Casa Azul Productions Enterprise (CAPE)

Bianca Alvarado is an educator with over 8 years of experience in innovative program design and management, curriculum development, strategic partnership cultivation, and entrepreneurship. She is also a community leader with 7 years of experience engaging in projects related to community development, STEM, and workforce development.

Bianca was raised on both sides of the Tijuana/San Diego Border. She graduated with a degree in international relations from San Diego State University. In 2018, Bianca obtained a masters degree in social innovation from the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego.

Recently, Bianca became the co-founder of La Casa Azul Productions. This project is funded through an Alumni Thematic International Exchange Seminars  (Alumni TIES) small grant from the U.S. Department of State. This project will concentrate on implementing an apprenticeship program where young adults will receive training and education in careers related to technology.

Problem: More than 82% of middle-skill jobs require digital expertise. Moreover, digitally intensive  positions provide higher wages and a career path to higher-skilled jobs. Much of the workforce is left behind, unable financially to relocate for a job or pay for expensive digital skills courses, especially people of color.   

Solution: Casa Azul Production Enterprise (CAPE) provides professional development in digital media and paid microwork opportunities to workers from underinvested communities, regardless of their physical location both in the USA and internationally. Our long-term goal is also to support young adults create businesses in their communities using the digital media skills they have developed. 

Scale: CAPE will continue to expand remunerative professional development opportunities for workers without access to digital skill training for robust labor markets at competitive wages.

With increased capacity, CAPE could expand beyond the US to provide pathways to higher-skilled and higher income work, regardless of location.

Blacks and Hispanics are under-represented in tech: There are half as many African Americans and Hispanics employed in tech. According to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the high tech sector employed a “larger share of whites at 68.5%, Asian Americans at 14%, and only 7.4% of African American, and 8% of Hispanics. Women also are typically less employed in the high tech sector at only 36%.

Digital Skills Gap/Global Unemployment: Many university graduates are underemployed and do not use the skills they acquired in school. Creating more employment and higher paying jobs requires moving workers from lower to higher skilled activities. An estimated 120 million workers worldwide will need to be re-trained due to AI and automation within the next three years. In 2014 workers needed three training days to close a skills gap, today it takes an average of 36 days. Many companies do not have a strategy or resources to address these gaps. 

Global COVID-19: The recent pandemic has accelerated the need to close the digital skills gap with many people being laid off, underemployed, or facing a rapidly shrinking labor market, along with growing at-home and remote work demands.

Solution:

1. Provide free digital skills training through interactive online courses.

2. Provide work to young adults and adults by providing them with digital microwork.

3. Provide support to help them create their own businesses using their new digital media skills.

Addresses: 

CAPE helps close the digital skills gap by providing free resources and flexible work. CAPE invests in its students by supporting them with professional development opportunities that match their interests.

Process: 

The process includes a multi-tiered certification program in which workers can progress through courses on digital media production. These courses are offered in Spanish and English, are currently available through the website, and can be accessed with a computer or mobile device. We are currently reaching out to tech giants to collaborate with them in offering these certificates to students. 

Business Model: 

CAPE is hired by other businesses on projects related to website design, branding, and digital media content creation. We then break the project into smaller components so that we can provide CAPE workers with microwork that they can do according to their skill level.  

CAPE is updating its project management platform to allow for real-time collaboration while maintaining high quality control.

Population: Our target population is young adults and adults, ages 18 to 35, from underinvested communities with a special focus on women. Our priority is a focus on expanding our existing program in the US. The time commitment required increases as participants become more engaged with the program. 

Needs: We actively engage with our community to better understand their needs through active listening and designing custom professional development tracks. 

One example is Paola Sanchez, who lost her job as sales associate during the peak of COVID-19 in May, 2020.  CAPE leveraged the skills that she already mastered as a customer service professional to initiate her training in social media management. 

Another example is Laura from Argentina. We impactfully outsource microwork to her. She has worked with us to produce digital media content for companies in the USA.  She is also helping us to teach the Latin community in the USA by producing an illustration course in Spanish and English. Laura is receiving a fair wage from Casa Azul while enabling Casa Azul to produce high quality content teaching digital media. 

