Play 4 Gateway - Games to better leverage on youth potential

A "Game-Based Talent Assessment Approach," that aims to provide PN and other educational institutions with a fair, equitable, accurate, human-centred, cost-effective selection process for underserved youth, regardless of their social status. This approach allows to assess personal talent and potential, putting an end to exclusive, unjust academic selection processes

PN has 12 years of experience in the IT sector in Cambodia. Over 90% (1,861 students) of our graduates have found employment within 2 months of graduation. A key part of our success has been directly related to our 4-step-selection process.

• Information sessions to remote areas about the PN program and trainings

• entrance exams focused on English, Math, and Logic.

• motivation interviews.

• social investigations with visits of potential students’homes

  Entrance exams have proved efficient for IT training as over 99% of integrated students make it to graduation. However, our process can be optimized

• as classical entrance examinations tend to provide information about a student’s capacity to acquire knowledge through classic education models, which is directly linked to a student’s financial means and social status.

• PN Social investigations occur at the very end

   This perpetuates a cycle of poverty. 

  We strive to provide a “Gateway for Life” through IT education for the most vulnerable individuals that truly need our support and can succeed from our digital trainings.

  We believe games can objectively assess talents in a non-discriminatory way. Because they rely on “shared approachable, somehow universal, mechanisms”, we believe we can bring a solution that

• selects appropriate games requesting specific talents/skills

• defines the “gamification script” to assess expected IT Talents for PN,

• establishes the relevancy of this assessment.

• is scalable for other trainings

Underserved youth, like anyone, have personal abilities and dreams which deserved to be acknowledged. If not, how can poorest youth comply with “standards” of “academic evaluation”? How can disadvantaged people engage in their own journey thrive in the 21st century?

We could create a unique opportunity to transform academic selection processes into a coordinated student-centred orientation processes where no one is set-aside or left-behind. Eventually, this assessment tool will be backed by a social business model

How can we help increase skills development for the underserved? And how can we ensure equal access? How to ensure fairness and equity in selection, when social inequality continues to restrict access to qualified training for the  poorest  students ; when academic "selection" hence enhances social  discrimination?

• By providing an adapted "support" to the relevant target
• By leveraging on the talent and willpower of youth, providing an educational program that fits his/her potential?

PN  looks  to  tackle  this  issue  at  the  threshold  of  the  access  to  higher  education, and to constantly improve our initial selection process for all our centers.

Gamification takes the essence of games – attributes such as fun, transparency, competition – and applies these to a range of corporate processes.

Interest in that matter has recently intensified. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with the MacArthur Foundation, made a significant investment to establish the Games Learning and Assessment Lab.

How can we take this approach one step further to obtain reliable results, untainted by social determinism or knowledge?

Indeed, when gamification is applied to the process, it might bring several benefits as it helps in unveiling actual behavior and capabilities of the candidate, in a visual and approachable way

Our impact:

Fair and equitable process to assess students’s talent and capacity to pursue IT studies

Cost efficiency and budget reallocation to have more impact and train more students

Scaled- Enhances PN’s ability to match “talents/potential” with a “broader set of possible training programmes/allows to anticipate skills” (for IT and more)

Beneficiaries of this solution, which delivers a fair and efficient process, are the underprivileged we support, and PN itself.

Other nonprofit, educational stakeholders and the private sector can benefit from this method.

Games and assessments are accessible on devices during the selection process. Data can also be accessed remotely.

Solution works if we can demonstrate that the selected batch has AT LEAST as much IT talent and potentials, as "previous" batches.

This can be done by "measuring" the correlation between Games "assessment" and "1st internship" Supervisor evaluations. - Fair and equitable selection step to assess talent, and student's capacity to pursue IT studies​.

Solution works when we can demonstrate that the selected batch match expected "social criteria" of PN even better than previous batch. Very poor gifted youth are selected, without gender inequality and no social determinsm. - Fair and equitable selection step to assess talent, and student's capacity to pursue IT studies​.

