Urban Indigenous Futures: Reimagined

Our solution will launch a community of leaders/providers working directly with the Central NM Workforce Board (MR-COG) and (Workforce Connection of Central New Mexico (WCCNM) to leverage WIOA funding and training for Urban Natives.  This training will lead to pathways that will ensure economic mobility and living wages for the many Urban Natives left out of the workforce. 

Our work will encompass leaders from economic development, local government, key Native serving community partners and the Central NM Workforce Board system in a significant way to provide Urban Natives (target ages 16-35) funding and community support.  We will be leveraging DOL funding and work with the Central NM workforce board, ensuring WIOA funding is made possible to this population and this program. The program will invest in Native entrepreneurism and innovation, as well as providing training for in-demand skills in pathways including information technology (IT) occupations.  This work leverages the community of almost 500 New Mexico indigenous learners already engaged with Tallo.com's platform for education and workforce. This innovation has strong potential to scale via other New Mexico workforce boards, and nationally.

Native Americans have inhabited New Mexico for over 13,000 years. New Mexico ranks as the 5th state in the Nation with the highest population of indigenous populations. In Albuquerque, Native Americans comprise 4% of the population, but make up 44% of the city’s homeless population.  Urban Natives are far from their homeland and remain disconnected from training and up-skilling that can positively impact their futures.  In 2017-2018, Innovate+Educate was commissioned by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to explore issues Natives were facing in employment pathways. Key problems identified included 1) lack of knowledge of how to gain skills; 2) lack of childcare for working families; 3) lack of connection to workforce (WIOA) skills-training and support; 4) need for more paid online resources for training and up-skilling.

And, the most significant key problem identified was a lack of trust amongst the community for the services they did know about. The Native community trusts its own, and solutions must be led and distributed throughout by Native people. Without this, trust will not exist in the community.  Our solution places top Native leaders and organization at the center of the work, ensuring a safe place to reimagine their own future. 

COVID-19 has impacted unemployment in the native community similar to all communities.  But, COVID-19 has also allowed Central NM to come together with recommended WIOA Training components that address the above problems identified.  

Our solution leverages the recently funded Economic Recovery Support provided to the Central NM Workforce entity to advance Entrepreneurship Training Components. Our solution will target these funds for the Indigenous community.  This solution will provide entrepreneurship training funds via WIOA funding, developing the next generation of Native entrepreneurs and innovators.  

Our solution includes a crucial component of technology to reach the indigenous community - an education and workforce platform provided by Tallo.com, already serving 500+ Native Youth and young adults in New Mexico.  Tallo will be the lead technology partner, working with Innovate+Educate Native lead, Dr. Maggie George, to ensure we reach, up-skill and successfully prepare at least 100 Native Youth and Young Adults across Central New Mexico for their new futures.

Our solution will include the National Indian Youth Council, the American Indian Chamber of Commerce, the NM Department of Indian Education, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, New Mexico Community Capital, the Kellogg Foundation and other key partners we have worked with previously. 

Our target population is Native youth and young adults in Central NM ages 16-35.  In Urban regions, they are often overlooked and disenfranchised from offerings and opportunities in Urban cities.  Understanding their needs is critical in engaging them around our solution.  Through our work and roundtables (funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation) in 2016-2018 and through the work of the National Indian Youth Council, we found that young adults want to:

• Further develop their academic, occupational and literacy skills;
• Become more prepared and competitive in the workforce;
• Attain personal/economic self-sufficiency
• Enter, re-enter, or improve employment

Key to the solution is curating the resources via the Tallo platform that will ensure these needs are addressed.  With this work, our target population will have opportunities for access to all of the above components. In addition, our solution will ensure mentoring, coaching and engagement via a peer mentor for reimagining their pathways on the Tallo Community. This may be an Urban Indian entrepreneur, business executive, educator, or other young adult.  The importance of like-minded and a cultural fit for our population is critical to success.  Development of an entrepreneur/innovator "takes a village", and this solution will provide that for our target population. 

Alignment is of course critical, and we spent considerable time as a team to ensure we alignment to the key components of the challenge:

Our target population (indigenous populations) was specifically called out in the Challenge. 

Innovation and Entrepreneurship was specifically called out in the Challenge. 

Technology components and the use of technology was specifically called out in the Challenge.

Engaging with and ensuring partnership from the Workforce board/Workforce system was specifically called out in the Challenge.

The ability to gain knowledge and skills for jobs and livelihood was specifically called out in the challenge. 

We are aligned!