CAPE provides professional development experiences and microwork in digital media and plans to offer full-time jobs as it increases capacity.

The quality of education and training that learners normally receive depends on the availability of the resources in their local community. Our goal to remove barriers by creating digital media training content that is high-quality both in terms of the content and interaction.

By providing free digital skills courses, CAPE can help close the skills gap in a way that is flexible for. These skills, CAPE’s microwork approach, and its focus on providing meaningful professional and career path development opportunities help these workers with the technical and professional skills necessary to be competitive in a rapidly changing job market.

For more than seven years I have been active in my community with a focus on serving the Hispanic youth community. In 2018, I partnered with multiple community members to host conferences and programs for youth. That same year my brother gave his GoPro to my cousin in México with no training provided. In the following months my brother was amazed by how my cousin began recording video without any previous knowledge. My brother spent the following months taking recording equipment such as cameras to Mexico to teach youth about digital production. It was then that we realized that we had to work together but did not know how yet. 

One day I saw one of my students expelled from school in San Diego because he lived in Tijuana. I realized that I wanted to create a program that does not have citizenship or other requirements for students to study. I knew that I wanted to create a program that is accessible to anyone from anywhere, to reduce barriers and make learning accessible. All these experiences and feelings  combined to inspire me to create a program for youth that allowed them to work beyond borders using technology. 

In 2015, I visited México City. While there, I was reminded again of borders, barriers, and divisions that we create daily in our society. From my hotel room I observed the protest for the 43 missing students. In the San Diego/Tijuana international border where I grew up, I saw and heard constant remarks such as “they” vs. “us” which create the borders and divisions. In the protest, I noticed the division between the protesters who were mostly all poor people, and the elite class who were being protected by police officers in front of their business, offices, and hotels. When I see divisions and barriers being drawn by humans, I think of my role in this life to be a person who assists individuals, organizations, and society in breaking down barriers to better opportunities for those who need them. 

Bringing down barriers for young adults and adults to access training in digital media content is my motivation for continuing our work at CAPE. There are many physical, educational, and systematic barriers that people of color face while trying to progress through life. My role at CAPE is to continue to remove those barriers by making education and training accessible.

From 2014 to 2016, as the Binational and Community Affairs Leader for Trash to Paradise, I organized and engaged 150 community members in STEM workshops related to sustainability. I raised and secured funding to develop a prototype for  the project and organized a multifaceted bi-national team in order to execute our project plan. 

From 2016 to 2018 as the founder of Baja Urban, I attracted various marketing outlets for free. We participated in national conferences for Hispanic women, many community events, and have successfully created a unique and creative sales marketing channel to reach our target market. In the Fall of 2018 as the head organizer for the “Me Project” Expo by Gente Bonita. In less than two months I established a partnership with 20 entities that were part of the expo which includes businesses, organizations, foundations, and universities from San Diego and across the border. We also acquired donations of financial resources and other in-kind contributions, including donations of  time and expertise to make this expo possible. 

More recently as the co-founder of Casa Azul Productions, I was able to receive funding to pilot a program involving more than 250 young adults in less than 3 months. This funding enabled us to continue in spite of major challenges that could have caused an end to our programs. These obstacles included having equipment stolen from our center in Tijuana, not having any personal income to pay my bills, and my own learning gaps in technology that I had to overcome.

Growing up in the San Diego International Border came with many challenges. In the context of border life, I had to learn to be flexible, creative, and open to new possibilities. My greatest teacher and guides were my parents, as I saw the sacrifice that they made so that we could make it to school in San Diego. My parents would do everything they could such as losing sleep, working long hours, and taking many risky and dangerous decisions.   

More recently in Casa Azul Productions, our perseverance level has been once again tested through the  challenges that we have overcome. 

One challenge we overcame was when our equipment was stolen. We were in the process of creating a digital media center; however, one day we had all of my brother’s production equipment stolen. He had worked for three years to save up and purchase this equipment. It was a heartbreaking setback. Due to this, we had to cancel a paid live event that we were going to record. This experience allowed us to rethink our business model and made us realize that in order to work with youth from underinvested communities, we needed to gather and teach the youth online. 

