Asia Initiatives

Our proposed LEAP project is our Upskilling Cascades program. Asia Initiatives works with people in the most disadvantaged urban slums and remote communities in India. When people in these settings do manage to attend formal schooling, the education is inadequate in teaching skills that can help people’s livelihoods after graduating. This situation was exacerbated by Covid-19. According to a recent study by Oxfam on Government & Private Schools During COVID-19, “Nearly 80% of Indian students couldn’t access online schooling during the lockdown, and many might not return to classrooms when they reopen”. Despite having the second largest online market in the world India, 50% of people living in India don't have internet access (Weforum.org, Aug 2020). The World Economic Forum predicts a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, in which 133 million new jobs will emerge by 2022 which will require digital literacy. As this prediction materializes and the unskilled jobs that these populations rely upon become increasingly obsolete, there is only a short window of time for people to catch up. The current educational and training institutions in India are grossly inadequate for the current technological revolution: Upskilling Cascades seek to radically improve this situation. Through this program, Asia Initiatives aims to address this challenge by activating the social capital of communities, and crowdsourcing upskilling from various individual, institutional and corporate resources. In Upskilling Cascades, community members with skills such as digital literacy, coding, connecting farmers to online markets etc., earn SoCCs for teaching their skills to others. Our teachers/mentors trade in the SoCCs they earn to get skill certifications, while artisans and farmers can redeem their SoCCs for micro-credit to start or improve their business and health insurance etc. Learners then teach their skills to others and so on, creating a network of teachers and learners that strengthens everyone’s livelihood opportunities. Our Knowledge Centers put digital work and connectivity within reach for people who otherwise do not have digital devices. Young adults in our Maker Labs get mentorship in patenting their innovations, and taking them to market. We are also setting up systems to connect our newly skilled people to formal sector employers. Asia Initiatives has impacted over 55,000 people so far, including 23,000 people in 2021 alone. We are also particularly focused on women, since they face additional discrimination and barriers to education, skills and jobs. Covid-19 has deepened the disparities in the workforce. Over 47% of women in formal employment in India last year lost their jobs compared to 7% of men, affecting not only their households, but their mental and physical health as well (Reuters.com, Aug 2, 2021). Our work through SoCCs ensures that the entire social ecosystem and social capital of marginalized people is improved to facilitate careers for women and men, and for the future generations.

Most aid programs for the poor today are top-down, with little decision-making power left to community members themselves. SoCCs, however, is the opposite. We at Asia Initiatives believe that people who are closest to the problems are also closest to the solutions, and that proximity is expertise. In order to actively involve our participants in their programs, we host regular SoCCratic dialogues through every step of the process. Within these seminars, participants are able to collectively create SoCCs earning and redeeming menus, which are hyper-localized to the specific needs of their communities. Development, after all, is not a “one size fits all” phenomenon: each community has individual strengths and needs, which is why our SoCCs program is highly adaptable to the specific environment of our various program sites. The seminars act as a means of crowd-sourcing innovation and creativity from our participants, and result in much more effective programs. Further, our SoCC App and Web platform enable people to record and manage their SoCCs earning and spending, helped by local SoCC managers, so communities can own their projects and the progress towards their Key Performance Indicators. P2P SoCC transactions also increase the velocity of transactions in communities, overcoming the friction caused by lack of money. This grassroots methodology not only enables individuals to customize their experience working with Asia Initiatives, but also encourages them to be more involved with our programs. When communities are incentivized to take charge of solving the collective issues they face, the result is encouraging local pride and a feeling of ownership over projects. This improves involvement rates during the program and increases the likelihood of projects becoming self-sustainable. Overall, the hyper-local approach of Asia Initiatives to all of its programming boosts program performance, ensures respect for local knowledge, culture and leadership, and allows community members to become stakeholders in their own success.

Our theory of change for the Learning Cascades and Upskilling Cascades at Asia Initiatives is outlined in the graphic to the left. The graphic demonstrates the methodology behind our innovative development technology, Social Capital Credits (SoCCs), as well as details common challenges faced in the model and responses undertaken by Asia Initiatives to combat them.

