Interactive Media Development for Latinas

A vicious circle exists in which Latinas are significantly under-represented in STEM fields, do not perceive STEM as welcoming to Hispanics and are not exposed to Latina mentors. Throughout secondary school, they have less interest in STEM courses, less academic preparation and less resources to access STEM education (NCES, 2019). The 62 million Latinas in the U.S. are 9.5% of the U.S. population yet receive less than 2% of degrees in engineering and computer science (NCES, 2023), underrepresentation that has not improved in the past decade (Almaraz, 2013). A Pew Research Study (Funk & Lopez, 2022) found 70% of Hispanic respondents said engineers and scientist were not welcoming to Hispanics in the profession. Among Hispanic college students, a majority cited Hispanic role models as a positive factor in encouraging STEM careers, with Spanish-speakers (60%) endorsing this sentiment even more than English-speaking Latinos. Fairlie et al. (2014) found that 20-50% of the achievement gap disappears when students are exposed to faculty from underrepresented groups. However, Latinas make up only 2% of faculty in engineering and computer science. Latinas are also more likely to be academically unprepared to succeed in majors leading to those jobs. While 75% of U.S. high school graduates fail to meet math proficiency standards, the figure rises to 88% of Latino students and 96% of English language learners (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2018). As the transition from elementary to high school sees a drop in both mathematics achievement and interest in STEM courses, pre-college intervention is essential (NCES, 2019). In 2020, Chromebook sales quadrupled over the previous year (Hachman, 2021) but relative to more affluent peers, low-income students are still far more likely to have mobile phones as their only source of Internet access. 

There is no shortage of educational technology teaching STEM content but existing software falls short in both student usage and design. Brasiel et al. (2016) studied the use, by 196,625 students, of 11 online educational technology products funded by the state legislature. Each publisher provided a benchmark of minutes of usage that represented fidelity of implementation. Only 9% of students met the respective benchmarks. Students don’t learn from software they don’t use. Major flaws in application development are the focus on testing over teaching and failure to adequately deconstruct new learning. Most software provides feedback only on whether an answer is correct. Research on educational technology in general (Sherrington, 2019) as well as our research specifically with Latino youth, has found there is often a need to teach prerequisite material it was assumed students had learned at earlier grades. Even applications with good educational design miss connecting with students due to social and linguistic variables. As one teacher in a high-need community said, “We need to add a ’Why to the What’. Both in and out of school, STEM education programs tell girls what they need to learn, but not why that matters to their own interests, family, and community.”

Interactive Media e-Studio  (IAM) program provides girls a ladder to careers in technology, interactive media, and management. What IAM offers Latinas is a job, their first paid work experience in STEM.  IAM is designed to maximize the probability of success in multiple ways.

1. IAM offers four, six-week micro-internship blocks and girls can complete only one or all four. Girls who need to stop out of the program for personal or family issues can return at the next cohort.
2.  To maximize success, blocks require gradual increases in commitment and knowledge, allow flexible scheduling and minimal hardware requirements. 
3. On-boarding, 30 hours over six weeks, required for all interns, can be completed on a phone, computer or tablet. In web meetings, two hours per week, Latina professionals discuss their careers and introduce required technologies, from Discord to Google Docs. The remaining three hours, interns login and complete work assignments including attending online training, bug testing, writing blogs and presentations. 
4. Live assistance, via phone, chat, email, Slack or Discord is available during intern work hours and any questions asked outside of work hours are answered within one business day. Communication by phone, web meeting and text is frequent and proactive both to provide individual and group mentoring and to resolve early any problems with software usage, confusion regarding task requirements or other issues. 
5. Upon completion of the initial internship, girls have the opportunity to select a second six-week internship of ten hours per week, focused on creative (art, audio or writing), project management or software development. If interested in more than one area, they have the option to complete additional internships in different areas of focus.

 After completion of the 30-hour on-boarding, girls receive a laptop (on loan for the duration of program participation) and in their first task, are guided in installing licensed software required for their internship track. Girls in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Los Angeles have the option to work one or two days per week onsite. Working fully remotely is an option for all interns.

We have piloted this project with 12 intern cohorts focused on game design, testing, development and project management. 