In the summer of 2018, the former Social Fabric Initiative(SFI) Program Officer at the Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego stated that I had turned “lemons into lemonade.” This compliment originated when I learned about SFI, and I knew that I had to be part of this program so that I could invite all the youth from the border community. 

Just two weeks before the event launch, I took on the role of Tijuana Project Manager which entailed doing all aspects of the program on my own in Tijuana. In just two weeks, I recruited 10 youth from Chula Vista to join the program and 7 youth from Tijuana to become part of our program. In just less than two months, I established a cross-border partnership with the Federal Mexican Government Institution of Baja California Youth Program, and rehabilitated the community park by engaging the community in the process. 

I organized youth to initiate a community committee in Terrazas del Valle, known to be one of the most violent from Tijuana. I also established a collaboration with a Mexican non-profit organization, to mentor and guide a youth project of rehabilitating their local park.

We are in the process of working with a local organization to become our fiscal sponsor.

Business Model

Our solution is to teach skills and create paid project opportunities for workers within the digital media production industry. We focus our efforts on training individuals who normally lack the infrastructure and access to digital media training. We strive to operate in optimal efficiency by using a supply chain with impact. Operating through Microwork allows us to impact a larger amount of lives in a shorter period. Impact sourcing this digital microwork helps those most in need of our digital media training courses for developing their skills in the industry. By using a microwork model we also are able to pay impact sourced workers for their time and work at a living wage. 

Retraining Workers Model

Many organizations that provide training to young adults try to match them to jobs available locally or in the region. Many of those jobs do not help them grow professionally or be able to perform high level skills in those growing industries. At CAPE, the courses that we are offering focus on career paths for 21st century careers in digital media regardless of their location.

Education & Training Model

We are working towards inclusive economic growth through digital media training.  Our training platform is designed to be simple and user-friendly so young adults and adults, regardless of their educational level, can fully comprehend it and gain new skills in digital media production. We can see now more than ever how remote work and digital media has gained much traction in the workforce.     

The goal of the project is to remove social and financial barriers for young adults and adults to access quality education. We will accomplish our goals by retraining young adults and adults in 21st century careers with a focus on digital media, which includes video production, website design, social media, illustration, and others. We believe that if we make our educational courses accessible, then more young adults will want to get training in digital media skills and thus have more opportunities for higher paying job opportunities and careers. To accomplish this we have three main objectives:

#1 Provide free education and training:

Input: Have digital media young professionals create online courses for other youth. 

Activity:  To do this will provide online courses that youth can access online, we also provide online webinars, and provide supplemental material like ebooks and workbooks for learners.  

Output: Students who have participated in our courses will receive a certificate, get networking opportunities for jobs, and they will receive hands on practice as well as economic assistance. 

Outcome: Users gain new skills in digital media. Students in our course get an assessment after each video so we are monitoring the progress of their learning. For each course, students must receive a minimum of 70% passing score to pass the course level. 

#2 Provide microwork to young adults and adults: 

Input: Program manager breaks projects into small components. 

Activity: The program manager assigns project activities based on learner’s level and works closely with them to support their learning.  

Output: We provide hands-on training for learners to put in practice the skills that they have gained through our online course. 

Outcome:  6 week course for 250 students which include three level courses and hands-on practice through online activities and doing microwork in real life projects. 

#3 Casa Azul provides 21st century training for workers around the world 

Activity: Program leaders maintain knowledge on career trends by building partnerships with business, government, and nonprofit communities.

Output: Casa Azul produces courses that are based on demand in the workforce by collaborating with public and for-profit institutions.

Since we launched our online platform in May 2020, we’ve had 250 participants globally take our self-paced course on website design, offered in both English and Spanish our top users come from the USA and Mexico. To date, our YouTube channel has 100 subscribers. Moreover, our first webinar on Facebook has been watched and replayed over 800 times. We are partnering with universities, nonprofits, and government programs that will host webinars on different digital media topics. The attendance of the live webinars vary from 30 to 150 attendees per session. 

