Ayiti Analytics

We are a data lab focused on increasing data science capacity in Haiti through education, consulting and research. To tackle the problem of unemployment, we provide structured education programs in partnership with local institutions of higher education, and subsequently place graduates in high skilled jobs with local employers. Our flagship education program, the Port-au-Prince Data Science Bootcamp, is organized in partnership with Digicel, a regional telecommunications company. Digicel cannot find local candidates with the analytics skills they need, so we launched the inaugural bootcamp to fulfill that need. Ayiti Analytics is leveraging this growing demand for data science to provide youth in Haiti with employment opportunities in the most disruptive sector of the 21st century. Our goal for 2020 is to train a foundational pool of 25 junior-level data scientists. Our goal for 2021 is to train 50-75 and to pursue other activities of applied analytics.

Ayiti Analytics was created to combat the problem of unemployment in Haiti, a country with highly educated youth who lack access to opportunity. The World Bank (2018) estimates that 30% of Haitians aged 15-24 are without work but they are actively seeking employment, and within the region, 20% of Latin American and Caribbean youth are unemployed. The causes for this are manifold, but hinge primarily on the lack of job opportunities outside of the agricultural sector. This explains why 60% of graduates from one of Haiti’s top technical institutes, an estimated 550 graduates, remain unemployed. Existing job creation programs focus on manufacturing and textile, but these have proven to be low-wage sectors that trap workers in cycles of poverty. What’s worse, these industries have not experienced enough growth to absorb the increasingly educated workforce. As a result, Haiti has experienced repeated waves of outward migration and stagnant economic growth as the most talented seek employment opportunities abroad. We are facing an unprecedented migration crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean, further widening the North-South skills gap. 

This innovation impacts college-aged youth in Haiti (18 years old and up) who are traditionally left behind or marginalized—lacking access to digital and 21st century skills. About 30% percent of working age youth (15-24) find themselves unemployed in Haiti, regardless of their level of education. Haiti also has a young population, with 54% under the age of 24. If there were opportunities available to them, they would seize it. 

By connecting youth to employment opportunities, we aim to catalyze a new generation of technologists in Haiti. Our constituents will become the first generation of data scientists in Haiti, pioneering a range of new services to help governments, private sector companies, and individuals make better decisions. In addition to our formal Data Science Bootcamp, we offer free, interactive data literacy meetups that allows us to reach a wider audience and build a data science community in Haiti. Our specific target population will not only support themselves with increased earnings after participating in our bootcamp and job placement programs, they will also support their families. If we can guarantee employment for every student we train, the impact per dollar will be far reaching.

Ayiti Analytics is a data science lab focused on increasing analytical capacity in Haiti through education, consulting, and research. Our programs include the Port-au-Prince Data Science Bootcamp which is organized in partnership with Digicel Haiti, biweekly interactive data science meetups, and consulting services. Our programs expand learning opportunities for Haitian youth—allowing them to participate in an increasingly digital workforce. 

We launched the Port-au-Prince Data Science Bootcamp this year. The program runs from March 9 through May 29, 2020, training the first generation of data scientists in the country. Over the course of the three-month program, these emerging data scientists receive mentorship from industry leaders, as well as the opportunity to work on 8 applied projects and an individual capstone project, while concurrently enrolled in Business English.

Over the course of three months, students learn how to: 

• Extract, clean, and analyze data using Python 
• Leverage Python’s powerful libraries to build machine learning models
• Utilize SQL to query from databases
• Build intelligent dashboards and communicate findings to nontechnical audiences
• Utilize correct data-points, analytics models, and decision-making tools to help employers better understand their operations, customers, and markets

After participating in the bootcamp, graduates are equipped to work as junior-level data science professionals with local employers. Using collaborative tools like Zoom, Slack, Google Drive and online learning platforms like Coursera, we have temporarily shifted our program online to respond to the challenges posed by COVID-19.

