Cocreacion project

Cocreación project is aiming to increase the employability of Latin Americans and the competitiveness of their products and services. The mechanism to make this possible is through the education in future skills and entepreneurship facilitate access to markets and finance.  Many people around the World are facing the situation to not be able to get a job, the demand is different to the offer and the competitiveness of many countries is pretty low specially in developing countries. Providing the right tools, mindset and guideline there are big positive changes ahead.

The region of Latin America tends to have greater inequality than the rest of the world and it is therefore believed that efforts should be focused on the growth of the region’s 57 million SMEs. Countries, like Nicaragua, depend primarily on commodities, low added value, and do not develop business sophistication and innovation as much as necessary. Therefore, a fast way to improve this gap is by supporting female entrepreneurship. Women in Nicaragua, as in the rest of Latin America, represent 50% of the population. By supporting female entrepreneurship, the global economy will increase of approximately 11% of global growth (INCAE Business School, 2017, p.5).

Female entrepreneurs in Nicaragua stated their main challenges are funding, education, specialized technological skills, and mentorship. Simultaneously, due to social and political unrest since April 2018 (World Bank, 2019), they are facing particular problems, such as an increase in unemployment, a decrease in both consumer and business confidence (M.Barrera, personal communication, May 12, 2019).

Moreover, according to the Nicaraguan Business Women Network the current political situation led them to reinvent their business, migrate online, and reduce their costs (Martínez, 2019).

Casa de la Cocreación project will be incharge of implementing a 12 months or more project to teach young women in Nicaragua to code and get a job locally or remote. Microverse our U.S partner, is an online school for remote software developers and job placements for their students. Microverse will support us teaching to code and with the job search for our beneficiaries. 

The project will use the funds to prepare the call, to pay the fees to Microverse for the following courses: HTML, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, React and Redux, Algorithm and Data Structures and help them through their career preparation. Through education program the students will be in a job-hunting process and encourage to create or improve an own project based on the skills learned counting with the coaching by the project lead. After the program, the students will be asked to be part of an alumni community which will support the spread of this program through promotion or teaching. 

The beneficiaries will be young women from Managua, between 18-35 years old with some knowledge or interest in ICT and with a current business idea or willing to have one. During the project I will coach them regularly about their career preparation or any support their need.

The project will provide a scholarship for a year or more, get a job at the national or international level. Beside this, the program will allow them to experience self-discipline, working with a multicultural staff, open their professional horizon, put in practice their English, and get a better quality of life.

My solution is alligned to the Challenge goals as its aim is to face one of the biggest problem in developing countries which is poverty and marginalization of groups. Through giving future skills to women in Nicaragua they can make a significant change expanding their options and mostly finally get a job or start their businesses. This solution can also be connected to the Learning for girls & women as consist partly in ICT education.

Cocreacion project solution is unique due to we are aiming to connect enterpreneurs with the demanded skills in the market and global network and resources till they get a job. Most of the projects provide the skills however not ensuring a job or funding for a project. 

It is an online school for remote software developers that  provide a rigorous and supportive peer-to-peer learning environment. Students learn through more than 1,000 hours of remote pair programming and real-time collaboration. 

This is one of our partners. However, we are looking for more with similar profile.

https://support.microverse.org/en/articles/2792991-press-kit

We believe this project can have a big impact in Nicaragua, because there is a need of it, there is no offer of such ICT program courses there and we believe in the experience and commitment of the project partners and us as project lead which results speaks for itself. Moreover, the selected candidates must be committed beneficiaries during and after the project to accomplish the goal to get them a job and a living, but also to diffuse after concluding their experience and replicate in Nicaragua and if is possible in other developing countries.

Current number: 0

One year: 10

Five years: 100

The goals impact will be through replication, the idea is to extend this project from one local city to another local city in the country and then to the rest of countries in the region, increasing at the same time the network that can support the growth and our goal of employability and business creation.

Financial: I am in an early stage looking for funding and mentors.

Technical: We would like to have the offer in different languages.

Management: This is not my main work is a personal project which I try to develop paralell to my work.

Legal: I am not an organization, so that´s limiting my chances.

I am already trying to apply for a grant and investing more time.

Part-time

Project lead: 1

Project co-lead: 1

Contractors: 3

My team is well positioned to deliver this solution due to we all count with the expertise required. We have skills in: Project Management, Research, Networking, Innovation, Enterpreneurship, ICT education, Job Market and Social Impact.

Project Partner:

Innovaction & Numu Academy

Role:

To support with the program call in Nicaragua.

To facilitate access to the Coworking space to the beneficiaries.

To communicate and coordinate with the project partners.

Project Partner:

Microverse

Role:

To communicate and coordinate with the beneficiaries, project partners and project leads about the setting up and progress of the courses.

The value for our beneficiaries is the possibility to get a grant, a job and increase their salary probably  two times more from the current one if they have it.

The idea is to start with grants and donations. However in the future also selling products or services and raising investment capital.

If my solution is selected for is possible to get more network, specially we would like to count with a mentor, advisors and fundings. My interest is to try it out and validate this solution and see how we can growth and even provide other solutions.

As we are in starting point, this is one of the solution I propose. However, I have more and would like to know which is the best way to do it, which is the legal figure more appropiate?, what are the funding I should consider or how to get revenue from it?, therefore I consider this type of partners.

MIT initiatives: to develop software and projects in Latin America

Microsoft: for sponsorship in Central America

Coding schools: to stablish in Latin America a program for girls & women

Women organizations: to develop project in Latin America

Cisco: to develop project in Latin America/ sponsorship

Gates Foundation : to develop project in Latin America

Any ICT company or start ups that would like to support Latin America, youth, children and refugees in ICT education, employability and health.