The url for the online resources can be found here at www.7generationgames.com/game_design/ 

As part of the Solve Challenge, our goal is to expand the micro-internship beyond game studios and include additional companies with a focus on interactive media. We have already obtained a second corporate partner, Big Edition, which hosts five websites with millions of visitors each month and a non-profit partner, the Strong Mind Strong Body Foundation.

There are three million U.S. Latinas aged 16-20. Our initial target population is Latina youth, age 15-20, in the southern California and Twin Cities area, with expansion planned throughout the southwest and Midwest. There are approximately 300,000 Latinas aged 15-20 in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the largest population in the United States. Latinos, of any gender, comprise 74% of the student population of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Most Latinos in Minnesota live in the Twin Cities, comprising 10% of the metropolitan population, with 14,000 Latinas aged 15-20.

Meet Emilia. She’s 16 years old, lives with her mother in Los Angeles and attends a public high school. Both Emilia and her mom are confident that she will be in the 55% of her class that graduates. With only 8% of her school proficient in math, Emilia seldom feels challenged in class. Her school has been on lockdown twice this week due to violence on campus, but she still stays after school for sports, saying, “I’m used to it.” 

Eva lives in the same neighborhood, with her mother and four older siblings.She hates math and science, but is making A’s because she often stays after school getting help from the teacher. When lockdowns happen, Eva’s mother gets worried and insists that she come straight home after school. She spends the time watching videos on her phone and drawing. She’s an amazing artist.

Alicia, age 20, lives with her mother, father and five siblings. Her father was disabled in an accident and her mother can’t drive. Alicia was offered the opportunity to attend a weekend university program for gifted students, but after missing the 6am bus several times and having to stay home to help care for the family, she dropped it. She now attends community college part-time.

Eva, Emilia and Alicia like nearly all of the girls who enter our internship program, don’t have a career goal, think they might go to college but have no idea what their major might be. Silvia, age 15, is unusual in that she is sure she wants to be an engineer. She attends a private school in Minnesota, on scholarship, where she is the only Latina in her AP Calculus class. Recently, she was sent to the principal for swearing at a classmate who asked her who did her homework, implying she did not earn her A.

Those are the lives of the girls we aim to improve. Our program addresses three major needs; it provides tangible introduction to careers through work experience, because girls have completed workplace tasks, it gives them the confidence they can succeed and through hands-on training, they build the foundation of skills for success. We understand their needs because we listen to them and their parents. Our internship allows multiple formats for communication in multiple languages - in person, via text, in shared documents, in workplace tools such as Slack, and in internship assignments where girls share their interests and expertise.

We were raised, live and work in the communities we serve and can relate to the diverse groups within the Latina community. Team Lead, Dr. AnnMaria De Mars, as a youth, cycled between her Venezuelan grandmother and aunts, foster care and the juvenile justice system. Because she excelled at math and programming, AnnMaria received scholarships to attend university through her Ph.D. Realizing that math and sports were her ticket to opportunity, AnnMaria has been a mentor in person to Latinas in Los Angeles and, via online courses and internships, to Latinas throughout the country providing training, tutoring and fundraising. For the past 14 years, she has led a youth afterschool program in south Los Angeles, work for which she was recognized as a 2019 AARP Purpose Prize fellow. She teaches part-time for National University, a Hispanic-serving institution, and was adjunct faculty of the year in 2022. She was the lead developer on the AzTech Games series, providing math instruction in Spanish and English in the context of Latino history. AnnMaria is bilingual in Spanish and English. 

Maria Burns Ortiz, Creative Team Lead, was raised in California and now lives in Minnesota. Maria has been recognized  2007: National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Emerging Journalist of the Year, 2008: Faces of the Future: Hispanics Who Will Influence the World, Newspapers in Education, 2013: Most influential people for Latinos in Massachusetts, El Planeta Newspaper; 2017: Rising Star Award, National Latina Business Women’s Association (Los Angeles); National Association of Hispanic Journalists Board of Directors (2009-2011); Unity: Journalists for Diversity National Board of Directors (2013). She is currently on the Advancement Committee and Girls on the Run volunteer coach for Risen Christ Catholic School. Risen Christ, the only Catholic bilingual immersion school in Minnesota, is an English/Spanish school, located in Minneapolis Powderhorn Neighborhood (two blocks from George Floyd Square). It serves more students who are low-income students (88%), Latinos (90%; 98.9% of color) and 65% ELL - all more than any other Catholic school in the Twin Cities.  She is micro-internship committee chair for the Strong Mind Strong Body Foundation - which has served 100% students of color (40% girls of color). Maria is bilingual in Spanish and English.