Currently, for every three students that create an account on our platform, one completes the introductory course. At this current rate, we project that by the end of the year will have directly impacted 1,000 students through our self-paced course, and a total of 2,000 through our YouTube channel, live webinars and supplemental course material. Our goal by the 2 year will be to directly impact 5,000 students, our goal by the 3 year will be to have impacted 10,000 students directly, by the end of the fourth year 20,000 students directly, and by the end of the fifth year 30,000 students directly. These estimates are conservative and do not take into consideration paid advertisement on social media and google ads. 

In five years, we expect to serve 30,000 young adults and adults with a focus on the USA who are taking our online courses on education in digital media and being part of our apprenticeship program.

Phase one is complete (September, 2019- July, 2020), accomplished with funding provided by the U.S. State Department. We have surpassed our pilot expectations by creating an online course that is now being accessed by young adults who want to learn about digital media.

Phase two (December, 2020- June, 2021) of this project consists of creating Casa Azul Productions Enterprise, an entity through which we will formally establish our social enterprise. We now know that we can produce the quality that clients seek in digital media production. The profits made from this work allow us to train youth, pay them, and leverage their skills to teach others; generating a complete impact circle. To accomplish this we aim to partner with workforce agencies across the USA, so that workers who are seeking employment can be re-trained in digital media. We also seek to partner with local governments and nonprofits from cities across the USA, so that together we can impact more displaced workers.

Phase three (July, 2021- December, 2022) of this project consists of partnering with a tech giant in the industry of Augmented Reality. As we study the digital media industry we predict it will grow at a massive scale. Because of this growth, much of the digital content, such as 3D modeling, will need to be produced. At CAPE we can do a lot of good in the world by impactfully outsourcing the digital media content of the millions of images that this industry will require.

There are various barriers that we have already overcome to make Casa Azul a reality some of those included having:

● Having our production equipment stolen 

● Using our personal funds to initiate the project

●  Having no local resources such as a computer center to host our workshops

We have been able to overcome some of these barriers by making our program online and accessible through mobile devices and desktops. However, we know that with the support of organizations like yours we will be able to accelerate our growth. We need assistance in the following areas:

Technical barriers. Our free educational and online website is powered by Wordpress. We use multiple third party options to provide hands-on activities, but we would like to offer more functions. As a social enterprise, we want to provide our clients and workers our own platform to manage our digital media service.

Legal barriers. We are in a space that requires knowledge of data usage, protection of information and privacy rights. While we recently created a policy for participants 13 years or younger, we are sure there are far more legal issues we are not aware of and must implement in our program.

Financial barriers. We started this project with zero funds. Bianca, our program leader, used her income from her job to start training youth. Eric, our co-founder, uses his job earnings to buy production equipment. They will continue to do what is necessary to keep the project moving forward.

Technical barriers. Currently, we do not have access to programmers who can effectively develop our program. If we become part of the SOLVE community, we would invite students to participate in helping design our software. Otherwise, we will outsource this to another country where it is more affordable to build.

Legal barriers. There are many privacy laws that make facilitating this work challenging. Being a part of the SOLVE community and working closely with individuals who have knowledge in tech work will give us the opportunity to ask these questions and obtain additional resources.

Financial barriers. We would like to be part of the SOLVE community in order to have access to mentors who have experience in scaling businesses and using systems. However, we are also planning on leveraging local resources as available. 

One of the financial barriers that we face is the ability to provide a stipend to our apprenticeship participants most of which participate in some kind of government assistance program. This means that it would be a financial burden for our learners to have to spend hours away from work to devote to the program. Another financial barrier that we face is the inability to hire full-time staff. We have turned down paid projects because working with multiple contract workers limits our ability to take responsibility for other projects that will require full-time staff. We are currently overcoming these barriers by only offering contract work and only accepting the paid projects that we can manage. 

Last year, we were awarded a mini-grant for Casa Azul Productions’ Apprenticeship Pilot Program funded by Alumni TIES which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by World Learning. Alumni TIES seminars give exchange alumni an opportunity to apply for small grants to implement transformational projects. 

