Glean Data

Leading youths on the path of taking data analytics skills to tackle social challenges in a more compelling way.

Glean Data is a project that aims to tackle issues of labor shortages in data analytics and poor practice of data-driven decision-making. Such a mission is realized through our three main activities: online training programs for young leaders with creative solutions to social issues, community events engaging youths on data’s real-world applications, and free data resource hubs to propagate data analysis awareness and promote data use. We leverage free data analytics tools to transform the knowledge of data analytics to the youths. We will select young people with creative and feasible ideas for social problems through social data competitions. Then these selected students will go through 2-month training to use the real data related to the problem they chose to analyze and draw insights to figure out solutions to mitigate or solve these challenges as a Capstone project. Along the way, they also have a chance to communicate and get support from guest experts in their fields. Their products will be propagated on social media and at workshop events. We also produce creative data analysis resources and tips to share among the community through our website and media channels.

The world is witnessing an era of unprecedented digitalization, resulting from globalization and automation as well as the teleworking transition under Covid-19 pandemic. This raised the demand for data science and analytics skills, which refers to the ability to collect, analyze, and draw meaningful insights from the data. It is estimated by the World Economic Forum that data analysts/scientists lie at the top of the global on-demand job list. A report of ILO in 2016 also emphasized that around 56% of all employment in ASEAN has a high risk of automation in the next couple of decades. However, the importance of data goes beyond employment: data analytics skills allow the identification of solutions for social problems. Because of these diverse applications, the demand for data competencies is well-pronounced to businesses and organizations. Despite this accelerated demand, there exists a lack of data awareness and analytics competencies among Vietnam’s citizens and organizations. A survey by PwC in 2018 revealed that only 13% of surveyed organizations possessed advanced data analytics capabilities and around 57% of these organizations only utilized data analytics on an ad-hoc basis. In 2017, a report of Cisco estimated a shortage of 500,000 workers with data analytics skills in Vietnam. These staggering figures about Vietnam’s concerning preparedness for the current digital revolution inspired the formation of Glean Data – a project that aimed at providing future leaders of Generation Z with the necessary data skills to succeed in the digitized landscape.

A survey in 2021 by PwC illustrated that Generation Z members (born between 1997-2012) would have accounted for one-third of Vietnam’s workforce by 2025. It also showed that 72% of Gen Z respondents showed an active desire for learning digital skills, including data analysis. In another 2019 survey by Adecco, data-driven decision-making was ranked as among the top 3 future leaders’ characteristics by youngsters of Gen Z. Yet, understanding the importance of data skills, data-driven decision making is the one area where these respondents felt under-served due to certain limits of current data programs offered in Vietnam: the language of instruction is not native (Vietnamese) or lack of in-depth curriculum that focused on forming a data-driven mindset instead of solely teaching a particular tool. Another research in 2019 by Dezan Shira & Associates showed that compared to previous generations, Gen Z had a stronger awareness of social issues and was more likely to participate in socially conscious businesses. Given the importance of Gen Z in future communities and their demand for sustainable digitalization, Glean Data strives to equip the youths with a fundamental skill set in data analytics to unlock the full potential of data to solve social challenges. To promote gender equality and diversity, the project encourages women and people of the underrepresented groups such as the LGBT+ community, ethnicity, and others to join the training with scholarship programs. Our target is at least 40% of our trainees are women, and 5% are from underrepresented groups.

Prior to our official launch, we performed an extensive survey on the sample of 261 young people and an intensive Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with 6 youngsters coming from different backgrounds. The results from the survey and discussion have confirmed our understanding of the targeted population and their needs of learning data analytics skills: (1) 72.2% of respondents heard or learned but do not understand data analytics; (2) 68.8% of respondents showed “High” or “Very High” demand for learning data analysis skills; (3) 60% of respondents expressed interests for social issues; (4) 78.8% of respondents believed that application of data analytics in solving social challenges is “High” or “Very High”. As for FGD, all interviewees shared a common perception of the importance of data for decision-making. They also demonstrated desires for learning data through case studies and practical projects to address social problems. Finally, we are conducting pilot training of our program to selected volunteers to get feedback and contribute to the development of the study program until March 2022.

After three months of planning, we have conducted public online surveys from all over Vietnam and one focus group discussion with our targeted groups. We gained insights into their current level of awareness on data analysis, ongoing data demand, and expectations on data training. At the same time, we have launched a trial version of our website. We are also working on the training curriculum, conducting pilot training, and getting feedback for improvement from all team members and volunteers before launching the first version of the training in March 2022. We are actively seeking potential sponsorships for financial security, partnerships with different organizations to co-create case study practices in each sector, and provide mentorships to help us build up a strong business model.