Asia Initiatives analyzes our efficacy in each step of our partnerships to ensure that we are providing the intended benefits to our target communities. This involves collecting feedback from each of our partners, as well as conducting our own research through independent researchers. For example, an evaluation of our projects in two project locations in India, i.e. Lucknow and Odisha was recently conducted to assess the impact of the Learning and Upskilling Cascade, and community perception of the intervention. This was done by in-depth questionnaire surveys with a sample of teachers and students in the communities. Our surveys revealed that only 66% parents of adolescent young girls who are part of our Upskilling program said that their daughters go to school or are in Upskilling Cascades with approximately 50% of respondent parents never having enrolled in school themselves. In both locations, approximately 90% of the enrolled participants are adolescent young girls with almost all of the participants walking to Asia Initiatives Learning Centers regularly to learn skills with the help of a mentor in the Upskilling Cascades program. Increased SoCCratic dialogues and increased community-based events with parents and children have been especially motivating for the community where held. 94% of parents have confirmed that language and digital literacy upskilling sessions have immensely helped their child. A cluster analysis was used to identify if discrete groups or clusters of participants existed in our teacher group, based on their demographic, socio-economic and SoCCs attributes. Demographic parameters included data on religion, caste, age of participant, locality, city and number of people in the household. Socioeconomic attributes were identified by city of project, ability to travel to Asia Initiatives’ Learning Center, internet access, type of transport that was accessible, type of residence, education status, income range and appliances in the house. SoCCs parameters included locality, city, year of joining the program, number of mentees, tutoring and ability to travel to the Learning Center. The socio-economic cluster analysis revealed that proximity to Asia Initiatives’ Learning Center from the house plays a key role in Upskilling, where as this was not the case for language and other subjects being taught. Regression analysis, a statistical test that mathematically sorts out what variables actually have an effect was also conducted. It revealed that there was significant influence by the gender of the enrolled student (female), and the proportion of lessons received. This means that redemption was not influenced by age, number of teachers, but rather gender and number of redemptions accessed from the suite of redemption offered. However, because our programming is so hyper-localized, we lack a standard system to conduct analysis. With extended funding, we would expand our evidence gathering technology and develop a standard procedure, further ensuring that our program’s impact is achieving its intended goals.

To ensure that our work is fully evidence-based, SoCC data is collected and analyzed for every project. This helps us understand if the communities are making progress towards the goals and KPIs they had set for themselves during the SoCCratic workshops where SoCCs menus and goals were established. Collecting this data on a continuous basis also allows us to adjust our menus for the duration of our projects, ensuring that our earning and redeeming processes are as effective as possible. Examples of our existing data on past projects includes: ● 550 women farmers were taught SRI (System of Rice Intensification), which needs less water, less manual labor, and improves yields. These farmers are training 1100 more farmers, who will go on to train 2200 more, and so on. ● 1500 young adults are earning SoCCs by teaching younger people, and spending their SoCCs on learning advanced digital skills, coding and hardware assembly in our Learning Centers in Lucknow and Odisha. ● Youth in 5 Maker Labs are being helped in creating innovative tech solutions to local problems, and funding to take these solutions to the market. Some youth have launched businesses to make and repair LED Lights using local materials. ● 2300 women learned to make organic kitchen gardens in Odisha, and are now teaching others for improved nutrition and incomes. ● 500 women learned micro poultry and dairy farming skills. SoCC stars were given further training as Veterinary Assistants and are teaching others. ● 1,200 tribal members in Mahad formed the first ever tribal microcredit cooperative, with members learning to keep accounts online.

Crowdsourcing skilled people to upskill others, incentivised by Social Capital Credits (SoCCs), who redeem SoCCs to improve their own skills.

As outputs of this project, we would like the following: - Research on how we can better keep track the learning in our Upskilling Cascade program. It is easy to do when people complete a program and get certification, but not so easy if people have acquired some skills, but not completed the curriculum. - We also need ideas on how to keep the teacher and student motivated, despite the fact that the teacher is earning SoCCs. The students come from very complex backgrounds, and are often trying to upskill against social norms that want to keep women from progressing “for their own good”. - Advice on how to connect more people who have received education through Upskilling Cascades to jobs and certifications. A list of potential formal sector employers, and certification certifying institutions, beyond what we have, would be helpful. - Research on online curriculums and programs available for preparing for various professional streams such as accountant, graphic designer, web designer, nursing aid, agricultural marketing and more would be helpful. - Research on videos available on how best someone from non-teaching work can be a good teacher would be very helpful.