TeenLabs : skills recognition for teens

In France, TeenLabs is committed to support every individual aged 12 to 20 to earn recognition as they develop their skills of the future.

We focus on digital skills following UNESCO categories : Tech, Cognitive, Collaborative.

We build a marketplace of personnal opportunities. An online catalog of activities compliant with Teens capabilities and that help them practise to develop their Tech&Soft skills : learn to code, design robots, modelize in 3D, pitch ideas, create websites, secure accounts, chase for fake news, explore IA...

We gather an ecosystem of activists in our unique space : providers of experiences in or out the schools, onsite or online.

Our mission is to help the 12-20 generation be equiped to make choices when becoming the workforce of 2035. As they grow, they will have to demonstrate engagement and expertise, to convince universities and employers.

We plan to back them up on the long run!

As the world is becoming more and more digital, systems become more complex and new usages arise. The future of work will be made of roles requiring the mastery of Tech&Soft skills like computer literacy, data analysis, collaboration, leadership, management of projects, infrastructures or security... This (r)evolution creates new jobs every day and the situation is accelerating.

This new paradigm can be a massive opportunity for humanity because the teenagers of today have, in theory, access to a huge quantity of online ressources. But, in reality, this varies a lot depending on contexts. Many young people might never be able to benefit from this.

The problem we are trying to solve is to support individuals build their future employability. We are developping an online space in which they are encouraged to take action and earn recognition from their efforts. A catalogue of selected activities.

We have a bold roadmap to build for, and with, this generation a safe community of recognized Doers, backed up with peers mentoring and endorsment.

They are the "slashers" of 2035 and they will have to demonstrate their development path, capabilities, curiosity and network recommandations.

We are here to help on their way!

We are building a forward-looking solution to support a generation on the long run.

It started in 2019, in France, with a selection of activities that help teenagers from 12 to 20 to practice and develop themselves, in regards with digital skills. We group these initiatives into an online catalog that invite teens to act, thanks to the ecosystem of existing activits : for-profit and non-profit organizations which aim to support teens with digital literacy education and/or soft skills experimentations and development.

We also built a resources center, providing documentation and testimonials about digitalized industries, new jobs, role models, higher education paths... This also serves our secondary beneficiaries who are the families as a whole because many parents are very worried to support their kids to find their place in the future of work.

The technology used is made of web-based solutions : Prestashop with Stripe secured payments for online registrations.

And thanks to some #TechForGood programs with engineering schools, we collaborate with students on building an agile roadmap to deliver additional services aimed to help teens with :

• recognition, through skills mapping, open badges and peers mentoring
• personalized recommandations to develop on their own path, through machine learning 

Our solution is being designed to serve teenagers directly, and indirectly their families. In another indirect way, we also serve the ecosystem of suppliers and trainers who may face a lack of visibility and benefit from a specialized online space to showcase their educative vision.

The young generation are the individuals who need to prepare themselves to find their own place into the world of 2035, and over.

All of them are currently underserved on Tech&Soft skills development that is not yet fully included into traditional schools programs. Furthermore when it comes to think about equality, the part of the population with less ressources will not be able to practise on accurate devices nor well informed about educative opportunities.

We address this current situation with our plateform and our roadmap :

1/ From the very first steps of the project, we get the curation done: we explore, search, investigate, identify entities that are passionate, diverse, inclusive to build our catalog of selections. For 2 years now, in France, we have met with organizations that specialize on teens practises, we have on-boarded some of them into our online catalog, we have started to collaborate with them to show their specificities. We have a complete part of our web-based responsive solution built as a "vitrine" for them. We are preparing for more to come with new partners and collaborations in the pipe.

2/ We listen to our direct beneficiaries : the Teens. We question them regularly through polls, we manage a Discord server, we participate to events (when possible!). This approach helps us to talk directly with the Teens, to ask for their feebacks and more important for advises!
But we do not forget the almost-direct other beneficiaries of our plateform : the Parents. They are worried about the future of their kids.
The founder of the project is a mother of 3, now aged 9-11-14 and the families around her were the direct inspiration of this project. Unfortunately, she knowns this is biaised by the social situation inherent to her lucky way of life and coming from a rural environment, she had still fresh memories of the energy that ones need to deploy to pass (and pay) a Master degree and then to candidate to valuable jobs when you do not have "the network". Consequently, TeenLabs is also designed to consider different kinds of communities : from very eased families that face today an anxiety of the burnout risk and the search of vocational path their kids will be searching for, to very uneased families that cannot purchase devices, nor understand what is going on with the digital revolution, and who are less prepared to talk about fake news and trageted by quick money liars and violence on social media.

