Potrero Digital

This project is intended as a powerhouse for generating digital tools for people living in areas with low levels of job access and formal learning. We see these tools as the first step to help them become part of the Contemporary Knowledge Society, where the key economic resource is the ability to learn through the digital system.

We are bringing about a cultural change in the communities in which we work: moving from manual to digital trades, as possibilities for job creation and community development. 

Potrero Digital counts with different programs, all of them oriented to digital trades, such as Codig, Digital Marketing, Animation and Video Gaming, E-commerce, IT essentials, etc. Each of them are divided in 2, 3 or 4 stages, aimed to give the best possible learning process for the students. All students must also participate in our courses on Digital English, Soft Skills, Entrepreneurship and Finance.

In Argentina alone, there are 16 million people below poverty line (35% of its population), and talking just of people under 18 years old, 52,6% of them are poor (7 million kids). If we add to this equation the low education standards of the region, the result is a very difficult environment for these people to get a proper job in which they can escape from this reality. Furthermore, researchers confirm that people with poor education and bad jobs raise children with lower possibilities than the parents to escape from wheel. This is the vicious circle that we aim to break down.

Most of people with low resources can only expect to get manual trade type of jobs, whose salaries are the lowest in the market. Meanwhile, the world is shifting faster and faster and the working market for digital trade jobs is growing exponentially. These people are not able to work, or even learn how to do this jobs.

Our target is to create a network of schools, in order to teach digital trades to people living in areas with low standards of job access and formal learning, which will bring better possibilities for them to get a better paid job. Due to the Covid situation, we changed from a face-to-face school, to one that is 100% virtually.

The courses were donated and created according to the needs and capacities of the students by leading companies. Our teachers and tutors are trained by them also. Each company created a course of their core business, so we know that the things we teach are up to date, and we guarantee that the students are learning something that would be extremely useful when looking for a job or working by their own. At the moment, we offer the following courses: Digital Marketing (created by Google), Tech Support (Cisco), E-Commerce (Mercado Libre) and Full Stack Programing (Digital House).

Furthermore, each course counts with 3 other compulsory subjects: Digital English (ICANA), Entrepreneurship and Finances (JP Morgan) and Social and Emotional Abilities. We prepare our students in the best way to help them get a better job, or even better, encourage them to entrepreneur.

Our target population is people form 16 years old onwards, from a low resource environment, looking for a change in their life.

We started our first school in 2018 in La Matanza, Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is one of the poorest districts in the whole province. In the first year there were 180 enrolled students; 75% of them finished the course and 50% got a new job in the following 6 months: some of them started working in companies as community managers, junior programers or in help desks; others started working by themselves in personal projects of even hired by others as website creators. Nowadays we have 9 different schools all around Buenos Aires Province and 2 in Mendoza Province, with 700 students.

Our strategy is to make alliances with private and public organizations that want to support us, in order to get the fundings. In the other side, we ally with social organizations in specific areas were we launch Potrero Digital schools, because they are the ones that know better the people in those neighbourhoods, they understand the needs of the students and they have the strength and capacity to act in that specific geographical place.

Our online school is open for anyone over 16 years old wanting to learn about digital trades, but specially aimed to people with low resources. Our target is to teach, guide and prepare students so they can have the best possible tools to enter in the world of digital jobs. Once the students graduate, they are not only able to start a career in the subject they studied, but they are also strongly prepared to entrepreneur, and even develop their own business, creating new jobs. We also help them during their firsts jobs, with the accompaniment of a mentor.

Potrero Digital is a powerful tool created to break the vicious circle in which people with low resources are immersed. We are focused in employability, not only giving the best digital courses, but also with tutoring, mentoring and the creation of a job network that connects employers and clients with our graduated students.

During the whole pedagogical process, students are assigned to a tutor that will guide them from their first day onwards, not only with technical and specific knowledge, but also in the development of soft skills. In all the courses there are compulsory subjects of socio-economic abilities that will help students to adapt to the labor market.