Diana Sanchez has lived her entire life in south Los Angeles, except for a few years in college and visits to extended family in Mexico. Growing up in an underserved community, Diana always had helping the community as her goal. That desire motivated her to pursue a career in education. Upon graduation, she returned home and worked as a tutor for students in elementary through high school and translator and interpreter for parents in Los Angeles Unified School District. Seeing the challenges faced by English language learners, challenges she experienced as a child, she was motivated to join 7 Generation Games to widen the scope of students she could reach through bilingual educational software and by supervising internships for high school students. Diana is bilingual in Spanish and English.

We have had 12 cohorts of the micro-internship program, serving a total of 61 youth. Of these three were 100% on-site and nine, during the pandemic, were either remote or hybrid.

We provide educational software, professional development and resources to schools in underserved communities, with a focus on teaching mathematics and science in the context of Latino and Indigenous history. Through the Growing Math initiative, we have served 47,681 students and 1,375 teachers over the past two years.

In total, we have had over 160,000 students use our software.

We believe the Challenge resources can help us in development of process, product and people. Our team is experienced in software development, curriculum development and B2B sales. Our internship program is a different type of initiative, more program than product. To expand, we need agreements with additional companies to mentor and pay interns, and a more structured model for those companies to follow to model our success.  Currently, where our online modules could use improvement, we offset with individual instruction. We know that is not scalable. We revise our online content as time allows and are planning a major revision beyond just game design and development to incorporate more of other media uses, including web development, software development for media corporations and content creation for corporations other than gaming. We already have one corporate partner. Through the resource partners and peer network we hope to find more  organizations that would be willing to pilot a micro-internship program internally, funded by their organization, or initially, through funds we raise, and provide us with useful feedback. We’re seeking input both on developing a better online platform that can be used by more organizations and in needs employers, both Latina and non-Latina, have for personal development and support to maximize their effectiveness in mentoring girls successfully.

The micro-internship program is a public service and we’re a for-profit organization. We have supported the program through our own volunteer efforts and funds from a non-profit. We are at a crossroads and the expertise within the Solve/Tiger Global network can help us decide on the next step. As we discuss below, options for sustainability include spinning the project off to a non-profit, seeking government grants, state or county contracts, foundation support or licensing the program for a small fee. Currently, we believe the non-profit and state/ county contracts are the two best options but both of these are areas where our expertise is limited. The opportunities for needs assessment and resource partnership offered through the Challenge, as well as the learning and development modules, will help us clarify the best path forward. 

We are also very excited about the personal and professional development opportunities. We have investigated other organizations for professional development, including those focused on underrepresented founders. However, these were either focused on ‘networking’ in members selling products like insurance and legal services to each other, or provided education at a very basic level, e.g., “a business should have a website.” We’re certain the Solve/Tiger Global Ventures program is on a whole different level and would give us the experience of being the mentees instead of the mentors.

AnnMaria's daughter, a teacher in a Los Angeles middle school, said it best. "You know, Mom, a lot of my students are like you. They are living with a grandmother, who is an immigrant to this country and never finished high school. They get suspended from school and picked up by the police for fighting. Some of them were in foster care before their grandmother got custody. You know those stories don't usually end up with  - And she got admitted to college at 16, won a gold medal in the world championships, earned a Ph.D. and founded multiple companies."  - But, sometimes, they do!

AnnMaria's childhood featured a series of moves, like many of the girls we serve, including living with a grandmother, an aunt, in foster care and juvenile hall. She got her 'ticket out' via a college scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis. While her classmates were vacationing over spring break and summer, she worked full-time to send money home to help her mother with the younger children. She received a fellowship to study for her MBA, worked full-time and lived a block from the Little Earth housing project in Minneapolis. She knows via lived experience the struggles of low-income students who cannot afford to take unpaid internships.

