UP School

We are committed to closing the economic and educational gender gap and empowering women by increasing the number of role-model women in technology. There is a huge gap in female participation in the most important technology roles for the future.

UP School is a free, live and online education program for young women with STEM education that trains them intensively in a specific area of technology. (Currently Data Science and RPA) From a pool of applicants we choose young women with high potential and low access to resources or women who are unemployed or underemployed. After the program, the students are placed into technology roles in our partnering firms. 

UP School can transform the lives of women by offering them a valuable education and opportunity of employment. In the long term, by increasing the number of women leaders in technology, we aim to empower girls all around the world.

We are solving the inequality in education and opportunity for young women, which contributes to the economic gap between genders, specifically in the rising field of technology. 

Women are still underrepresented, underpaid and often discriminated against in the tech industry. There is a consistent trend where it is difficult to retain women in STEM jobs once they've graduated with a STEM degree.

The gender gap report reveals that the greatest challenge preventing the economic gender gap from closing is women’s under-representation in emerging roles. In cloud computing, just 12% of professionals are women. Similarly, in engineering and Data and AI, the numbers are 15% and 26% respectively. 

In Turkey which is where we started, only 33% of women are employed and only 10% in technology.

Turkey is expecting 33 million jobs in AI and digital technology but the lack of potential employees with the necessary technical skills hold back Turkey’s development.

Furthermore, university education in Turkey falls short of preparing STEM students for employment which leads to young women with high potential left unemployed. 

UP School is a free online education program. It provides young women with technical skills, soft skills and mentorship to succeed in technology roles. Currently we have programs on Data Science and Robotic Process Automation. 

Selected students (around 20) participate in a 2-4 months intensive training program. The 100% live-online program includes 8 hours of technical skill classes and 2 hours of soft skill development weekly. Every week, a selected mentor from the industry meets the students, shares experiences and answers questions. Students are supported by TA’s who also grade their weekly homework and final group project.

Students graduate the program when they earn a UiPath certification. Upon graduation,  we distribute the students’ CV’s to our partnering firms and arrange at least 3 interviews for each student. Our goal is for every student to find a job in their speciality, thrive at that position and become a role model leader in technology.

Hatice* is one of our current students. She has a degree in mathematics, she is passionate about data science but currently works as a store clerk because she never got the support or resources she needed to fulfill her dreams. After UP School, she is expected to start working as a data scientist and to be on her way to become a leading figure in the tech industry.

Our solution most immediately serves women between 21-35 who has or will graduate with STEM degrees. The profile we look for during the selection process is women who have high potential but insufficient resources. We prioritize students from middle to low-tier, underfunded schools, low socioeconomic backgrounds, and those who are unemployed or underemployed.

After UP School, their careers and perhaps life is transformed as they start a high-profile job in technology.

Apart from the technical skills to thrive as a data scientist for example, UP School's education in soft skills and 1 - 1 mentoring creates lasting effects on the students motivation and life goals. Overall, we are aiming to empower women and girls all around the world, by showing them they can be a leader in the technology industry.

Our solution addresses the dimension of strengthening competencies in STEM for young women for effective transition to employment directly. UP School's technical education (currently in Data Science and RPA) is designed to train students for direct transition to employment in those areas. Aside from the technical education, extensive soft skill development and mentoring is provided to prepare the students for and guide them through their first steps in their new careers.

UP Schools program fills in the gap between college education and employment in technology for women who need it the most.

UP School is very different to and more effective than massive online open courses (MOOCs) such as Udemy, Coursera or KhanAcademy in solving this challenge because

- UP School works at an individual level with every single student. Every student's homework is followed-up and graded, students work with their soft-skill teacher and mentor on a personal level with 1-1 meetings every week. Every student is promoted to partnering firms for employment and every student is offered at least 3 internships. The employment process is closely followed and supported.

-UP School can provide this program for free because of its innovative business model. We do not create any type of financial burden on the student. We're a B-B organization; we provide skilled employees for the firms we work with and in the meanwhile bring job opportunities to young women who normally wouldn't have them.

-UP School doesn't have a direct competitor that specifically works on the transition from education to employment in emerging technology roles for women, so it fills a very important gap. Other organizations working on female employment in Turkey focus on low-skill jobs which miss the mark in empowering women and thinning the economic gender gap. Other competitors provide free educational sessions on STEM in order to spark interest in girls; however, this rarely translates into a successful career in technology.

UP School's core technology is educational technology. We are using the recently very popular approach of remote learning which requires different platforms and software to act as communication channels, classrooms etc. 