We are working in the development of an app that will make the perfect match between the clients needs and the ideal student for that particular job, in addition of a mentor: an experienced worker in that specific job that the student was hired for, that will help him/her in their firsts jobs and will accompany him when struggling in any possible task, making these firsts experiences more useful for the students. It will also guarantee the best quality in the work delivered.

The whole process is design to build up a virtuous circle, in which people with just basic knowledge and few possibilities, can study a new (digital) trade, aiming to get better job opportunities and having better life standards, so he can raise children with better education and better possibilities in the future.

Our school network is powered by a video conference platform. The change from a physical school to an online one (triggered by Covid-19) allowed us to expand our capacity, in terms of quantity and geographical localization of the students, in a way we never believed we could achieve so quickly. 

Potrero Digital's plan is to migrate from this platform to a full educational one during the next 6 months, where we can follow students path throughout the hole pedagogic experience. This will also allow a continuous flow of documents and information between students, teachers and tutors, making the learning experience even better and easier. The whole school network will use and be connected through this platform.

On the other end of Potrero Digital, we are now a days working in the development of a job network that will connect employers looking to hire graduated students. We intend to create an app that will be able to connect both ends: employers needs with the best possible fit for that specific job for a fair price for everyone. We plan to launch it in Argentina first, but as the digital jobs can be done entirely from the workers home, we will later escalate to all Latin America, . The idea of changing the scope of these students, from the few job opportunities he had in his neighbourhood and surroundings with a manual trade, against the opportunities he will have of a digital job in all the continent, is just mind blowing.

The main technologies used by Potrero Digital nowadays it's a video conference platform called Webex (donated by Cisco), but in the near future we plan to have an own educational platform that will launch these schools’ network to the entire region.

There are countless  examples of successful online courses and even online university carriers, such as Coursera, EDx, Udemy, University of Phoenix, Harvard and even MIT. Furthermore, during 2020 mostly every country, including Argentina and Potrero Digital itself, had to suspend schools due to Covid and were pushed to adapt to online teaching. If we were able to achieve this in a negative scenario, with little preparation time, imagine the results if we have the correct technology, good training and the time to develop it.

The second main technology that we aim to develop it´s a website/mobile app to connect employers with graduated students, so they can be hired by the first ones. There are many apps that already exist, such as Nubelo, Workana, Freelancer, Indeed, etc, that connect people that want to hire people for a project or specific task, or for any type of job.

We believe that poverty and inequality are vicious circles incredibly hard to break. People with low resources will mostly have poor education, leading to low salaries jobs, creating mediocre living standards in which their kids will be raised and the wheel will continue spinning. We are convinced that good digital education, one that it's updated to today's needs, together with support and guidance will help these people to escape from this reality.

Since the last decades, we are experiencing an accelerated change towards a digital word, but on the other hand, education remains essentially the same, at least for the majority of the people. Just a small and fortunate sector of society can afford a quality teaching in digital and computing knowledges, meanwhile the amount of people needed to work in these jobs increases day by day. 

Potrero Digital breaks this gap, and bring people with low resources closer to digital jobs. Not only do we have the most up-to-date courses, donated by world-class companies and created specially for the needs and capacities of these people, we also teach them Digital English, Digital Literacy, Interpersonal Skills and Finance and Entrepreneurship, making the learning process as complete as possible. Furthermore, we also guide and accompany them throughout the hole pedagogic process and during their firsts jobs, with tutors, mentors and graduated students that lived similar situations. In every school that we open, we create a local network of people of the same area, creating a "safety net" for those who are struggling, elevating the amount of graduated students at the end of every course. 

Once the students graduate, they acquired an incredibly amount of tools, allowing them to begin their journey in the digital working world. They will have the ability to become entrepreneurs, not only breaking the vicious circle mentioned before, but they will also have the capacity to create new jobs and give others the chance of getting a digital and better paid work. 

Only quality capacitation and support will give people the possibility to achieve a better life style and get a promising future for their children.