3/ TeenLabs has explored and has learn on the way : in France a lot of non-profit organizations are active to help teens learn to code for example. We are integrated them in the design of our information sharing and ressources proposals.
As a consequence, part of our organization is about bringing free contents accessible to anyone: we think our space as an equitable virtual global modern classroom. The Montessori pedagogy is also inspiring us: in short, our aim is to be here with our curation effort and inspirations when people want to jump in and need to find something of trust to start from. Today said-educative contents have never been more numerous on the web but that can be impressive and even not understandable for teens and their parents. TeenLabs is here in the process to support on quetsions like "where do I start from? Who can help me? How can I keep training and learning when I tend to lose my motivations?"

Concretely, as of today, we propose free challenges with small educative
goals so that anyone even the neewbiest can join. We share free
intitiatives from our favorite non-profit organizations though our
social channels. We have included a section into our responsive
web-based plateform about FabLabs : in France, they are often managed by
small non-profit teams passionnate to help others develop new
capabilities.

We address this through a modern classroom mindset : people can come here and will find peers and mentors to help keep going and get rid of doubts. Our roadmap is meant to go further and to add a recognition system into our online space.

Even our plateform operative architecture is finally more equitable (ok fair enough with the true story : initial plan was to build a mobile app but, due to financial constraints, was finally designed on a web-based solution, which is finally more open globally as not requiring a smartphone in hands).

The services and the ecosystem we engage in through our searches for partners are all focused on one goal : we aim to address the needs of this young generation to develop their future employability thanks to the demonstration of the actions they take to develop their skills (at school, in autonomy on the web, with peers and mentors or in workshops with educators).

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Examples of ressources proposed by TeenLabs, in the order of appearence below

- worshop proposed to the Discord participants : "code to animate a sprite sheet"

- Ecosystem zone in the website : explore the map of the French FabLabs that are open to minus 20 years old or find interviews for jobs inspirations

- Our online catalog of selected activities : some free, below 50€ or below 100€ proposals

- Social media sharing of free opportunities

We address the problem of teenagers preparing for their future adult lives, with the perspective of digital skills. This group of the population is diverse by essence but has common needs of developing themselves within a renewed workspace paradigm with a fast evolution pace.

We address this problem with the platform that gathers multiple and diverse invitations to discover, act and practice. Delivering filtered recommendations, building a safe space, rich resources and services supporting recognition and endorsement. These will equip them with the capabilities and empowerment to build their own path within the world of 2035 and beyond, with conscience.

We are in the Prototype stage because I have been working on the concept phase from 2019 to 2020 and the company has been created last July 2020. In this first year, we are building and testing our activities catalog, activated in Novembre 2020. We have been working on our first year roadmap, through new services and contents preparation, built and deliveries.

Our core community is made of 1K French families with teenagers, concerned with digital skills development, willing to help the kids explore and learn more, especially with coding.

Our business model is based on a commission paid to us by the supplier when a registration is sold. We are now planning to move to an hybrid business model (B2B2C) to support even free activities join the catalog, and to help the proposal of an open space for young people to earn recognition for their efforts on their own.

The way we think about the problem to solve is innovative by itself as we do not build a new program to educate young people. Indeed, we have been asking ourselves several Why:

• Why do young people need to develop their digital skills?
• Why is not a university diploma enough anymore when considering the future of work?
• Why will teens of today need to prove their stage of development?
• Why are not all people able to develop their own skills smoothly and get recognition of their efforts if they try?

This led us in a way to help young people find existing proposals, with some curation added in the process. We also linked this with an open space design, in which every user can add their own perspective, even those no one is yet aware of.

That is a back-to-the-basics when considering the Digital environment and its fast development. And this innovation mindset is allowing us, since day one, to set up proposals and to test them.

Consequently, as of today, we are building an innovative platform aiming to gather a new generation of knowers and players who will be able to smoothly follow the flow when becoming professionals and to bring perspectives and ideas on the table to support the raise of improvements, for example in the way humanity occupies this planet and takes cares of each other, without rejecting digital capabilities because of fear and lack of understanding and education but embrassing it to explore even more.

We are currently serving 1.000 people.

Next year, we plan to serve 10.000 people.

In five years, we plan to work on reaching a target of serving 1 million people.

We are not yet working towards measuring the UN Goals, but we definitely have to set a measurement plan in regards of Goals #4/5 and on longer term Goals #8/10.

Founder = 2 (1 acting, 1 counselling)

Part-time staff = 1 (communication)

Contractors = 2 agencies (web-development and traffic acquisition)

Trainees = 3 part-time (web-development, FabLabs research, Quality management)