We plan to leverage the Tallo.com platform and Tallo Community and expand the solution to Arizona, and Oklahoma within 2 years.  Tallo serves over 6800 indigenous youth and young adults currently, including over 500 in New Mexico and Arizona and almost 1000 in Oklahoma.   To date, we have been unable to identify a national approach for a scalable program to ensure the most innovative solutions for indigenous young adults to have equitable access to workforce and learning solutions.  If this grant is funded, we believe that this initiative can scale rapidly.  We have commitments from our NM U.S. Senators/Congressional leadership to work on a New Mexico-led approach that could scale.  We have national partnerships with the Indian Youth Council, The American Indian Chamber of Commerce, and other organizations that would help us scale this work.  Key to scaling is leveraging our relationships with State and Regional workforce boards that will provide WIOA training funds.  We have expertise in this area, after working for over a decade with Workforce and WIOA funding.   This project will focus on a trifecta of federal workforce funding, community college and short term training and industry partnerships to ensure success. 

Full Time Staff - One

Part Time Staff - Three

Contractors - TBD

We are spending more time researching and working with other leaders across the Country around DE&I.  We are working with Rural Sourcing, Inc., who has launched a DE&I Initiative that will provide programmatic shifts for ensuring a diverse, equitable and inclusive organization.  This includes the way we search for talent, the requirements for that talent, and ensuring that the population we are serving is led by a diverse team. 

New Mexico is one of the largest majority/minority States in the nation, and we commit to continuing our work in building diverse, equitable teams of age, race, and educational attainment.

Our solution is unique in multiple ways - including the population we will serve - which is Urban Indigenous populations.  This population continues to remain at-risk, especially post COVID-19.  The lack of the community's availability to resources - with a trusted team of leaders - has contributed to this population being left out of skilling and training opportunities that will lead to good jobs.  This is the first solution that attempts to create a unified voice of leaders we have met throughout New Mexico previously in our work we did with the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to identify Native leaders, bringing the critical issues to the forefront, and identifying solutions that could be addressed to serve indigenous populations.

New Mexico has a significant percentage of indigenous communities, including the Navajo Nation.  COVID-19 has presented an opportunity of need and necessity to pilot this program, scale it, and see successful outcomes for the community. 

Tallo.com is not a new business model, but bringing the model and platform to an indigenous community broadly is a new solution.   Key to reaching the population and ensuring scale is made possible by the Tallo.com platform and technologies. Tallo.com provides a digital platform and app with over 1.5 million users that connects talent with education and career opportunities.  The platform allows talent to overcome traditional boundaries such as geographic and socioeconomic circumstances while developing and showcasing their skills, allowing them to be discovered by colleges and companies. The platform has gained users in all 50 state and has made over 180,000 connections for their talent users in 2019 and 80,000 in 2020 alone. Over the past year, Tallo has been cited by a report commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Business Insider, and the Office of the White House as a pioneer in the career navigation process, unlocking real career avenues for determined talent ready to enter the workforce.Tallo’s virtual workforce platform provides a means for talent and talent seekers to overcome traditional geographic and socioeconomic boundaries and assists in the development, retention, res-killing, and attraction of talent. Tallo provides the only end-to-end workforce talent solution based on an approach of combining science, data analytics, and digital technology.

Link to Tallo Overview: 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markcperna/2020/10/28/hey-gen-z-this-is-how-to-get-yourself-hired/?sh=2bbb57ee6d6d

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markcperna/2020/10/14/recruiting-top-gen-z-talent-in-a-post-pandemic-world/#2125d3cb7d

https://www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/12702545-surpassing-one-million-users-tallo-surges-to-become-leading-student-career-connection-platform/all

"Tallo’s virtual workforce platform provides a means for talent and talent seekers to overcome traditional geographic and socioeconomic boundaries and assists in the development, retention, reskilling, and attraction of talent. Tallo provides the only end-to-end workforce talent solution based on an approach of combining science, data analytics, and digital technology. Over one million Tallo users showcase their skills and accomplishments, connect with post-secondary institutions and companies, and have access to customized career pathways and financial assistance guidance. In addition, our solution will ensure mentoring, coaching and career advice based on real world experience via a peer mentor community for guiding talent pathways (traditional and nontraditional) on Tallo. Tallo users represent more than 27,000 high schools, 4,000 colleges, hundreds of companies, and governmental entities. Tallo also serves a diverse community of users, including 250,000 Black and Latino/Hispanic students and young professionals. Over the past year, Tallo has been cited by a report commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Forbes, Business Insider, and the Office of the White House as a pioneer in the career navigation process, unlocking real career avenues for determined talent ready to enter the workforce. "

For more information about Tallo, visit www.tallo.com.

For more information about Innovate Educate visit www.innovate-educate.org

Our theory of change leverages the amazing resources/assets that we have accumulated over the past decade with our work of I+E and Tallo.com and partners the people and implementation (I+E) with the platform and technology (Tallo.com) for scale. 