During 2019, our first hole year of teaching, we had 180 students, divided in two schools. 75% of the students were able to finish and graduate form their courses, and 50% are now working as entrepreneurs or in companies such as ORACLE, ACCENTURE, CISCO, SANTANDER BANK, MEGATLON, to name some.

This year, due to the Covid situation and the quarantine that was imposed by the Argentinian government, in which schools all around the country where suspended, online teaching was applied from one day to the next one. This created a big change to our plans, so we quickly adapted to the new paradigm. With the help of our partners, we were able to teach all our courses via a video conference platform, allowing us to increase our maximum students limit. Just in 2020, we opened 9 new schools: 7 in Buenos Aires City and Province, and 2 in Mendoza Province, with a total of 700 students that are now a days taking the different courses.

We are currently working to open by the end of this an online school in Brazil, with a target of 1500 students counting both countries. The goal for 2021 is to have schools in the whole region, from Mexico to Argentina, with 4000 students. 

We will continue growing and teaching digital trades, always taking into account the percentage of completion of the course and employability of graduates.

We see ourselves teaching digital and technological trades in all Latin American region with online and also presential schools, depending on the needs of each vulnerable community, with more than 15,000 students. We are working hard to build a cooperative system, in which graduated students are not only able to work effectively for themselves or others, but also they can become teachers, tutors or mentos in Potrero Digital's schools, helping the ones coming after them.

New courses and trades will be taught to the students, always taking care of the capacity and needs of our students, searching the best possible tools to give to them. 

There are two facts, that convinced, show the power that Potrero Digital has to change peoples lives in the future: the first one is that we live in a world that is more connected than never in history before. The second one is that most digital or technological jobs can be done remotely, thanks to communication technologies (these are the jobs that we train the students for). If we add this to facts together, the result is our vision for the future: Potrero Digital's graduate students will not be limited to the geographical region where they live in to get a good job, the whole world will be the limit. 

At the moment, we have three big barriers: the first one is the amount of vulnerable people in need of hardware or connectivity to allow them access Potrero Digital's online courses. 

The second one is the minimal amount of knowledge that students need to have in order to take maximum benefits from the course. We saw people entering our programs with few knowledge, struggling very hard with the subjects. Many of them dropped off the courses, creating a feeling of frustration and failure that will make them never try to learn these digital trades again. 

The last one is the the capacity of the working market in Argentina, which now a days is extremely contracted due to the economical crisis that we are suffering, stimulated by the Covid. 

None of the barriers mentioned before are big enough, not even close, to make us stop on what we are doing. 

For our first barrier: shortage of hardware and connectivity, we depend on public and private donations. In order to escalate Potrero Digital, we need to get more people involved.

For the second barrier, we encourage people to take an introductory course so they can take all the possible advantage of the teachings. Nowadays we are developing, together with public and private associations in the communities where we have schools, introductory courses for people with no knowledge in digital subjects. 

Finally, for our last barrier, we think that all crisis are moments of opportunities. We saw it ourselves, with the changes that the Covid situation brought and the expansion for us that this meant. We strongly encourage our students to become entrepreneurs, and start their own business, or apply the knowledges they learn in an existing project. Digital trades, and specially e-commerce, are booming now a days, and it is a matter of time that the needs for workers of this type will become scarce. 

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The team is made up by: 20 full-time employers of Fundación Compromiso, the NGO that leads Potrero Digital's Proyect + 22 part-time employers working in the geographical place where the 11 schools are based + 25 teachers and tutors for those 11 schools, who work per hours, depending the amount of courses/students they are assigned to + 5 contractors for different services we hire when needed, such as content creation, legal issues, etc.

Fundación Compromiso (FC) is the vehicle that channels opportunities in the digital economy for PD students by fostering their endeavors. It contacts  them with the big corporations and the chains of providers so they can deliver digital services with the warranty of FC. 

Drawing upon the philosophy of management specialist Peter Drucker, FC developed a new model of training and support for social sector organizations, corporations and Public institutions, mainly in Argentina but also in Latin America and Spain. FC has been identified as one of the 3 most trusted NGOs in Argentina by 'Business in the Community' in 2004.