We use a combination of software as the foundation to help our students to gain data analytic skills. The main software includes Excel, Power Query, Power BI, and Google Data Studio. The core value of these tools is the analytical power to help to process, analyze, and visualize data to create meaningful stories from which we can draw predictive analysis and make decisions to address various issues in society. The Glean Data mentors will accompany young leaders in 2-month intensive training with practical exercises to form a mindset of data analytics skills for students and let them apply directly the knowledge they learned in the Capstone project that they had an idea at the beginning of the program to solve a community issue. We will collaborate with leading enterprises and organizations in 3 main sectors to help students interact, learn from guest experts and utilize data from these institutions. At the end of Capstone projects, successful students will be awarded prizes to realize and test the problems and solutions that they analyzed in their community with assistance from Glean Data and our partners. Capstone projects from students will also be shared on our website and social media platforms (Facebook and Tiktok) to motivate other youths to learn data and take action to use data for a better life. 

Within the first year of launching our project in 2022, we are to provide data analysis training for 45 young leaders with creative ideas to solve social problems. Furthermore, we will organize inspirational events (webinars/summits/social data competitions) to share the real-world application of data to reach 320 attendants. In addition, we will build free data resource hubs for an estimated 5000-user base.

To achieve the estimated number of audiences that we plan to serve in the next year, we intend to carry out the following activities: 

• Social issue competitions around 3 themes: Economic Development, Education, and Environment to select 45 young leaders whose issue can be addressed using data. 
• Online training on data analysis for these 45 young leaders (15 leader/cohort) to provide them with the necessary skills and opportunities to showcase their data-informed social solutions.
• Workshops and webinars to promote data application that intends to improve 320 attendants’ understanding of data use in different sectors.
• Online sources and tips for practice in data analysis for 5000 users

Through these activities, we want to create 2 main short-term impacts: 

1. Enhanced skills in data analysis and data use of youngsters in addressing socio-economic problems;
2. Raise community awareness on data power and data usage for sustainable development.

For each of the above activities, we will have specific metrics to measure our results at output and outcome levels: 

Output indicators:

• Output 1.1 - Social data competitions: Number of applicants joining the competition.

• Output 1.2 - Webinars/workshops: Level of satisfaction (% of attendants find these events useful to their data awareness or data usage)

• Output 2.1 - Online training: Net Promoter Score (“How likely is it that trainees would recommend our training to a friend?”)

• Output 2.2 - Online sources: Number of people who access provided resources across our platforms.

Outcome indicators: 

• Outcome 1 - Promoting data-driven decision-making society: Proportion of youngsters who participated in our activities informed that Glean Data’s interventions promote data-driven decision-making in their work and study within 3 months of engagement. 

• Outcome 2 - Job security and income improvement: The proportion of trainees confirmed that our training program has supported them in finding new job opportunities and raising income after 1 year from the date of training program completion.

The primary barrier that Glean Data might face is the training may not deliver to the trainees as desired and the students may not be motivated to complete the course so we need to test our study program carefully before launching. The second barrier would be securing fundings for our project. Although our core activities of providing training are online-based with minimal costs, there will be non-virtual events that would be difficult to organize without financial support from donors. In addition, some of our students may face difficulties in accessing necessary infrastructure (hardware) to use and practice tools during the training, especially those underrepresented groups in remote areas. Besides, there will be competition with other training platforms and companies in the market.  Another barrier could be losing team members due to objective and subjective reasons. Finally, a new project with a new way of delivery without advice from experts in the field could be inappropriate to the customers. That is the reason why Glean Data is not only reaching for donors, we are seeking a supervisor who can go along with us and orient us to the right track. 

Our team consists of 3 full-time members from different backgrounds, each will be leading a separate section of the project that is relevant to previous experiences of each individual. 

1. Tra Nguyen – Project leader is currently a data management coordinator of USAID Vietnam. With his experiences of leading different projects in various non-profit organizations and familiarity with data management, he is well-suited to oversee the operations of our project. 
2. Tu Ngo– Program development lead is currently doing his PhD in the US. Through his research and work experiences, Tu possesses remarkable data skills with a considerable number of data tools, which would be useful in developing the program content. 
3. Tram Tran– Communication lead is currently a marketing executive at an FMCG in Vietnam. Having taken on various roles in the marketing field with major brands, Tram knows well about brand management and communication. 

Aside from 3 team members, we have a financial advisor - Ms. Mai Anh with over 3 years of experience in accounting – finance, and solid education background in business. Hence, she is very excellent at consulting on our project’s budget and financial strategies. Our 10 volunteers will also work hard to support communication activities, event organization, and training assistance. 

Our project has not yet established an official partnership with any organizations/institutions. However, we are seeking local and international partners working in 3 main sectors that we are focusing on to co-create engagement events, provide case studies, and support our students.