#STEM-Girls-can-do-it-too! Platform

South African young women may be discouraged from a future in sciences due to limited Career Guidance Support reflecting changing trends in the labor market. Our Solution: Luthando Careers Platform, a super-charged, personalized "virtual" career day to elevate career guidance in rural & under served schools. This platform leverages evidence-based career personality tests, the proliferation of Mobile Applications and virtual storytelling to inspire and educate learners on career choices. Through the platform learners particularly, girls, can pursue a career path suited to their personality, interests, skills and aptitude. Learners explore and discover possible career paths watching videos of female professionals sharing their lived experiences, steps taken to pursue their careers, connection to necessary resources, content and organizations to help young career starters find, plan, and navigate their personal career journeys. This will promote participation of girls in science, fighting gender inequalities which limit their expectations and professional goals.

The future of work is driven by robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other disruptive technologies. South African rural girls are not adequately prepared for this 4th industrial revolution as they continue to lack exposure to STEM professions which hinders their economic empowerment to shift them from vulnerable positions in low-skilled and informal jobs to stability of the formal economy.  Many barriers contribute to this problem including, lack of family support, teenage pregnancy, prejudice against the girl-child, lack of career guidance and development opportunities, lack of mentors and female role models, lack of awareness about what the STEM fields offer in terms of educational and career opportunities and limited access to internship opportunities. The Luthando Careers-STEM-Girls-can-do-it-too programme seeks to address most of the highlighted barriers. The platform provides girls with a virtual career guidance platform that allows those who select a STEM career path to access career information from various STEM fields. Beneficiaries receive career inspiration from young female professionals in the same field. Young girls will also spend their vacation-time as interns in STEM industry aligned to their chosen career path to increase their knowledge and understand the practical world of work to inspire them to pursue STEM careers.

Luthando Careers Platform exists in two formats; a Mobile App called the Luthando Careers Suite and a web-based platform as well. The Mobile App works on Android Operating System. Embedded in the Careers Platform is a sub-platform called #STEM-girls-can-do-it-too which is focused on career guidance and development of female learners interested in taking up careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics(STEM). Our career guidance platforms facilitate the following: 

•   A pre-registration- allocation of a unique user ID where bio-data is collected.

•   Career Assessment- John Holland’s assessment tool is utilized to help determine dominating personality traits in a learner to help make career searches more meaningful

•   Career research, Information, Identification-Access to a career library that informs learners of the various career fields and occupations in the South African and international context

•   Career Counselling-Luthando has young, vibrant and experienced Career counselors on standby to provide one-on-one career guidance physically (rural schools) and virtually for those with internet access.

•   Career Motivation- Luthando Voices is our Career motivation platform for sharing stories from real life professionals in the chosen STEM field. Luthando leverages storytelling as a vehicle for information sharing, motivation and inspiration.

Luthando Careers targets learners from rural and under-served communities who do not have access to adequate career guidance support. Special emphasis is on female grade 8 and 9 learners (subject choice stage) right through to Grade 12 (tertiary application stage). In partnership with an ICT social enterprise called URGlobal working in rural schools, Luthando  conducted formative research using focus group discussions and interviews with learners,teachers, heads of schools and parents on the challenges they encounter with regards to career guidance and their expectations. These findings informed  the initial Website and Mobile App wire frame. Once the prototypes are ready we will test them at the same URGlobal pilot sites. Our Career Guidance platform intends to provide learners in general with structured but unique career guidance and development support. In so doing, they will select a career based on their personality, interests, skills, aptitude. By selecting such careers we expect that learners will attain better goals in line with their career plans, pursue careers that interest them, keep them happy and productive and for many rural female learners improve their livelihoods and job prospects in the 4th industrial revolution. 

While more female students attend school in South Africa than before, rural schools still face a myriad of challenges. There is still a limited number of female learners participating in STEM subjects and in turn STEM careers.  The STEM-Girls-can-do-it-too platform offers young rural girls access to career information from various STEM fields giving them an opportunity to stay in school and attain good grades. Learners are linked to STEM industries for internships and other resources to increase their knowledge and understand the practical world of work, while also facilitating and promoting digital literacy of rural learners. 