FC has been working and delivering first class services for the last 26 years. 'Mission Focused', 'Customer Centered', 'Values Based', 'Results Oriented and 'Demographic Driven' have been our motto and our distinctive way of performing. The great and small social organizations, corporations and public organizations that have been working with us from the very beginning, are still our customers and partners.

We have developed a great capacity to articulate with all different members and organizations from our Society, such as Cooperativa La Juanita (co-creator of the first PD School in La Matanza) and SFFO (based in Morón). They both bear an extensive background and experience in the development of productive endeavors that promote social integration through training and job creation. 

Finally, we are associated with huge companies, who believe in us and support us through the donation of digital courses, such as Google, JP Morgan and Mercado Libre, among others.

Potrero Digital has several partner organizations that help us achieve our goal in different ways:

- Companies that created and donated the courses we teach: Google, Cisco, Mercado Libre, Da Vinci, Digital House, ICANA and JP Morgan.

- Scholarship donating Companies:: JP Morgan, Mecenazgo, Banco Santander, Argencon, Fundación Banco Nación Argentina and US Embassy. 

- Equipment donating Companies: Ernst and Young, New San, Banco Provincia and Ieric

- Professional Services donating Companies: Identia PR, Estudio Beccar Varela and Estudio Marval O'farrel.

Potrero Digital is targeted to youth and middle age people from vulnerable socio-economic situacion. We provide them with updated digital and technological knowledge so they can apply for better jobs, or they can become entrepreneurs in the digital world. Our courses are 100% online, but they can also be blended (online and face-to-face), depending on each communities' needs.  In addition, we are developing a network, that in the future is planned to become an app, that connects employers and entrepreneurs with graduated students. A fee will be charged to any employer hiring a Potrero Digital student, that will be used to make the business model sustentable. 

After graduating from Potrero Digital, we continue with the follow up of the students, with a mentoring program during their first jobs, to help them adapt as best as possible to this new working world. It's important to take into account that we are preparing people for jobs that are currently highly required, since few people have access to the education required and it's most of the times very expensive. 

It will take some years before we can rely 100% on this income, so meantime we depend on social fundings provided by public and private investors that want to support these peoples education.

In order to achieve the scalability of Potrero Digital program, the Digital Platform and Virtual Campus plataforma.potrerodigital.org were created, which will allow the development of face-to-face / virtual courses on all tracks (blended learning) and also generate subdomains to the new schools. The platform is a fundamental tool that has different functionalities for students, teachers and school coordinators.

Progress will be made in the implementation of a financing strategy through individual donors in order to achieve a broad, loyal and constantly growing individual donor base with the objective of raising funds and financing Potrero Digital program. Progress will also be made with a financing strategy through large donors and alliances with other companies to find additional resources.

On the other hand, the idea is to advance in each of the digital trades schools in the creation of a digital work cooperative, where students can offer different digital services to companies (such as community manager
hours, programming hours, creation of websites, etc.). At the same time, the organization will keep a percentage of the income earned, which will be reinvested in each Potrero Digital. 

Potrero Digital's main objective is to give free courses of digital and technological trades to vulnerable socio-economic populations. We depend on private and/or public organization's donations to pay teachers and tutors salaries, as well as funds to pay the background structure built for that specific online school, such as communication, guidance and support given to the students.

Furthermore, there are plenty of students that want to study at Potrero Digital, but they, or their family, don't have a computer/cell phones, or have no access to internet. We have donors that take care of these people, and others that pay for the connectivity of students, but the growth that we are looking for, we need to expand our capacity of facilitating these needs to our students.

Finally, the expansion to new geographical places for new schools demands an extra amount of money, to pay the needed structure to give the best pedagogic experience for the students.

Solution technology: it's important to have the best available technology in terms of educational platforms, communication and networking, in order to give the best schooling experience, tutoring/guidance and to facilitate the connection between the graduated students to de working market.