As an alumni of the Gilman Scholarship, Bianca (our program leader) was eligible to compete for this, and the pilot program was awarded $10,000. The theme for last year’s Alumni TIES grant that we were awarded was on, “Stronger American Cities: Closing the Skills Gap and Building Entrepreneurial Ecosystems”.  

Through this program we have been able to receive support to manage the funds that we were awarded. We are currently also receiving support with getting a fiscal sponsor to help us apply for grants. 

We are currently expanding our educational program to reach more youth. Some partnerships that we have started a relationship with and will continue to foster are: 

1. Education Department of Baja California, Mexico: We hosted a workshop for more than 100 students of the University of Technology of Tijuana

2. Sweetwater High School:The school’s STEM program promotes our resources through its portal 

3. The National Girl’s Collaborative Connectory Portal: A comprehensive collection of STEAM opportunities and programs where families can discover local STEAM opportunities for students. Our online program is featured in their portal.

4. JPMorgan Chase’s Advancing Cities Challenge: Partner with the San Diego Economic Development to host interns. 

   
   

CAPE is a hybrid nonprofit, our goal is to train and employ young adults (18-35) and adults (35+) from underinvested communities who are interested in technology specifically in digital media careers like website design, video production, social media management, etc. We will do this by offering fee-based services to small and medium companies on digital content creation.

Our program will not only help workers become professional on digital marketing creation, but also leverage and help them transfer the skills that they have already gained through their job experiences. 

Our solution is gear toward to customer/client bases: the first strategy focuses on young adults that already have some knowledge on social media and digital content creation and we help them to professionalize this skill so that instead of being passive consumers on social media they can become active creators of digital content. 

The second strategy focuses on business clients who struggle to stay updated with technology, for example, business websites as well as social media. Our program can offer those services to them; managing a Facebook account in the USA can cost between 2,500 to 5,000 per month. We will provide this service and other digital media services to small companies and employee young adults in the process.  

By engaging young adults in producing micro-work for digital content projects for businesses, we train young adults and provide them with hands-on experiences in an industry that they are already familiar with.

Our goal is to become a fully functioning social enterprise, relying primarily on the contracted work that we get from small and medium companies on digital content creation and along the way train young adults through digital media microwork. 

Just last year, CAPE generated our first income by working with five local businesses in San Diego, helping them develop their website, branding, and rebranding of a store, as well as video production. Currently, we are starting to produce online curriculum designs, like e-books and workbooks all with young adults who work as independent contractors who would like to work full-time for CAPE.

We will also seek grants from public and private entities who seek to fund programming related to workforce development, STEM, apprenticeship programs, and small business development. In June, 2020 we implemented an online course on website design for college students from a business school in Tijuana which was put together by the Educational Department of Baja California, Mexico. We will continue to seek these kinds of collaborations so that government institutions can support our effort in training the workforce for 21st Century careers. Philanthropic donations will be cultivated as well.

Last year, we were awarded a mini-grant for Casa Azul Productions’ Apprenticeship Pilot Program funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by World Learning. As an alumnus, Bianca (our program leader) was eligible to compete for this, and the pilot program was awarded $10,000.

A breakdown of the $10,000 grant that we were awarded by the U.S. State Department: 

• About 70% to cover the fees of instructors

• 15% to cover the cost of project materials

• 15% remaining to cover the rest of the cost will be spent on creating our next course

The pilot program consisted of the creation of our courses on website design, illustration, and UX design. We also now have a fully established and free platform (website) that allows users from around the world to take our courses. Moreover, when creating these courses we hired and contracted only young-adults to be the instructors of our courses.  

Moreover last year, we started to do digital media projects for customers. This is where Casa Azul Productions Enterprise was created to combine the business aspect with the social aspect of our project. These projects were accomplished through micro-work that we impactfully outsourced to young-adults from the USA, Mexico, South America. We served five business customers on website design, branding creation, rebranding of their store, and other digital media creation projects. Some of the work that we produced for these businesses can be viewed at:  

• www.jessicarosasevents.com 

• www.casafiestajuicebar.com 

• www.treecaresd.com 

We are seeking $250,000 through competitions and grants which will cover the cost of personnel and equipment to expand our program. We hope to be able to get this funding by the end of the year to be able to hire our contract workers full-time. Our plan is to use the funds to hire full-time young adults who can help us with more robust digital media projects, and provide paid-apprenticeships for young-adults who are learning about digital media from underinvested communities.