Our range of educational services extend beyond the bootcamp to include free interactive meetups to teach practical data literacy skills. Meetups are hosted every first and third Saturday of the month. They are free of charge and open to the public. In addition to the meetups, we host interactive webinars to connect youth in Haiti to practitioners around the world. Using webinar tools like Zoom has enabled us to reach a broader audience for our educational programming.

Long-term, we aim to pursue other activities of applied analytics. Select graduates from our bootcamp will be hired by Ayiti Analytics to provide direct consultation services to organizations in Haiti. Similar to the work pioneered by Data Labs around the world, Ayiti Analytics employees will be able to deploy machine learning techniques to improving our understanding of old and recurring problems in Haiti.

Our approach is innovative in its very premise, promoting Haiti as a source of tech talent as opposed to just a source of unskilled labor. Organizations like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have for years funded manufacturing projects in Haiti, spending $224 million in 2012 to build an Industrial Park. This Park has not yielded the results promised, and the 6,000 of the initially projected 60,000 workers barely earn a living wage. Most employment generation programs in Haiti fall within this trap, investing in low-wage and low-growth sectors. What we propose in contrast provides access to meaningful employment and opportunities for social mobility. The impact per dollar is farther reaching and has the potential to break the cycle of poverty, as graduates from our training programs can expect to earn 5 times more than the national minimum wage of 500 HTG per day in data science and data engineering roles.

This project is designed to provide intensive training for youth from the Global South to enter the growing field of Data Science and Analytics. In the case of Haiti, there are vacancies within the computing sector, but there are no established training programs. This project leverages this growing demand to up-skill youth and to provide opportunities for economic mobility. 

Take for example, Haitian entrepreneur Duquesne Fednard. He hired 150 youth to work for his tech company in 2012, and five years later they have all transitioned from extreme poverty to middle class. An inspiration for this project, Duquesne taught us that Haiti can change if we provide opportunities for youth to be their most productive selves. At its core, our mission at Ayiti Analytics is to connect youth to employment opportunities so that they are better able to support themselves and their families. We also seek to catalyze positive change and to inspire a new generation of technologists. Our students will become the first generation of data scientists in Haiti, pioneering a range of new services. Graduates from our Data Science Bootcamp will be trained to use cutting-edge technology to unveil new solutions to old and current problems in Haiti.

We are serving 25 youth through our inaugural data science bootcamp. Through the community-based educational meetups that we organize, we have reached 100 plus youth and young professionals in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. We seek to graduate 250 youth from our bootcamp over the next five years (25 students per 6-month cohort). 90% of students will be full-time employed within six months of graduating. Tracking % increase in median incomes will also guide our understanding of the program’s effectiveness. If implemented annually over successive years, we envision significantly increasing the pool of data scientists in Haiti and increasing access to opportunity.

Ayiti Analytics’ vision goes beyond training data scientists in Haiti, as we are more broadly seeking to build a platform for solutions and insights. In countries with inadequate data infrastructure, it is difficult to assess which interventions have had measurable impact or which populations are vulnerable, but collecting and analyzing data can increase our understanding of these problems in Haiti. Our goal for 2020 is to train a foundational pool of 25 junior-level data scientists. Our goal for 2025 is to train 200-250 and to pursue other activities of applied analytics (applied research and consultation services). Select graduates from our bootcamp will be invited to conduct independent research or to provide professional consultations on behalf of Ayiti Analytics. Similar to the work pioneered by Data Labs around the world, Ayiti Analytics employees will be able to deploy machine learning techniques to improving our understanding of old and recurring problems in Haiti.

The barriers that currently exists pertain to accessing content in Haitian Creole. Most of the online instructional material for data science are in English and to a lesser extent, French. However, our learners are mostly proficient in Haitian Creole.

We seek to make educational content more accessible to a broader pool of learners. Our curriculum design team is working to localize content into Haitian Creole.