After her MBA, AnnMaria moved to San Diego, a single mother working as an engineer and traveling to east Los Angeles three days a week to train for the world judo championships. At age 28, she returned to graduate school attending UCR, a Hispanic-serving institution, for her M.A. and Ph.D. while teaching mathematics and tutoring in predominantly Latino schools. Since 1997, she has lived in the Los Angeles area. As a parish council member at St. Anne's Catholic Church, she successfully implemented changing the confirmation classes her daughters attended from Spanish to English, which required multiple presentations (in Spanish!) during which parents concurred that even though they may feel most comfortable in Spanish, that was not the case for their children.

For the past 14 years, she has been an instructor in an after school program at a south Los Angeles middle school teaching judo and providing youth enrichment activities. The program has evolved as the neighborhood composition has changed and is now comprised of 80% Latinas.

The three core innovations of Interactive Media e-Studio  are:1)  delivery of the initial program via mobile, 2) focus on immediate job skills and 3) paid internship over a series of blocks with gradually increasing demands. Unlike programs where girls are treated as needy recipients of social services or remedial education,  IAM is first and foremost a job  where girls receive the same mentoring, expectations and training as interns who come through the traditional route of prestigious high school or university connections. Through cohorts, interns receive small group and individual mentoring as well as network with professionals. Key to the mentoring project is that the goal is success in a STEM profession. Mentees gain work experience in core skills, remote work technologies and software applications relevant to their interests.

 Many computer science programs begin with the assumption that students want to learn to code. We’ve found that wanting to learn to code is far past step one for STEM careers, and maybe not a step at all. As Latina co-founders of a software community and integrally involved in our communities, we see step one as exposing girls to career options, with relatable role models to teach them: what careers are available, that people like them succeed in these careers, the prerequisites for success and that they can be successful. Step two is providing the foundation; office technology basics and core skills, such as professional communication, and then transition to step three, applying those skills in a work environment, which may be design, audio, graphics, software development or project management.

Through the Solve/ Tiger Global Ventures Challenge, our goal is to revise the online resources we use for interns, including website, assignments and assessments, as well as add mentor training materials so that our micro-internship program can be easily adopted by other organizations.  Our girls often don’t apply for internships or entry level positions because they don’t have the confidence that they belong in those spaces. As one young person commented, “The first meeting we had was in Beverly Hills and it was scary. But, each time we go somewhere outside our comfort zone it gets easier.” 

When no one in the organization looks like you, not being able to do simple tasks that everyone else seems to know, like getting on the correct Slack channel or Discord, or commenting in a shared file, can be yet another message that, “You don’t belong here.”

 IAM provides the first entry into STEM careers for girls by raising their comfort level, giving them the basic skills, providing letters of recommendation,  experience and connections to apply for the next step. For employers who have DEI goals, LIMS provides connections to girls whose interests, motivation and skills have been vetted through our program. For organizations willing to step further and be internship sites, we provide a tested, structured program and resources. 

Goal 1: Provide 44 Internships to Latinas in Year One and 486 by the end of Year Five

We aim to provide 44 internships in year one, 246 interns over the next three years and 486 interns total over the next five years.  Our first quarter is focused on revising our internship onboarding module, with four interns as alpha testers. We will add our creative (audio and graphic) internships in quarter two, software development in quarter three and project management in quarter four, with all internship options to be continued through the end of the five years.

Goal 2: 85% of interns will complete the six weeks of internship with their cohort

This goal is based on the history of success with this program, accomplished largely through maintaining open communication with interns and, as noted above, designing a program with their success in mind. Over the previous cohorts, 85% have completed, making this a reasonable goal. 

Goal 3: 90% of internship completers will graduate from high school and either attend college or become employed in a job that offers a career path.

Again, we have exceeded 90% with our programs to date through a combination of intensive mentoring and self-selection. With a maximum cohort size of 12, girls get individual attention that enables us to both intervene at the earliest sign of difficulty and help them identify their own career interests. Strategies that have been successful to date include introducing youth to professionals in the organizations in which they show interest, sharing opportunities for scholarships and open positions with interns and writing letters of recommendations to support post-secondary and employment applications. We cannot claim that success is all ours. Girls who show interest in and complete an internship focused on STEM careers are not a random sample from the population and tend to have above average motivation and ability, which makes them more likely to succeed after the internship. 

Goal 4: Final production of online materials for all four internship options.