Funding and revenue model: Compromiso has more than 25 years of experience in the NGO world, depending on 3rd parties donations, added to other incomes that we generate, but it is always good to be in contact with experts with new ideas and innovations.

Marketing, media and exposure: it is very important to get us known in other countries, where we haven't worked in before, and where we need to build trust in order to expand our digital school network. Good communication with the society will bring more fundings, and more opportunities to keep helping people.

We strongly believe that the only possible way to achieve our goals is to cooperate between different organizations. Potrero Digital's school network is builded with the help  of different organizations, public and private, such as technology companies that donated the courses we teach students, or donated computers and cell phones; district governments that support scholarships for students in their area; social organizations that work in the geographical places where online school are "based", connecting people from their neighborhoods with Potrero Digital, giving support to the students; and many other companies that donate money, professional services and time to this project. 

However, beyond the network that we already have articulated, we need to get more people and organizations involved: first of all, to continue growing in areas where we currently have no reach, and also, to expand our course base that we provide, and be able to offer a much broader spectrum of knowledge. For these reasons, we reckon that MIT would be a perfect partner for us: there are countless courses that the MIT can develope and we can teach to people.

Argentina is the country of the region that hosts the most refugees. Not only people from Latin American countries, such as Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti, Cuba (and many others), but also from the entire world like Siria, Nigiria, Ghana and Ukraine came to Argentina looking for a place to escape from their realities. It is estimated that more than 50% of all refugees in the world are kids, that will probably have a very basic education.

We are a school that teaches digital trades to vulnerable people. Who is more vulnerable than a person from a foreign country escaping from war, dictatorships or poverty scenarios? 

With the money of this prize, Potrero Digital will include as many refugees as possible to our courses, assisting them with computers, cell phones, connectivity and specialized tutors to ensure the best possible pedagogical process for them. We will also help them during their firsts jobs with propper mentoring. With this specific funding, we estimate that between 200 and 400 refugees can enter Potrero's Digital program per year.

65% of all our students are women. They are the most vulnerable sector of the society, because of many well known issues: the have worst salaries, they are the ones that take care of their children, they have access to a reduced number of type of jobs, employers refuse to hire them since they are afraid they can get pregnant, and many other issues.

In this current scenario, they are mostly doomed to work more than 8 hours a day in a manual trade, such us textile industry, with the worst working conditions, including a very cheap salary, added to the work of raising her children.

We work to give these women the tools to enter to the digital industry, that it's mostly dominated by men work in, with better salaries, better working conditions and a brighter future. Potrero Digital aims to reduce the gap of inequality, not only between vulnerable people and educated people, but also between men and women.

If we won this prize, we will open a Potrero Digital School only for women, based, most probably, in Buenos Aires Province, where most of the vulnerable women are found. This will include specific tutoring for them, adapted subjects, if needed, and the development of a working network focused on women's needs, created to help them get an easier access to the digital working world

Potrero Digital's mission is to address unemployment amongst youths on the South American region by providing them with skills that will make them fit for a wide range of digital careers .These careers include website development, ecommerce, content curation, coding, video games and animation, amongst many others.

We believe our solution enables working-age adults to build the skills and resources they need to access well-paying jobs in a changing marketplace and thus qualifies us for the GM Prize on Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship.

We will use the GM Prize on Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship to  open new schools in different geographical areas to give digital skills to mare people.

Potrero Digital is a network of digital trade schools. We teach people, from 16 years old onwards, the most updated and useful knowledge so they can get an entry level to very well paid jobs, such as coding, programing, e-commerce,digital marketing, just to name some. 

Our 100% online platform allow us to take our schools to any part of the world. For the moment we only have spanish courses and teachers, but it is not a hard task to translate them. We just need a local organization that wants to install a Potrero Digital School in their area, that will help us get the necessary resources such as teachers (that we will later prepare), tutors that will guide the students, and many other backgrounds issues that only local organizations have the knowledge.

We strongly believe that an education that prepares people for good jobs or entrepreneurs, is the best possible way to take away people form vulnerable situations.