To our knowledge there are limited affordable and easily accessible personalized/mobile career guidance Apps in South Africa. Our competitors run very expensive centralized expos mostly in urban areas where schools/learners pay a fee to attend. While these career guidance Expo's are informative, they are not personal, the experience is once off and  the information is limited. They do not provide learners with an opportunity to assess their career choice and conduct informed career research guided by evidence-based psychological personality and aptitude tests. Furthermore, some of our competitors have high tech urban centralized career guidance centers, not easily accessible to rural learners as they have to travel long distances  and not many can afford to do so. Such centralized centers are expensive to build, equip and maintain. Additionally, most career guidance models do not prioritize girls, STEM and the participation of parents and teachers in the learner’s career journey as we do. Our innovation is unique in that its delivery is mobile and virtual and delivered by young career guidance coaches.  The model is current as it is aligned to the future of learning and work. It is cost effective, convenient, inclusive and parent engagement is an important component. Additionally, schools can access our platform for a small fee for all their learners to cover our running costs. The platform is actively updated with new careers as they emerge and also contributes to ICT literacy particularly of girls.It allows us to measure outcomes of the career guidance intervention via our dashboard. 

The Platform utilizes Mobile Technology preferably Tablets and smart phones. However a simple computer can be used to access our Web-based version. The native app development approach and the Android Programming language Java were used to develop the virtual career guidance platform. The Platform allows learners to upload bio-data, participate in the Career Assessment Test and access videos, so to achieve back end heavy lifting, Firebase was used for authentication, database and storage.  Genymotion android simulator on Google cloud was used to test the app before deploying to real device & it made workflow faster.  Google cloud virtual windows machine was used to develop the app because of limitations in computing power of the computer we were using especially on ram so we used a virtual computer with about 12 gig ram. We used minimum sdk 21 to support from Android framework 4.0 & above.

 Robotics i.e drones and cameras will be used to create content for the Luthando Career Voices Platform. Internet connectivity will be used to help the rural learners access the the career guidance platform. Luthando will need secure servers as data on personal information will be collected from from the beneficiaries.  The back end team, will need efficient laptops with good processing power, especially for the software and content developers. In future Luthando wants to include AI to create better visuals for our career research modules in our platform. 

Our solution uses technology that is widely used i.e the internet , mobile phones/tablets, Mobile App, Servers, Videos, Social Media (YouTube). This technology was leveraged due to its simplicity, accessibility and cost-effectiveness. Rural schools are not privileged enough to have access to career guidance counselors or attend career expos. The mobile application is the best solution to introduce rural learners especially female learners early enough to enhance their understanding of personality types and what different careers involve to help in career  planning, development and guidance. The foundation of the whole process relies on the initial psychometric career assessment which is based on universally accepted Career Test theories on Interest, Aptitude, Personality and Motivation assessments published by John Holland a renowned psychologist. Our assessment is designed to measure a learner's affinity for an academic subject/course, stream or role based on the required personality characteristics and aptitude for the same.

Our solution aims to keep learners especially girls who choose to pursue STEM careers in school through supportive career guidance and development. The activities provide Learners with  career assessment which automatically leads them to a corresponding John Holland’s code(s) career personality denoted by a color i.e investigative, or artistic, realistic and possible career choices from our career database aligned to each of the codes.  Learners then research the given career choices and choose a specific career path. After selecting the career path, they develop a career plan outlining the subjects they need to take in the 10th grade, the grades they need to maintain and how to maintain such grades, additional resources and support they will need and utilize to achieve their career. The outcome of the whole career guidance process is a career choice, path and plan. 

We will measure the number of female learners who choose careers in the STEM field and they will receive further career coaching and development through the STEM-Girls-can-do-it-too programme where girls receive additional support to follow their STEM career path, receive mentor-ship and inspiration from female professionals in the STEM field and participate in internship programmes in local industries during school vacations to keep them motivated. Ultimately we will measure the proportion of female learners who proceed to higher learning or world of work to pursue a STEM Career path in accordance to their Career Plan. 

We will also train teachers and engage parents and community leaders to sensitize them on the value of career guidance especially for girls to pursue STEM careers. The ultimate result of this engagement is well rounded support and holistic career development of rural learners especially girls. This holistic support will contribute to motivation of learners especially girls to follow-through with their career plan, attain the necessary grades and ultimately pursue a career that is best suited for their abilities and contribute to alleviating their vulnerability in future. We hope that learners who go through our programmes are more productive and efficient. 

The current Number we are serving= 50 at the school where we are working with learners, teachers and parents to develop our prototype. 

