One Million Interviews Virtual Academy

The mission of OMIVA is to increase awareness of the regional employability skills gap & youth unemployment/underemployment crises while helping one million youth qualify for better job opportunities by 2030. We also understand that soft skills are hard to develop. In the working world, grow through experience. But, how can you gain experience without the job opportunity? That is where our employability and mentorship platform can assist.

OMIVA offers a way to learn critical skills by combining engaging live and pre-recorded mentor-driven content, interactive challenges and simulations, matching to experience opportunities.

The virtual academy balances crowdsourced experience with vetted expertise. Users are taken through an engaging, interactive environment to learn and challenges to immediately apply it. Anyone, anywhere in the world can use our tools to contribute at their own convenience regardless of language or country while we focus on innovating the learning experience and maintaining quality. 

LATAM & Caribbean has the world's largest skills gap. Emphasis has been placed on improving access to training for digital skills but key soft and other employability and job retention skills are often overlooked. 

This gap contributes to double-digit youth underemployment and unemployment, impacting over 20 million youth. In Jamaica, for example, it takes over 2 years on average from graduation to gainful employment while employers are challenged to hire those with the right skills.

Between 2012 and 2013, I volunteered with a community-based police youth group and developed an informal job network to help youth in that and other communities find entry-level employment with small businesses. I saw first-hand how a lack of critical employability skills and competencies made it hard for these youth to retain jobs or become eligible for promotions. I also
saw first-hand the challenges companies had with identifying the right talent even though many companies are looking to hire youth with the right skills and learning agility.

Since over 40% of our regional labour force is comprised of youth, this gap in skills and knowledge must be addressed so that our youth can readily qualify for work or other growth and income opportunities across the region.

The solution can be explained by looking at a potential user journey.

Take Michael, a 24-year-old, who has been in the working world for the past 4 years. He works in a call centre and finds that he doesn't quite understand why he doesn't get considered for promotions even though he diligently does his work. Our platform exposes him to concepts such as lateral leadership, emotional intelligence and other skills that can help him stand out. After all, moving into junior management requires more than just the ability to do the work in front of you. 

Our platform allows him to digest information easily on his phone in short 10-15 minute bites. It then challenges him to directly apply the concept in his current situation and provide feedback on the challenge. His participation and engagement are rewarded and mentors and others can celebrate his progress and growth. While on the platform, he is exposed to skills and careers that are related to his current role by mentors who are currently in that role. The platform makes him aware of the gaps he needs to fill to make him more likely to successfully close those opportunities. 

Our target audience in terms of beneficiaries are working-aged individuals (18-34 years old) across LATAM & Caribbean with 0-5 years or entry-level work experience who are trying to :

• Identify a career path
• Get hired with limited or no experience
• Develop the skills to keep their job and thrive in the workplace

Although having graduated from University, they realize that they find that they are either disillusioned about what paths they can pursue or they are frustrated because they cannot find a job that interests or challenges them. Perhaps they cannot get past the interview stage or if they do, they find themselves feeling underutilized and unchallenged. They want to make progress but find that while others know how to get ahead, they are consistently frustrated by the workings of the workplace. They are motivated to learn and reduce their skills and knowledge gaps so as to get to the next level. Perhaps they want a mentor but do not know how to go about finding one or even how the mentor relationship works.

On the other hand, our local/regional Mentors are career professionals with over 5 years of experience in their field or a specific skill. Additionally, we have global experts who are widely recognized in their field or skill and have an established record of achievement. Each has a different kind of value to provide. They leverage their knowledge and experiences in pre-recorded videos or live, online individual or group mentor sessions. They want to give back because they know what it is like to be in that position but they are hesitant about becoming mentors due to concerns about the time commitment, getting too close and exposing personal details to strangers or how to properly manage a mentor-mentee relationship.

The platform brings both groups of individuals together and supplies the technology, learning methodology, quality assurance and reward systems to make it work. In 15 minute bites or hour-long deep dives, learners and mentors choose how to spend their time while we focus on ensuring that all time spent is impactful. Mentors and learners may join the platform independently or may be exposed to it through their organization.

Not only was it borne out of learnings from working with youth from under-resourced communities in our region but it is also based on the need to help them access the employability skills and improve their access to income-earning opportunities. 

The fact that this is based on a virtual, scalable model also helps to address some of the current challenges that learners and mentors face. The platform lessens the sacrifices both parties have to make in order to participate. We intend to apply for zero-rated status in Jamaica, where the Government has supported this for educational sites during the pandemic. 

We have sourced the technology to power the various aspects platform and are in the process of completing setup, branding and customizations. For example, we have the capability now to have content uploaded by mentors and grouped into skill categories and groups. We can integrate live sessions, track the progress of our users, rank them using gamification, assign challenges and assignments for them to complete etc. 

We have also reached out to potential mentors and content partners. Our biggest gap is the promotional plan that will secure ongoing registrations both on the mentor and user ends. 

Since we are in the pre-testing phase but have a usable minimum viable product with which to test assumptions and get started, we have categorized our status as a Prototype. 

Traditionally you have either mentor websites or e-learning websites but this platform brings both together and also provides interactivity, gamification, challenges and rewards for both parties. Some of these sites reuse the same courses, pulling them from other sites and there is a lack of niche, country or region-specific content. This specificity is important since there can be significant cultural differences between countries and even company and industry types. We anticipate that one of the most significant effects of the scalability of our platform will be the unearthing of a wealth of information for industries, countries and topics that are usually crowded out by content from larger countries such as the United States.

We are focusing on the software, learning methodology and quality assessment which also makes it attractive to companies for in-house use for onboarding, performance improvement plans, employee self-guided learning, offboarding support or cataloguing of internal expertise. 

For the prototype, we are using a white-label web application that features gamification, advanced matching and recommendations,