The onboarding materials (internship session one) have undergone multiple revisions and we expect the final version completed by the end of year one, with feedback from our interns and mentors. We have less finished versions of the material for the other three internship options, which we will pilot and revise over the next three years, with a goal of having a turn-key solution for other organizations.

Goal 5: Recruit 25 more for-profit and non-profit organizations to provide internship positions and financial support.

We have multiple networks through which we can reach out to organization, including  the AARP Purpose Prize Alumni, International Game Developers Association and Minneapolis Community Solutions program, but our first step is to have a final product in terms of process and materials to share with these organizations.

We collect data on the number of youth who complete micro-internships each quarter, by gender, race, ethnicity and educational level. We also collect data on percentage of interns who complete an internship and number of partners accepting and funding interns. 

We also collect data on high school graduation, college attendance, college major, employment and career goals. In prior cohorts, this data collection was informal, as interns and their families followed up to let us know about their progress. 

Going forward, we plan more structured data collection and collection of process as well as outcome data. quarterly emailed follow-ups to interns to track outcomes and also to  check in whether we can provide assistance, for example, with letters of reference. We also will add interns to alumni Slack channels after their internships to maintain communication. Metrics, measurements and frequency of data collection for indicators are shown in the table below. All data sources will be recorded in a database maintained on our servers.

In addition to the outcome variables above, we will collect weekly data on process variables including the number of potential interns contacted via email, in person or social media, number of potential mentors contacted, number of organizations contacted and number of online resources created or revised.  The team lead will compile the data from online databases in a monthly report for the staff, mentors and mentees. Results will also also be posted on the organization website.

Our Logic Model progresses from situation to long-term outcomes as summarized below.

SITUATION

• Latinas underrepresented in STEM careers

• Lack STEM mentors, especially Latina mentors

• Perception that STEM fields are not welcoming to Hispanics

• Latinas have less interest in STEM courses

• Latinas are less academically prepared for STEM majors

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INPUTS

• Mentors from 7 Generation Games and partners

• Facilities in Minneapolis and Los Angeles

• Online platform with resources for communication and training

• Professional development materials for mentors

• Computers and Internet access

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ACTIVITIES

What we do

• Recruit mentors and mentor organizations

• Recruit interns from the community

• Provide training and resources to mentors, including bug testing educational software to teach mathematics, which is a major product line of 7 Generation Games

• Provide internships focused on teaching skills needed in STEM careers

Who we reach

• Latinas age 15-20 in Los Angeles and Twin Cities metropolitan area (in year 1), and expanding to southern California and the Midwest by year 5

• Professionals in organizations offering STEM internships in our target regions

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OUTPUTS

• Revised internship resources optimized for Latinas from underserved communities

• Trained interns

• Experienced mentors

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OUTCOMES

Short-term outcomes

• Increased intern knowledge of STEM career options and professional networks 

• Improved mathematics achievement and knowledge of computer applications - as both are correlated with student perceived usefulness and autonomy (Abín et al., 2020; Lowry et al., 2013).LIMS grew out of our research in underserved communities. Major factors in determining educational software usage are instructor preparation and access to computers, Braisel et al., 2016; De Mars, 2016). Formative data are necessary to evaluate both whether students are actively engaged in educational activities and whether learning is taking place (Hattie & Clarke, 2019; Sheridan, 2019) and efficacy data are necessary to document impact.Our model includes continuous data collection through multiple methods to monitor intern progress.
  

• Increased mentor knowledge of structure and resources to maximize success for Latinas from under-resourced communities

Medium-term outcomes

• Increase in applications to post-secondary institutions

• Increase in STEM courses taken by interns in high school and college, as performance in and attitude toward mathematics are major predictors of selecting STEM careers (Daker et al., 2021).

• Increase by mentors in volunteering to supervise Latina interns from underrepresented communities

Long-term outcomes

• Increased number of Latinas in STEM careers. Cognitive load theory (Sweller, 2020) posits that crucial to long-term memory storage is breaking down new information and integrating the parts with pre-existing knowledge. The more connections formed between the ‘chunks’ the greater deeper understanding occurs. 
      Many disciplines have a small set of 'archetypal problems' and once students become familiar with each problem type, their cognitive load is reduced, as learned strategies are applied to new problems. Exposing students to multiple examples of correct solutions to various problem types, whether in mathematics, coding or project management, increases their ability to solve future problems (Rosenshine, 2012; Sheridan, 2019).

