsApp and the Alumni Facebook Community Page - Help at least 50 youth affected by conflict gain employment or matriculate to universities

While there are many resettlement agencies working to provide in-person language training for newly arrived displaced persons, Paper Airplanes is unique in our extension of services to those affected by conflict, rather than just officially recognized refugees. Further, no other organization to our knowledge is providing individualized vocational skills training or widespread language instruction to this population using technology. We have been able to use Skype, an existing and accessible technology on smartphones and computers, to reach those across the region with free language and skills training. Our next phase of growth involves building an educational platform for our users.

Paper Airplanes continues to work closely with beneficiaries on the ground to ensure joint ownership of the organization. Currently our staff includes five former learners out of 25, and we have a two-year goal of reaching 50% of our staff being former learners. This has the dual effect of increasing ownership within the populations we are serving as well as providing on-the-job training skills that youth can use for future jobs. In addition, we solicit feedback from each beneficiary both throughout and at the end of each term, constantly working to improve our programs by incorporating beneficiary feedback.

To date, Paper Airplanes has served over 1,000 students across a wide range of locations - including Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, the Netherlands, and France. The technology we use is accessible because it is free, easy to download, and mobile-friendly. As long as users have a somewhat stable Internet connection, we can reach them. We are also working to provide simple hardware to our most disadvantaged students to increase the program’s accessibility and the learner’s experience. If broadband is not enough to conduct full video sessions, tutoring is conducted through basic chat, either through WhatsApp, Facebook or Skype chat.

We are working on securing funding from three different avenues. First, we are soliciting small donations from our community of volunteers and our followers on social media; we have successfully raised $11,000 from over 100 different individual donors. In the fall, we plan to launch small-scale fundraisers and awareness events on college campuses, as well as a crowdfunding campaign to be launched on Giving Tuesday. Second, we are working to secure corporate sponsorships and investments such as tech companies like Microsoft and Facebook, company foundations like Cisco’s, and employee matching programs like that through the World Bank. Third, we are continuing to apply to grants that can allow us to scale our solution. We have applied to four grants to date, with fourteen more planned in the next six months. Our solution does not require high costs to show high impact, which we hope will be attractive to donors.

We are unable to compensate over 200 hours of staff work, meaning that our staff has high turnover, a lack of institutional memory, and spends too much time recruiting and training. Our solution will first and foremost require our ability to recruit and pay key staff members as full-time employees. Our solution will also require significant IT updates to scale. This is something we are working on with Princeton University, but will need further support. Finally, Internet availability can limit our reach in situations where Internet has been cut, so we are hoping to build computer labs in beneficiary hubs.

https://www.paper-airplanes.org

https://www.facebook.com/PaperAirplanes/

Paper Airplanes has reached a critical point in growth, in which we require not just financial support but technological support, data analysis expertise, and program management advice from professionals. We are a young team, and our sustainable growth is dependent on this expertise. If given the opportunity, we plan to use Solve’s community to connect with database managers, Python and Javascript coders, and nonprofit managers to help us improve our work. As a unique organization using existing technology to provide skills training to people affected by conflict, we also hope to share our experience and help others grow.

Talent Beyond Boundaries (https://www.talentbeyondbounda...)

Kiron (https://kiron.ngo/) 

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