When we scale-up our prototype we would like to service about 20 rural schools. Each grade 8 and grade 9 consists of about 100 learners per school. In one year we therefore envisage to serve about 2000 learner which will take us about 1 years with our skeleton staff.

We would like our App to be endorsed by the Department of Education which will result in its increased demand in South Africa by all schools as part of the Life Orientation Curriculum. We therefore see ourselves serving more than 50% of our rural grade 8 and 9 Learners. 

1. Increase universal access to career guidance and development in schools by targeting at teachers, Learners and parents- Via our Luthando Careers Platform. We will provide training to teachers on how to support learners with their career plans. Learners including girls will receive a full career guidance counselling and development experience via the platform 
2. Increase the number of female learners who choose subjects and career choices in the STEM by 80%. We will run the  STEM-Girls can do it too programme to promote the uplifting of female learners with interest in STEM in rural schools
3. Improve learning outcomes by assisting 10000 Learners (a year)  to select informed subject choices. Through our mobile teams which we hope to deploy to each district, we will be able to reach 50% of all rural schools in South Africa in 2 years
4. Create innovative digital platforms and physical opportunities for Learners to experience the world of work before cementing a career choice
5. Provide support to Learners from rural schools and under-served communities with no access to ICT to apply for career or world of work opportunities. We will utilize Mobile Tablets which will be part of our mobile team package and each child will be given an opportunity to utilize a tablet and its technology which will allow them to learn how to navigate and use the mobile technology

Financial barriers-We are currently lacking in financial resources to pay our software developer who is working on a voluntary basis. We also need funding to pay for our career researchers who research the various career fields and career information and ensure that the information on the platform is correct and current. We also require funds for our mobile teams to pay for their salaries, tablets and audio visual technology including tablets, cameras, drones, laptops, sound systems and servers and internet connectivity and transport to schools. 

Legal- Because we are providing services to young people we also need funds to solicit legal advice on areas which might expose us to litigation.

Cultural -No cultural barriers for now although we may consider language as a barrier to effective delivery of career guidance services to young people in rural South Africa and we may need to develop some content in South African local languages especially for parents to understand considering that we are working in rural South Africa where English literacy is limited. 

Our organisation is a social non profit enterprise which relies on donations in cash and sometimes in time where well wishers volunteer their expertise. Our prototype has been developed solely using Volunteer time and none of the development team have been paid. We hope to continue lobbying potential volunteers and service providers to donate or volunteer to our programme. We are actively applying to various organisations and well wishers for funding of various components of the development process. However, very few funders are willing to fund start-up social enterprises but we continue to persevere as more resources are still required which we hope to also be awarded from this application. 

Currntly only 5 people work in our solution team on a voluntary basis including: 

1 Project Manager 

1 Software Developer  

1 Content Creator and graphic Designer 

1 Researcher 

1 Social media manager  

Project Manager-Ms Chipo Mutambo is holds a PHD in public Health, a Master of public health and has worked in the development sector for more than 10 years.  Her experience includes developing new change ideas with a potential to solve society's wicked problems particularly in the education sector. She is the one who conducted a problem analysis and conceptualised this solution.

Software Developer 1- Mr Dale Banda is Chemical Engineer and Software developer with vast experience in developing software. This is however, his first project where he volunteered his time to develop the Luthando Careers platform APP prototype.  

Content Developer and graphic designer 1-Mr Titus Marume is an experienced content creator with vast experience in advertising and marketing industry in South Africa

Digital Manager-Priscilla Mtambo is an experienced content developer and social media marketing expert. She has run various campaigns for corporates in South Africa, Zimbabwe and the UK. She is running our social media pages and developing content with Career professionals and editing video content

Researcher- Ms Samantha Dube- Samantha holds a Master in Public Health and has experience managing education, health and community development projects, mostly in rural areas and under-served communities

We are also working with URGlobal a local ICT enterprise that is providing ICT training to rural schools in the Eastern Cape province. This organisation has helped us with testing our innovation in schools where they provide services. 

We are also working with M and E Lab Pty as their Corporate Social responsibility beneficiary. They have volunteered their time which they will provide us with technical assistance to develop the project measurement plans, visual dashboards and data collection tools when we start running the programme in schools. 