• Increased number of Latinas in STEM careers serve as role models and mentors to Latina youth, thus creating a beneficial circle

Throughout the IAM internship, girls are exposed to common workplace technologies. Onboarding materials are hosted on a website, with the first week highlighting the diversity of jobs at a game studio. We are in the process of expanding the site to include STEM careers in other industries. To submit work assignments, from blogs to presentations for marketing meetings, girls use Google apps in the onboarding internship, with Office 365 added in subsequent internships. Blog posts are written using WordPress.

Onboarding internship (all)

• WordPress for blog posts
• Google Docs, Drive, Slides and Sheets for accessing and completing work assignments. Google meet for cohort meetings.
• bugzilla - For their quality assurance component, girls download and test games that teach mathematics and social studies, then report bugs.
• Slack - for communication with other cohort members and mentors
• Discord for communication among interns
• Google bard and ChatGPT for presentation outlines, draft emails and advanced search
• Filmora Go and iMovie for movie editing

All of the above technologies will be introduced in the first six weeks with additional usage and new features explained and applied in subsequent internships. After completing onboarding, girls can choose one of three internships, each of which introduces additional software, as noted below.

Creative internship

• Adobe Photoshop for photo editing
• Audacity for audio editing
• Adobe Premier for film editing

Project management internship

• Office 365 applications - Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams and OneDrive for accessing and completing work assignments. Teams for cohort meetings

Software Development Internships

• WebStorms Integrated Development Environment
• JavaScript/ HTML5 / CSS

Three full-time employees work on the solution team.

Maria Burns Ortiz, CEO, New York Times best-selling author, award-winning game designer and digital storyteller.

AnnMaria De Mars, President, statistician with Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, has taught mathematics and programming to students from middle school to graduate school.

Diana Sanchez, Project Manager with diverse educational experience from tutoring to producing educational games. 

All of our team members are bilingual in English and Spanish.

We started five years ago. Our first internships were 1:1, then we expanded to 3-6 interns at a time. Initially, interns came to our office, then we had a young woman from a reservation in North Dakota who needed to telecommute. During the pandemic, we offered all internships completely remotely. This year, we have had a mix of interns, some in our office in Minneapolis, two remote from the Dominican Republic and we are working with the Red Lake Nation in Minnesota to offer additional remote internships. We're seeking funding to add more internships.

Many companies talk about the value of DEI, but at 7 Generation Games, we embody it. Of our 11-member core team, over 90% is of color and more than half are women. This team makeup is almost unprecedented in the tech ecosystem. Our team is from the communities that we seek to serve. In Los Angeles, our team is 50% Latino and 25% African-American. Our Indigenous team members represent the Lakota, Navajo, Ojibwe and Cree nations. Of our non-Indigenous team members, over 60% are immigrants or children of immigrants. Age and disability are two areas of diversity often overlooked. Our core team includes a person with a visual impairment and another with physical limitations, and ranges in age from 25 to 67.

And it is not by pure luck that we have been able to fine strong and diverse talent in spaces – technology, education and gaming – that are overwhelming white-dominated and, in tech and gaming, overwhelmingly young and male. We have built the team we have from the ground up, with three of our developers coming up through our company as interns. Two of our founders are Latina, and we made a conscious decision when we started this company to create an inclusive corporate culture that reflects the communities we seek to serve and to provide job opportunities for those, who like ourselves, have been historically marginalized and excluded from this industry for far too long because they lack the social network connections or fail to fit the pattern matching criteria.

 We have been able to not only attract, but retain this diverse talent because of the corporate culture we have created. Our executive leadership tells every new hire, “You are here because we believe in you. If we didn’t think you were capable of doing this job, we would not have hired you. You do not have to prove that yourself to us.” And on more than one occasion, we have told new hires, “We know firsthand what it is like to be hired and feel as if you are being forced to carry the weight of being the sole representative of your community in an organization on your shoulders. You do not have to carry that here.” And they can look around at both the team we have created and the products we have produced and know what is true.  

Our commitment to DEI focuses not just on now, but the future. For five years, we have run a paid summer high school internship for at-risk youth to provide them firsthand industry experience and exposure to opportunities within our company and industry.