Currently, we use applications such as Zoom, Slack, BlackBoard, Google Classroom, Piazza, AirTable and WhatsApp to power the operations of our program. 

However, UP School's main goal for the near future is the invention and development of new educational technology, especially those involving artificial intelligence. Our enterprise will go much further than simply utilizing pre-existing technology and actually into creating its own edTech. More information on this later.

All of the educational technology we are currently ussing are widely accepted and used. 

We currently use Zoom to conduct the lessons. We use Slack and Whatsapp for announcements, general discussions and for smaller groups of students. 

Activities:

• Classes on technical and applicable skills in data science or RPA are held 3 times a week
• Projects and assignments that use real cases from several industries gives the students real-world experience
• Sessions on soft-skill development are held twice a week. They complement the technical education.
• Students receive ongoing mentorship from instructors, TA’s and industry leaders
• The UP School community continues supporting alumni through the rest of their career
• At least 3 interviews are arranged for every student with partnering firms

Short term outcomes: During the Program

• Women who may have been hopeless, dissatisfied and disheartened due to unemployment or underemployment are filled with hope, ambition, motivation and belief that they can be a transformative figure in technology
• The students are given applicable technical knowledge that their University education could not provide, which makes them very attractive candidates for jobs
• The students have a set of strong and crucial soft-skills that will support both in their career and personal lives

Medium-term outcome: Up to 1 year after the program

• The students are employed in a high-impact technical role, in a desirable and influential firm, usually in one of Turkey’s major cities
• The students’ career pathways have been transformed as they have stepped into technology. This may mean a completely different life for them.

Long term outcome: 1-10 years after the program

• More representation of women in technology
• Younger women get inspired by female leadership figures in technology and feel hopeful
• Social constructs about technology being a “masculine” career is challenged by the wider public
• Economic gap between genders start closing as women have a bigger role
• Economic gap between genders shrinks as women hold more higher paying positions in growing fields
• Gender inequality is lessened

Right now we serve 18 students in the RPA program.

By the end of this year we will be serving 61 students in both the Data Science and the RPA program.

Overall, we have received 1000* applications to both programs.

In five years we aim to serve 6100 students.

Firstly, we aim to reach more women globally. In five years we are aiming for 80k applications to the program and 6k women trained by UPSchool yearly.

We are also aiming to expand globally to the UK and Italy.

Our larger goal (within 5 years) is for UP School to develop into a hub/lab that creates its own transformative educational technology inventions. Our teammate Merve Cerit, a graduate student in Stanford University specializing in Learning Technology and AI, is leading this development.

Our current pilot program in RPA is gathering data from our students and acting as a testing ground. Our immediate vision is to develop a digital teaching assistant which automizes the human-capital intensive tasks of tracking performance which will be our first step in scaling up.

1. Currently, UP School's operations require a lot of human-capital and in order to reach the scale we desire we must find a way to automate some of these processes or a way to reach more volunteer human resources. 

2. We don't currently have affirmation from the Ministry of Education as a school which intermits some of out further actions.

3. There is uncertainty around the amount of investment we will receive as we will only start looking for funding around December. This restricts our current growth and scaling operations.

4. In order to expand globally, we would have to develop a program in English. Running two versions of the same program will also inevitably require more human capital.

5. We are worried about the financial viability of UP School in the case of going global as we would require a new network and set of skills to reach agreements with clients outside of Turkey. We believe that we need international collaborators and partners in order to globalize our operations.

1. UP Schools initial efforts in ed tech invention will be towards using AI in automating some processes for teaching assistants so that a larger scale of students can be served without losing out on the quality of our programs support.

2. Applying for the documentation as we scale up will overcome this barrier.

3. Currently, we can speed up sales in order to generate a revenue stream until the funding period begins. In December while searching for investors we will leverage our association to a strong NGO in Turkey called YGA, which we believe will give us a upper hand in the process.

4. We would appreciate partners that would help us develop the education programs in English. This is especially prevalent for the soft-skill part of the education.

5. Adding international partners to our team becomes crucial here. MIT Solve is one of our first steps to spreading the world about UP School so we can potential gain partners, collaborators and mentors from all around the world.

2 full-time

1 part-time

5 volunteers

The common ground that brings our team together is a Turkish NGO called YGA. The majority of our team has spent several years working with YGA in other social enterprises, learning and adopting the YGA philosophy which developed us into competent and conscious entrepreneurs.

We've all also studied the soft skills taught in the UP School program which enables a smooth, consistent and positive work environment.

Our commonality forms the close friendship and ease of collaboration in UP School, but the variety of experiences in the team is its real strength.