We estimate that we need $250,000 to scale our project. We expect to use the funds as follow:

Office Supplies and Equipment: $5,000

Software and Platform Development: $7,000

Program Manager: $40,000

Digital Media Production Manager: $41,000

Apprenticeship Program Stipend ($500 per youth for 140 youth ) 2020-2021: 70,000

Apprenticeship Program Stipend ($500 per youth for 164 youth ) 2021-2022: 82,000

Apprenticeship Program Stipend ($500 per youth for 300 youth ) 2022-2023:  subsidized by company and government grants 

Apprenticeship Program Stipend ($500 per youth for 600 youth ) 2023-2024:  subsidized by company and government grants 

Online training for 1,000 young adults (1-year): No Cost

Online training for 5,000 young adults (2-year): No Cost

Online training for 10,000 young adults (3-year): No Cost

Online training for 20,000 young adults (4-year): No Cost

Online training for 30,000 young adults (5-year): No Cost

What we at CAPE seek most out of a partnership with SOLVE is guidance. The journey to becoming scalable and financially sustainable as a social enterprise can be overwhelming and at times isolating. 

Technical support is the most important for us because technology is the core center of our program. We have to stay updated with new technology so that we can bring the best opportunities to retrain workers. We also need technological advice as our program is online so we use online various tools such as the cloud to transfer files, software editors, and other platforms.

Having someone with prior experience in scaling projects, particularly socially impactful projects, can help guide us in the right direction with our vision like Faculty Professor Thomas Kochan whose work focuses on the need to update America's work and employment policies. Alongside the individualized support, we also believe Solve’s solutions can assist us in developing better communication methods with our team members. 

We have also found that in order for our social enterprise to be successful, we must be able to reach out to community workforce and educational programs. This is a key component and would help us in increasing the number of participants in our apprenticeship program.

Finally, we started to do R&D on Augmented Reality through the use of 3D Models. Therefore, we would like to connect with faculty like Professor Sanjay Sarma and professor D. Fox Harrell who both have a background in online education, AR, VR, and/or 3D Modeling.

CAPE is in need of assistance in the following areas:

1. Guidance and access to networking to assemble a board of directors with both nonprofit, business, and technological experience.

2. With professionals who have the capability to code, we can customize our platform and provide more features to our students.

3. Support with scaling our program, currently the co-founder is in charge of all aspects of the project, leaving limited time to do outreach.

4. Creating online content for users requires legal knowledge in regards to the use of data, registration, age limit, etc.

5. Zero funds have been invested in advertising and marketing, requiring us to do more word-of-mouth outreach which can prolong our goals.

6. Other: We have started to do R&D on Augmented Reality through the use of 3D Models and would like to connect with the MIT faculty who is also working on this. 

We would like to partner with research staff from MIT working in workforce development and Tech specifically in workforce development, Digital Media like AR, VR. Their expertise would allow us to more efficiently design courses and programming for a broad array of students through their experience and their research in best practices, case studies  like Faculty Professor Thomas Kochan whose work focuses on the need to update America's work and employment policies. This would help us facilitate innovative opportunities giving jobs to people in underinvested communities or workforce development. 

We have also started to do R&D on Augmented Reality through the use of 3D Models. Therefore, we would like to connect with faculty like Professor Sanjay Sarma and professor D. Fox Harrell who both have a background in online education, AR, VR, and/or 3D Modeling. We want to explore the potential of creating digital images for these new industries using the workforce and talent in underinvested communities through our business model which is offering workers microwork in these industries.

Moreover, we would like to partner with a tech giant (like Amazon, Google, or IBM) to collaborate with them in offering certificates and customize courses to young adults and adults. 

Finally, we would like to continue to partner with universities, government entities, and nonprofits  around the USA to help them retrain the workforce for 21st century careers specifically in digital media.