There are two major groups of beneficiaries of our solution, the girls who intern and the organizations who employ them. The value proposition we offer businesses and non-profits is the ability to both meet their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion goals and hire Latinas who are motivated to succeed and provided the scaffolding to enable their success. The value proposition for the interns is the ability to gain paid work experience while exploring STEM careers. A third group of beneficiaries are foundation and government organizations who have funding to pay interns and are searching appropriate placements. We have worked with one foundation in Minnesota and are in discussions with a second in California.

The key resources we bring to the table are our staff with expertise in software development, creating interactive media content and project management as well as mentoring interns from marginalized communities. We have office space in Minneapolis, co-working space in Los Angeles, licenses to all needed software and regularly receive donations of used computers and tablets that can be loaned to interns. In this project, we currently have two partners, one corporate and one non-profit, where girls can intern, in addition to 7 Generation Games, and will be seeking additional partners.We know both that the local community benefits from girls who are better educated and better employed and that the initial costs of the interns are not offset by the value of the work they can complete without assistance - hence the need for this program. Therefore, we are seeking underwriting from local governments to pay 50% of the costs of interns, with corporations bearing the additional 50%. We have one proposal under review with Hennepin County and will be applying to Los Angeles County.  The key activities undertaken are mentoring and training of interns, but in this process they will assist in software development and creation of content and assets (blog posts, graphics, audio clips) that are a benefit to the corporate partners. These products also benefit girls as they create a portfolio to use for future employment. Our current market segments are predominantly Latino communities in southern California and the Twin Cities. Our long-range plans include expanding geographically and expanding recruitment to predominantly Indigenous communities (where we already have staff and extensive history), African-American and low-income White communities. We began with these market segments because it is where our greatest strengths, as bilingual Latinas with deep roots in the communities, are major assets in outreach and communication.

To date, our business model has been a combination of service subsidization and organizational support. We are a for-profit company that makes educational games and the tools to make them. As part of our corporate responsibility, we have offered a few "first job" internships for underrepresented youth each year as part of a program that enabled us to develop and refine resources and procedures for mentorship. We recognized that these youth would require more mentoring from our supervisors and would not initially be as productive as the typical computer science major intern we hired from colleges. We are planning to expand the service subsidization in three ways, through local government contracts, corporate partners and foundations. We can continue to subsidize the resources in website development, mentor, intern training materials and a limited number of software licenses. We will continue and expand government, corporate and foundation support for interns' stipends, software licenses and hardware. As noted above, the benefit to corporations, including 7 Generation Games, is both addressing DEI goals and the potential to hired interns whose entry level experience has been subsidized and supported through IAM. 

Our current plan is to share our resources with other organizations at no cost, provide mentor training with staff salary supported through local government funding and have stipends, hardware and software supported through a combination of corporations paying 50%- 100% of the costs and the corporation where interns are placed covering the remainder of the cost. We have worked with a Minnesota non-profit that pays 50% of intern stipends, have a grant proposal under review to local government to cover intern stipends and staff salaries and are in discussions with a California non-profit that pays 100% of intern stipends.

Justification of the returns of this program to our investors are in terms of human resources, public relations and corporate connections. As a technology startup, attracting and retaining qualified technical personnel is a struggle. The "grow your own" strategy of hiring and developing from marginalized communities has enabled us to have high retention of interns who transitioned to junior developer and content creation positions. Much of our software has Latino or Indigenous history and culture story lines. Marketing to those communities and corporations who sell to them, the closer ties to the community by hiring youth is not only "good works" but also good business. Again, as a small company, wanting to subcontract and do business with the larger corporations, offering the internship program resources as a service causes them to be aware of us and our products and services. 

Our revenues increased from $201,000 in 2020 to $695,000 in 2022, primarily through payments for customized educational software development. We were awarded $50,000 from the Chilean government to develop educational resources in Chile, $25,000 from the National Science Foundation as part of the iCorps program and $1,000,000 from USDA for a COVID-19 Rapid Response grant to develop educational software for predominantly Indigenous communities. 

We have raised $400,000 over two seed rounds, $91,000 from three successful Kickstarter campaigns, and most recently, closing in January, 2023, we raised $78,000 from the WeFunder crowd equity platform. However, our funding has primarily been through federal grants and revenue from customized game development.