Merve specializes in learning sciences and artificial intelligence, now starting her Phd at Stanford. She has a fauna of experience working as a data and AI specialist, teaching and studying the science of teaching. She is currently designing the curriculum for the Data Science program and also will lead the development of UP School's own educational technologies.

Mina, the founder, is passionate about women’s empowerment and has worked in several similar projects volunteering for more than 5000 hours in her collegiate years. She has previously worked at Turkey’s biggest crowdfunding project and also led YGA’s science initiative which brings science to children in remote areas.

Tonguç has more than 20 years of experience of leadership in the technology industry as he previously worked as a director in Turkey’s biggest telecommunication company. His experience is crucial for UP School’s smooth operation and future goals of developing edTech.

We partner with YGA, a Turkish NGO which supports startups that branch out of it. UP School is YGA's 6th venture, other ventures include WeWalk which was selected as one of the best inventions of 2019 by Times. YGA will be fully financially supporting UP School until we find investors and until our revenue generation is stable. YGA also supports UP School by the network it has of Turkey's leading academics, business people and philantrophists.

We are partnering with Stanford GBS under their Global Management Immersion Experience program with MBA students working with UP School for a summer.

Ford Otosan is one of our first partnering firms. They partner with us in the process of interviewing and offering jobs to UP School's students. We aim to partner with many firms in the form that we partner with Ford Otosan.

UP School is a B2B service provider and earns revenue from partnering firms that employ UP School students. The firms pay a sponsorship of a certain percentage of the students’ yearly salary. Furthermore, we are supported by donor funds, and investment in the form of equity and loans.

UP School creates shared value for all parties involved. Our value proposition for students is a free, online, high-quality education with a job opportunity upon graduation. Our value proposition for partnering firms is saving them time, money and energy by creating direct access to high skilled employees that have been trained to their demands.

Some of our KPI’s are: drop-out rate, employment rate, years of employment at placed firm, and qualitative evaluations from written feedback of each student that we collect after every class

Our key resources are human resources in the form of instructors, educational content designers, TA’s, support staff and sales staff. Which also creates our biggest expenditure areas which will increase linearly as we scale up.

Our key partners are firms that agree to interview our students and guarantee to employ a certain number of them, and mentors who are leaders from the industry that invest time to engage with the students.

Right now we are financially supported by an NGO. We will have a sustainable revenue stream starting July 2020. From December 2020 we will be supplementing our revenue stream by raising funds from investors in the form of grants and loans.

UP School’s primary hope with Solve is non-financial, it is to find the people, partners and business support we lack today. Currently, UP School has only one full-time employee, the rest of the team are part-time staff and unpaid volunteers. While the pilot program has been a success, and every team member is deeply passionate and hopeful about UP Schools potential to empower young women, we have a couple weak muscles that MIT Solve could help us strengthen.

UP School's dream is to scale globally, bringing out unique offering into the parts of the world where gender inequality is at its worst stages. We want to upscale the life changing power of quality education and a strong career and bring it to the women who need it and want it the most. This is exactly where MIT Solve community can help us. We're looking for strategic partners that will work with us so that we can use complementary activities to reach many parts of the world, strengthening the global effort for girls and young women participating in STEM. From reading through the solver applications even, we can see many organizations that we could partner with create impact.

Furthermore, UP School has a great need for professional business support. Uncertainty about our future and the challenges we mentioned would be more easily resolved if we had long term support from some of the best and most experienced experts in the non-profit and social-entrepreneurship world.

Partnership:

- We aim to create global impact, so we are looking for organizations we can partner with in order to carry UP School's operations to other countries

- We are looking for organizations that can partner with us in any of the following areas: providing educational content, development of educational technology that uses AI, reaching out to high-potential women that needs our program

Support:

- UP School needs the personalized support that the Solve community can provide especially on building a viable business model and strengthening our revenue model and scaling strategy. We have weaknesses in the formal business organization front, that disables us from scaling.

Technology:

- UP School's aim to start inventing our own educational technology, requires high quality human capital and expertise. In order to step into the edTech world, we would need more team members, external support and partners.

We would like to get support from MIT faculty that work in the intersection of educational science and artificial intelligence. If not faculty, we believe that the Solve community could help us reach specialists or organisations working in this field who can help UP School in various ways.

We would like to gain support from MIT or other educational institutions to share their MOOC's or other resources so that UP School could work to integrate the knowledge in those courses to our intensive, interactive curriculum.

We would like to partner with organizations that could help us reach firms that would be willing to employ from UP School, or other organizations that work on female employment.