Activities (for the first pilot in ABQ) include :

1. Convene roundtables with key stakeholders for the program including workforce board leaders, community college leaders, Native American Leadership, and CBOs working across ABQ with Indigenous populations

2. Engage employers in the initiative early on, using the Tallo, Inc. Competency CalculatorTM tools to identify the skills they need for their jobs.

3. Engage indigenous youth in roundtables to identify their career interests, their foundational skills (CoreScoreTM), and their knowledge of community resources to ensure we map them to their areas of interest and needs. 

Outputs: 

1. Youth/Young Adults gain competencies, skills, access to training, employment

2. Companies adopt processes for working with the workforce partners and hiring indigenous candidates in their pipeline - a toolkit for DE&I

3. A model for scale has been developed to go to Oklahoma and Arizona

Short Term Outcomes:

1. Model has been defined and partners brought to the table due to this funding/project

2. A city-wide project launched and specifically focused on Indigenous young adults' futures

3. Companies demonstrate willingness to review their hiring policies and thresholds for increasing talent pool of indigenous populations.

4. A shift in understanding of the importance of community initiative around the future of WORKING and LEARNING for indigenous urban community.

Long term outcomes:

1. Tallo, Inc. creates a community that mentors, manages, trains others to expand the work into Arizona, Oklahoma (in two years) and even beyond over the next 3-5 years.

2. The work, led by Indigenous, for indigenous people, becomes a model that ensures equity, diversity and inclusion for workforce, community colleges, cities, and companies big and small.

3. A "Urban Workforce: Reimagined" Toolkit for scaling to others via Tallo, Inc.

The goals are to scale to at least Arizona and Oklahoma by the end of 2022 (2 years).  2021 will focus primarily on the theory of change described above in Albuquerque, then scaled via the Tallo, Inc. platform and relationships in place. 

The major goal is to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion is front and center for the urban indigenous populations across the US due to the program and outcomes. 

Through our work and research for over a decade, we know what it takes: 

Committed People

Committed Leadership

Connections for whom you are serving

Community buy-in

Federal and State policy leadership

Marketing and Communications

Tools that ensure skills based hiring and training (Tallo, Inc.)

Platform for scale

Our goal is for this to be a great example of the future of work and learn within five years. 

Barriers are always there, as we have done this work and understand what it takes. Obviously, if this is funded and moves ahead with MIT Solve, we will immediately seek matching funding from other foundations/partners to ensure we have the right leadership and resources in place.  That reduces the barrier to funding and scale.

The largest barrier for this specific work is cultural.  We know this.  We have worked with native populations and the lack of trust is there for non-native leaders.  They have been taken advantage of many times, and the trust must be there.  Therefore, any leaders we bring in as consultants or team members will be of Native American descent.  Establishing a nonprofit that will lead this work under I+E as the fiscal agent will ensure a level of trust for the organization and the mission.  Dr. Maggie George will be CEO of the organization. 

We will work with the community to ensure that we address barriers we hear through our roundtables first and foremost.  We will reach out to other experts in the space, Including the Kellogg foundation to understand other barriers they have identified in New Mexico.   Key to overcoming barriers is bringing in indigenous leaders, CBOS, and communities that are working across the space. 

Once funded, we will reach out to SOLVE, Morgridge Family Foundation, New Profit and other Challenge partner communities to ensure a full understanding of each partner and where we can leverage their expertise in the work ahead.  We believe collaboration and leveraging knowledge of prior work is critical for the project. 

We have not worked on a project specifically focused on Urban Indigenous populations that collected key data.  The below are data points we will collect:

Age
Location (where currently living)
Employed/NonEmployed/Underemployed
Single Family (parent)
Language of choice
Race/Ethnicity
Disability
Veteran
Educational Attainment
Prior Work Experience
Foundational Employability Skills (assessed via our skill-based assessment)
Career Interest 

We will also want to collect data from our roundtables and meetings with key stakeholders to inform the project.  This could be prior successes, failures, key learnings from previous work in the space, and much more.   We also want to ensure a privacy of the community around data they do not want shared.  We do hope to collect data around transportation and childcare, which we know are key factors for the indigenous population across New Mexico.

Our proposal is a combined for profit/not for profit collaborative.  

The nonprofit is Innovate+Educate, partnered with for profit technology partner, Tallo, Inc. 

Tallo now owns all technologies previously built by Innovate+Educate, and we are partnered to scale those tools, including our core employability assessment, competency calculator, and skills parser tool for industry/businesses. 

We have the experience to deliver.  We have run over $20,000,000 in grants over the past decade.  Dr. George has the experience in her previous role as President of a Native college, Dine College (NM and Arizona).  Dr. George also consults with Achieving the Dream as a leadership coach to 15 tribal colleges across the U.S. 

