SCHONECT

The Schonect is an Integrated digital platform which offers various vocational training and education programs, including leadership, communication, and digital literacy. This platform also provides a way to connect the employers who demand skills and the workforces. Both two actors can meet their needs at the same time on this platform. The candidates not only increase their skills but also have a direct path to their career. 

In addition, Schonect has a special feature, it is a scholarship program. This will allow employers to hire their future professional workers by helping candidates to fulfill their skill set first through a scholarship before starting to work. This feature will open to everyone, including women, low income, and remote groups to participate.

By implementing the Schonect solution, we can decrease unemployment, raise the wage levels, and of course, carry out economic growth to those countries. This will complete government program “KARTU PRAKERJA”. We can say that Schonect is a one-stop solution providing not only skill development but also career opportunities for the candidates.

• Unemployment rate increases annually, and it even becomes worse during the pandemic. According to world bank data,  the unemployment rate in India and Indonesia rose to 7.71% and 4.11% in 2020. 

• Inequality of education access to the underprivileged community, due to financial hardship.  In both Indonesia and India, workers are 15–20 years old with an elementary to high school education level (Research brief, Young Persons Not in Employment and Education in India: 2000-2019; Raden Muhammad Purnagunawan, Gender, Education and Labor Market in Indonesia: Some Issues and Challenges). Most students drop out at Junior and Senior high schools, and without higher education certification, they will not be able to access jobs. 

• Gender gaps between male and female in labor force participation, because culturally, females should get married and be housewives and thus, not many are motivated to go to school, and finish higher education. Many end up being stay at home moms, however, due to the limited amount of the income their husbands make, and they do not have sufficient 

• We are providing blue-collar workers with a well-planned career path. In Indonesia, the high demand for blue-collar workers with vocational training is still high. Nonetheless, not having a degree in a career path could make the workers stuck in their profession because it is one compulsion to secure your position. Sadly, not all people can be well-off enough to pay the tuition fee; that is why only 8% of the youth population in Indonesia can go to college. It is also worsened by many youths dropping out of junior high school. This platform will establish a short- and long-term career goal for youth workers. 

• Our solution helps decrease unemployment with a joint scholarship program between the private sector, state owned companies, and the government. To the youth while giving them training at the same time.

• Our solution will close the gap between female and men workers, so female workers are not marginalized.

• Our solution will help workers to raise their wage level with increased skill. This will help the individual economy to grow.

• Our solution will help businesses and companies to fulfill their needs of professional and skilled workers.

India and Indonesia have the same problems. Low wage level population is more likely high in these growth countries. One of the main causes is the low education levels. Some communities have limited access to get skill training or education. Some others have to work at a young age to fulfil daily needs and food. Early aged marriage also pushes them to put the priority on fulfilling daily necessities. These countries need to focus on solving the problems, so that the poor population rate and economy are not worse in the future.

Beside social problems, other problems may occur in this technology and digitalization era. By 2030, automation is expected to displace an estimated 23 million jobs in Indonesia, and nearly 70 percent of jobs in formal employment could be automated in India during the same period — including 12 million jobs held by women. Unemployment problem is gradually becoming much worse day by day, especially during the pandemic. According to world bank data,  the unemployment rate in India and Indonesia rose to 7.71% and 4.11% in 2020. The diversity of economy and geography sometimes cause  a “skill-gap” among the workforces. Due to financial hardship, most people cannot access higher education and end up being low skilled workers. 

Skills development is a key component to increase country's productivity. Schonect has solutions for those problems. Schonect has a priority of providing access to education and vocational skill training. This platform also will connect candidates with the private sector, state owned companies, and the government. With this program, stakeholders will get their needs for skilled workers and on the other hand, candidates can improve their skill level and economy. This great collaboration will answer employment problems in India and Indonesia.