Our programs include the Port-au-Prince Data Science Bootcamp which is organized in partnership with Digicel Haiti, biweekly interactive data science meetups, and consulting services. Our programs expand learning opportunities for previously excluded populations in Haiti—allowing them to participate in an increasingly digital workforce. We launched the Port-au-Prince Data Science Bootcamp this year. The program is anticipated to run from March 9 through May 29 2020, training the first generation of data scientists in the country. Over the course of the three-month program, these emerging data scientists receive mentorship from industry leaders, as well as the opportunity to work on 8 applied projects and an individual capstone, while concurrently enrolled in Business English.

There is one full-time staff (the co-founder and director), and 5 part-time staff members working on the solution team.

We are committed and we have garnered tremendous support from local and international actors in the past year of building this innovation. Our executive team consists of the Founder and Executive Director, Castelline Tilus. Ms. Tilus founded Ayiti Analytics shortly after completing her Masters’ Degree in International Policy and Development, and has consulting and project management experience in Haiti. She now serves as the Stanford Women in Data Science (WiDS) Ambassador for Port-au-Prince. Morgan Mendis is the managing partner and Principal Data Scientist at Ayiti Analytics. He has 7 years of industry experience developing decision models and visualizations to communicate complex information. With their combined educational background, technical expertise and commitment to Haiti, education and development, both Tilus and Mendis are uniquely positioned to lead this venture. 

The Digicel Group, MCC-Pepfar's Data Collaboratives for Local Impact (DCLI), a number of local universities and private-sector organizations in Haiti as employer partners. The Millennium Challenge Corporation's Data Collaboratives for Local Impact (DCLI) has proven to be a strategic international partner. They manage a consortium of data labs around the world. Partnering with DCLI has connected our innovation to the U.S. and to data labs around the world. 

We have two primary customer segments: Haitian youth and organizations operating in Haiti. For Haitian youth, we provide highly interactive educational content and opportunities for employment. For organizations, we provide talent placement, professional training programs and data science consulting services. To date, we have partnered with a variety of organizations ranging from large telecommunications and banking companies to local non-profits and start-ups. To deliver on the valuable proposition to students and organizations, we provide a host of education programs. We have the Port-au-Prince Data Science Bootcamp, free interactive meetups, as well as free educational webinars. We provide these services through a blend of online and in-person instruction. Our strategy is to introduce data science broadly across the economic landscape in Haiti through education and short-term consulting projects with organizations to demonstrate the value of data science, once we have established ourselves as the premier data science provider, we will expand to engage in public research and larger consulting projects that will allow us to employ the students of our various educational programs.

We plan to secure our organizations financial sustainability through a combination of grants, consulting engagements, professional education programs and participating in innovation challenges with monetary rewards that align with our organization's mission. Currently our main focus is on developing a robust data science community in Haiti so are focus is to acquire grants to operate our bootcamp and other training activities. In addition, we plan to pursue consulting projects to maintain a steady stream of revenue that will allow us to expand our educational reach and develop brand recognition as experts in the domain.

Ayiti Analytics aspires to be a premier data lab within the Caribbean. We are applying to the TPrize Challenge to help us progress into the Growth and Scale stage of development to accomplish this goal. If our solution is selected, in addition to securing funding, we are seeking connections to industry experts, mentorship, and additional resources to help our venture expand to other markets in the Latin American and Caribbean region and to provide a broader range of data products and services. 

Partnerships with organizations like ESRI, a supplier of geographic information system software, would help us explore geospatial data analysis as it pertains to Haiti. Partnerships with university-based data labs like the MIT Data Science lab or the D-Lab at University of California, Berkeley would help us pursue more collaborative research projects, specifically projects that pertain to Natural Language Processing and other advanced data science topics. Partnerships with Latin American IT outsourcing firms like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS Latin America) and Stefanini IT Solutions, would shape our understanding of tech talent needs within the region. And lastly, partnerships with more established tech ventures in the Global South (i.e. Samasource and Andela) would help us expand and strengthen our network across the Global South.