Our team has worked for over a decade with low income populations and workforce boards.  Our entire decade has been spent developing tools and strategies to ensure underrepresented have upward mobility and access/equity for learning and work. 

We have listed many.  We work with hundreds of national organizations, including NAWB.org.   Due to our national breadth, our partnerships are in the thousands, including over fifty workforce boards, 50 foundations, 150 colleges, and hundreds of nonprofit organizations in the workforce space. 

We have a business model that has been built by our Board of Directors and we are happy to share this if we move forward.  It is based on the Social Business Model Canvas, but is our own IP, developed in 2018.

We leverage a Collective Action Work Plan that was developed by our board in 2018, and ensure each project has laid out outcomes and measurements that can be well tracked. 

We have been trained as a team to work with Results Based AccountabilityTM.  RBA ensures successful project management, deliverables and outcomes with the end result in mind.  More can be found here at 

http://raguide.org/

RBA - Ensuring Equitable Outcomes

We will continue to secure funding and create a business model with Tallo, Inc. that will ensure scale.   We work with over 20 foundations, and Tallo works with over 50 corporate partners that will be interested in not only providing resources but also hiring this talent and including this work in their own talent sourcing.   Tallo, Inc. has a business model, and with over 1Million current learners, a future business model will be achievable for this work. 

We continue to be funded by WIOA funding, grant funding, contracts aand other sources with our work. Tallo, Inc. has a business model that generates revenue specifically for the services they provide to organizations and businesses/industry.   We can provide any funding details as we move ahead, but do not want to share all details here since it will be publicly viewable. 

We will seek to raise another $500,000 within six months for the NM pilot from grant and funding sources.  We know that this is achievable due to our relationship(s) with New Mexico workforce leaders and funders, and we believe we have identified the partners that would fund this.  The funding of this program is critical to get the matching funds.

Fixed Costs/Overhead (annual)

Rent - provided inkind by I+E

Utilities and Other Costs - $2000

Accounting/Bookkeeping - provided in-kind by I+E

Legal Insurance $1000

Technology Platform, Project Management Team and Delivery $50,000

Advertising and Marketing $10,000

Training Matching Funds (above WIOA funded) $15,000

Salaries 1 Fulltime FTE provided by grant $65,000

$143,000

Other Variable Costs TBD

We are applying to the Reimagining pathways to Employment in the US Challenge as we see it is of great benefit to scale the partnership of Tallo, Inc. and Innovate+Educate, bringing together our expertise across learning and workforce to go to scale.  Tallo brings the technology that is so critical to scale.  This application lays the groundwork for potentially reaching many indigenous young people in ways never attainable before. 

We also believe in the expertise of the partners leading this Challenge.  It is immensely valuable to our vision for this work. The expertise across the SOLVE partnerships will help us in multiple ways, from business solutions, to project planning, to connecting with other Challenge teams that are working with Workforce Boards as well.  We would like to see a workforce advisory board across all teams, and involve NAWB.org as a leader of that advisory board to ensure all workforce boards are aware of the work happening.  We know that silos across WDBs remains an issue, and a community of practice could be very beneficial for barriers all teams will face.  I+E has been working with NAWB since 2016 (funded by W. K> Kellogg Foundation) as we convened a 15 member advisory board for family employment services, so we bring expertise to helping the Reimagining Pathways  to Employment do the same, and are happy to provide in-time commitment to that work, relying on the expertise of the Challenge partners to help us do that.

Product-Service Distribution - it is important that we build the work out and will want help from the community of partners to distribute the learnings and work happening to others.

Board Members or Advisors - we would like to develop an advisory board at the beginning of the work in NM (year one) that includes a national advisory board around indigenous populations.  We would hope that these partners of MIS SOLVE could help us with this. 

Monitoring/Evaluation - a review of our RBA process in which we produce concrete evaluation and measurement goals would be welcomed from the partners.  We know each of the SOLVE partners brings expertise in evaluation and approaching outcomes data, and would benefit from this expertise. 

National marketing, media and exposure of the work will benefit the project to scale, and will help secure more funding as well.    It can also have an impact in elevating the work overall of ensuring equitable pathways to employment, even leading to longer term policy implications at the State and Federal level.

New Profit and MIT- for their knowledge of what will be happening with other partners across the spectrum of this Solution. 

MIT  - for RBA results accountability and evaluation - to ensure we have the right goals/objectives/data outcomes tracked

The Morgridge Family Foundation for their understanding of impact across communities.  They are located in our neighboring state (CO) and will understand the impact of native populations wells.  Also, we would rely on their expertise around funding not just ending in a check - but providing strategy/support, network connections and leadership expertise to the work.