Bertha Pangaribuan

Schonect is a digital platform that focuses on improving soft skills and offering scholarships—enhancing soft skills by uploading many materials and providing a companion for the workers to participate and attend until getting the certificates or degree. Training materials are not limited to non-digital but digital materials, such as digital marketing, data analysis, UI UX, etc. Nowadays, digital materials are in high demand, especially in the pandemic where many companies need their employees to have technology skills. A companion that Schonect offers will be such a worked-buddy who can help the workers to create their career path. 

This solution would be ingenious because we offer a complete package for workers and employers where both parties can get an equal benefit. Companies that employ competent workers who have extra competency skills will surely benefit to the company itself.  Also, employees who have suitable qualifications can perform well and add good value to the organization. 

By developing an accessible platform through digital transformation. We provide a platform for all candidates or workers in improving their skills and level of education. Our focus is on improving this through joint training and scholarships (from certified employers).

The core components stack are as follows:

• Provide soft skills training that is useful for increasing the knowledge of workers. The training materials provided are in accordance with the program taken by the workers and will be provided by the experts. 

• After training they will receive a free career assessment and job connector. In the final assessment, the training participants will receive a certificate which is an added value because the workers already have better knowledge and the advantage for the company will be to have workers according to the required fields. 

• In addition to receiving training, workers will have the opportunity to increase their level of education to a higher level through scholarships. By providing this program, workers will have the opportunity to further improve their knowledge and the company will get workers who have qualified educational qualifications.

1. Workers will receive useful training to improve skills according to their abilities or according to the job for which they are applying. Participants not only do training but also get a final assessment of all provided materials, get a training certificate and be distributed in the appropriate company. The benefits for this company will be very profitable because it gets workers who already have basic knowledge in accordance with the field of job vacancies. This makes it easier for both companies and workers to improve their work performance and this can be bet on a career bootcamp.
2. After conducting training and job distribution, they will be given the opportunity to get scholarships which can increase their level of education to a higher level. This is based on the number of workers who are dominated by workers with high school graduates, with this scholarship program the company will get qualified workers and low-income workers can get more opportunities.

By implementing Schonect in Indonesia, it will improve the skill value of the workers. Workers will have the exact skill which matches with business needs. Those who cannot continue their education due to the low economy level can complete their education with a scholarship program provided by Schonect. 

Not only that, companies and governments also have many advantages to find professionals and skilled workers who have their needed skill set. This will be good to improve company productivity. With scholarship programs, stakeholders indirectly help remote communities or low economy populations to upgrade their economy level by skill development. 

In a word, with Schonect, candidates will reach their wanted skill set and career, and companies will easily find their needed skilled workers.

1. Number of People who get access to Higher Education
2. Numbers of People who get the Jobs
3. Percentage of Skills increase after taking our training programs and courses
4. Increase in the Income after getting skills increase

Seeking financing from investors or loan would be a challenge amid this process. We cannot neglect that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought enough doubt to investors in supporting new business.

To face those challenges, Schonect will collaborate with the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry of Manpower, and the Ministry of Youth to conduct counseling for all levels of workers or students. In addition, we will cooperate with the ministry of communication and several internet service providers to supply internet packages at affordable prices and expand internet network coverage.

5 people

The team members are three people as following:

1. Bertha Pangaribuan :Research, Conceptualization and Team leading

2. Hana Yanita : Apps Development 

3. Hana Eka Hargiyanti : Business development 

   The other two will work with business marketing. 

Regular meeting, open communication, and equal work division.

Technical partnership: We are currently building a relationship with the ministry of human resources to continue the feature on the "PRAKERJA" project. To connect the two applications, we will provide an application programming interface (API) so that users who have already signed in to "PRAKERJA" system can easily access the features of Shonect. 

Business partnerships: Since there are still 161,960 polytechnics in Indonesia and only 51393 students per year, Schonect plans to continue collaboration in a way scholarship providing to women, low-income, and remote groups.  

The purpose of our submission is to leverage the funding and in-kind resources available to the challenge winner in order to establish strategic national and international partnerships that open doors to customer opportunities that demonstrate the feasibility, scalability, and traction of our innovative approach for reaching, engaging with, and empowering underserved communities with evidence of its social impact to prospective investors.