Our Key partners

•     URGlobal

•     M and E Lab

•     Department of Education

•     Department of Labour

•     Department of Higher Education and Training

•     Schools

Which problems are we solving:

•      Lack of affordable Career Guidance opportunities for rural schools

•      Lack of training and resources for teachers

•      Few young girls taking up STEM Subjects and career paths

•      Low educational attainment in rural areas

•      Poor grades in rural schools

•      Selection of careers that are not personalised

•      Lack of a career Guidance curriculum and resources

•      Limited internship and mentorship programmes for learners especially girls in the STEM field

•      Teenage pregnancy and early marriages

•      High School Drop-out rates in rural communities

•      High levels of unemployment in rural schools

Our Key Activities

•    Online personalised Career Guidance Expo- Career Assessments

•    Career Counselling for Parents, Teachers and School governing bodies- Workshops

•    #Girls Can-do-to-Platform-Mentorship Workshops

•    World of Work programme- Workshops  

•    University Application Drive-Workshops

•    CV writing and interview skills workshops

•    Career mentorship and Advice-Virtual and physical

Customers

•      High school Learners

•      Parents of high school Learners

•      Teachers of high school Learners

•      School heads and School Governing Bodies

•      The Department of Education

•      Local Industry

•      Women employed in the stem industry

•      Universities  

What Key Resources require?

•         Physical-We use a work-from home strategy to limit expenditure on office space

•         Intellectual (brand patents, copyrights, data, equipment)

•         Human-Salaries for staff

•         Financial

We will continue to apply for funding from various sources ie foundations , Corporate social responsibility spends from corporates in south Africa, Volunteer time from our volunteers, application for subsidisation of our programmes by the Department of education and Department of labour. We will also sell our products,  including the following training and capacity building products 

•    Career Counselling for Parents, Teachers and School governing bodies- Workshops

•    #Girls Can-do-to-Platform-Mentorship Workshops

•    World of Work programme- Workshops  

•    University Application Drive-Workshops

•    CV writing and interview skills workshops

•    Career mentorship and Advice-Virtual and physical

The Solve Platform is an exciting opportunity to learn, develop and apply for prize funding that can change the lives of our beneficiaries. The prize money we will receive will help us improve the quality of our APPs to subsidise salaries for our development team. It will also improve our productivity and allow us to successfully pilot and make bug-fixes to our App. If we win the prize,  our organisation will also gain global recognition which will help us apply for more funding from other funders interested in social Enterprise. By just applying for this challenge we have also had an opportunity to view what other social intrapreneurs are working on and how they are innovating as well as their business models. We are also hoping to receive mentorship and strategic advice to improve our business model and be more impactful

We need Business model support from SOLVE which will help us develop viable business models that are low cost, low overheads and high impact. We are keen to learn and be mentored. 

We are also keen to partner with organisations that are interested in providing us with tech solutions that can improve our Applications and are also willing to fund such improvements such as adding AI/AR/VR to make our APP competitive and have a future outlook to motivate the Learners that we are working with 

We would also like to Partner with organizations that develop mobile technology for them to donate devices,for them to also advertise our product to their networks. 

 Social media and marketing organisations- to advertise our APP, Social market our innovation and help us with packing our services so that they are not only professional, but also palatable to our variety of beneficiaries. 

We would like to partner with the following organizations 

Qualcomm- As the have their Qualcomm for good where they are helping organisations in south Africa develop tech-based solutions to solve the worlds wicket problems in health and education. 

Vodacom, MTN and other telecommunications organisations based in South Africa

Schools and the Department of Education- We hope that they will take up our products and pay to use our services

M and E Lab- We are already partnering with this organisation as they continue to provide us with technical support in M and E 

URGlobal is a social Enterprise which we are already in partnering with. Our partnership will expand this year as we start piloting our products at the schools where URGLobal provides tech education in the Eastern cape

Solve- We would like to receive prize money, mentoring and training from the network that SOLVE is working with

Luthando a hybrid institution with an eclectic mix of public health scientists, economic development strategists, creatives, legal practitioners, and social scientists working together to improve the quality of life and total inclusion of migrants and refugees in South Africa. Our focus areas include health, education,  innovation and entrepreneurship, media, and the environment. We empower and leverage the efforts of foreign nationals contributing towards South Africa’s transition to a more socially, politically, and economically viable nation for its local, regional, and global citizens. Our organisation was developed as a social enterprise that promotes the employment of Migrants, refugees and Asylum seekers in South Africa after the realisation that the job climate is changing and the country policies in South Africa are becoming exclusionary and unfriendly  and more difficult for foreigners to find paid work. Some of our team members with Masters degrees and formal qualification were now forced to take menial jobs which could not sustain their families leading to poverty and mental health problems. Our solution will ensure that we contribute to the development of the South Africa education sectors as well as the future economy by empowering foreign nationals with employment to develop tech solutions. Our solution will create employment, in the long run improve the livelihoods of economic refugees but also promote their social inclusion in South Africa.  