Thanks to digitalized Gamification process, PN's selection process is efficent and faster. PN can reallocate budget to integrate more students and broaden impact. Sharing evidences about Games assessment accuracy, PN can Partner with NPO to achieve more. - Cost efficency +

Enhanced PN’s ability to match "Talents/Potential" with a "Broader set of possible trainings/anticipated skills" (for IT or others).

How can disadvantaged youth learn to prepare their future and thrive in the 21st century?How
do classical tests help anticipate the ability to acquire new skills
throughout life, to adapt, to work flexibly with social, and critical
thinking skills?In
our current fast-changing reality, how can we assess a youth's ability
and potential to enter an ever-evolving professional life, using our
same old academic approach? Traditional academic approaches could even prove counterproductive in regard to our goal of breaking the circle of poverty.
None of our nonprofit partners, facing similar challenges, have yet implemented such a solution.

Passerelles numériques’ overall mission is to break this circle of poverty. We strive to make  sure  that  we  provide  a GATEWAY for  life  through  IT  education to  the  very  individuals who  both  truly  and  deeply need our support (social criteria), and can actually make it to their graduation and above (capacity and talents)

In doing so we seek to better understand how to  identify and acknowledge specific individual capacities,  intelligence, aptitude,  talent  and  potential—areas where  classical  academic  tests  tend  to fall short.

We focus more on how to leverage on talent and willpower rather than on knowledge and grades.

During the pilot stage, the solution will be deployed in the existing framework of our annual selection process in Cambodia (pilot), then in Vietnam and the Philippines. Each year, our selection teams travel to remote areas to inform youth about PN trainings as well as opportunities, and to identify future beneficiaries. The games will be accessible for free on mobile devices, online/via applications. For potential partners, the solution will be shared within a framework where PN’s role and responsibilities are clearly defined. These tools will be offered at affordable rates to nonprofit organisations, and will be appropriately priced for Corporates. 

PN is supported by Corporates, Foundations and Individuals, in France and Asia, who committ to make a difference.

We would dedicate current PN Education Manager and Selection teams to prepare the Pilot. Expected impact on budget can be anticipated and manageable as Selection process is strongly yearly budgeted with important costs. PN regularly mobilizes skilled volunteers and resources (also from our partners companies) to help roll out projects and specific missions.

Besides External relations (ERO) teams are dedicated to fundraising and would continue to raise support to our global mission including this project. 

Liaising with Selection teams and education manager, ERO teams will help identify appropriate partnerships among our current relations, to scale up the project. PN has already strong assets in this area as we partner locally with more than 40 organisations in Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philipines in the Framework of our comprehensive selection process.

Ability to

Accurately define expected "talents" and "skills" for a given professional area/ trainings / opportunities

Accurately design or identify the games and the appropriate sequence of Games (script) than can help assess a number of identified and expected talents/Skills?

Demonstrate the accuracy of this assessment for PN specific targets (underprivileged). Demonstrate that there is no "social" bias in the process.

Budget and cover devices costs

Run process in remote areas with little / slow connection

Evaluate pilot

Demonstrate accuracy to partners

https://www.facebook.com/passerelles.numeriques

https://www.linkedin.com/company/455759

I believe in building bridges. I believe that We make "great things" buy putting together our skills and our vision. PN'DNA stands in this belief that we can all bring support to empower "others" to do and achieve more. We were born this way (Building digital bridges) ; In this specific project, I believe that we can achieve more putting efforts in a better "human-centered" beneficiaries process, considering talents and willpower of the youth we support. Acknowledging they have a voice to be heard, a talent to be recognised. I believe MIT-Solve has great expertise to bring to PN's vision

Some of our partners:

Accenture

Econocom

Thales

Ubisoft

Microsoft (through software donations and funding)

Societe Generale 

Enfants du Mékong 

Fondation Amanjaya

Richad Hua Foundation

JP Morgan

Bank of America Merry Lynch

We have none. We build bridges. The more organisations want to achieve what we do, the better.