At Luthando we are passionate about girls and want them to also have a future in the 4th industrial revolution workplace. To that end, we have extended Luthando Careers Suite to include the #STEM-Girls-can-do-it-too platform.  

This new platform targets girls in Grades 8 and 9 from disadvantaged rural schools, who are at the stage where they can select subjects which are detrimental to their future career choices.  Our model’s strength is that it leverages evidence-based career assessments, to determine a learner’s strength and passion which suits their personality, aptitude, and resources.

Girls who receive this support are expected to improve their grades, stay in school, and successfully pursue their chosen and desired careers in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

We will use the Innovation for Women Prize to enhance the Luthando Career Voices for Women in STEM which is a  digital storytelling component, which showcases stories from Young people especially young women who are studying towards or already employed in the STEM industry to inspire and motivate our young girls to pursue this career path.

We will use the Innovation for Women Prize to enhance thefund our internship programme that links our female learners to the STEM World of work, where they can spend their vacation-time as interns, learning from the practical world of work by shadowing female STEM professionals.

At Luthando we are passionate about girls and want them to also have a future in the 4th industrial revolution workplace. To that end, we have extended Luthando Careers Suiteto include the #STEM-Girls-can-do-it-too platform.  

This new platform targets girls in Grades 8 and 9 from disadvantaged rural schools, who are at the stage where they can select subjects which are detrimental to their future career choices.  Our model’s strength is that it leverages evidence-based career assessments, to determine a learner’s strength and passion which suits their personality, aptitude, and resources.

Girls who receive this support are expected to improve their grades, stay in school, and successfully pursue their chosen and desired careers in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

We will use the Innovation for Women Prize to enhance the Luthando Career Voices for Women in STEM which is a  digital storytelling component, which showcases stories from Young people especially young women who are studying towards or already employed in the STEM industry to inspire and motivate our young girls to pursue this career path.

We will use the Innovation for Women Prize to enhance thefund our internship programme that links our female learners to the STEM World of work, where they can spend their vacation-time as interns, learning from the practical world of work by shadowing female STEM professionals.

At Luthando we are passionate about girls and want them to also have a future in the 4th industrial revolution workplace. To that end, we have extended Luthando Careers Suite to include the #STEM-Girls-can-do-it-too platform.  

This new platform targets girls in Grades 8 and 9 from disadvantaged rural schools, who are at the stage where they can select subjects which are detrimental to their future career choices.  Our model’s strength is that it leverages evidence-based career assessments, to determine a learner’s strength and passion which suits their personality, aptitude, and resources.

Girls who receive this support are expected to improve their grades, stay in school, and successfully pursue their chosen and desired careers in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

We will use the AI for Humanity Prize to expand our APP to include AI, AR,VR to introduce career avartars into the APP where learners can visit workplaces from the comfort of their school and see the jobs that they opt to do on AR/VR

At Luthando we are passionate about girls and want them to also have a future in the 4th industrial revolution workplace. To that end, we have extended Luthando Careers Suiteto include the #STEM-Girls-can-do-it-too platform.  

This new platform targets girls in Grades 8 and 9 from disadvantaged rural schools, who are at the stage where they can select subjects which are detrimental to their future career choices.  Our model’s strength is that it leverages evidence-based career assessments, to determine a learner’s strength and passion which suits their personality, aptitude, and resources.

Girls who receive this support are expected to improve their grades, stay in school, and successfully pursue their chosen and desired careers in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

We will use the Future Planet Capital Prize to enhance the Luthando Career Voices for Women in STEM which is a  digital storytelling component, which showcases stories from Young people especially young women who are studying towards or already employed in the STEM industry to inspire and motivate our young girls to pursue this career path.

We will use the Future Planet Capital Prize to enhance thefund our internship programme that links our female learners to the STEM World of work, where they can spend their vacation-time as interns, learning from the practical world of work by shadowing female STEM professionals.