Recode Digital Empowerment

The rise in youth unemployment and high levels of young people who work but still live in poverty is a global issue, but it hits even harder in Brazil due to giant inequality. 25 million Brazilians between 15 and 29 years old are currently economically disengaged. In response, Recode champions an ecosystem for digital empowerment in Brazil and other 7 countries, having impacted over 1.7 million lives since 1995. We partner with local-based community organizations to deliver educational programs that introduce youngsters from low income communities to digital world by building skills for a ethical use of internet while building social awareness, creativity and computational thinking. We are currently scaling up by expanding our reach and scope to impact 1.2 million people over the next 5 years through the empowerment of our students to capture the unmet and ever-growing demand for jobs requiring digital skills.

Empowering youth for a positive use of technology is the start for the community-driven change we envision, but to face the socioeconomic challenges in Brazil in a large and sustainable scale also requires that we tackle the employment gap in the technology market, targeting youth employment in productive well-paying jobs. Recent economic research shows that skill-based education, both to employment and on-the-job training, is the most effective path for accelerating social inclusion. Brazil ranks 28th among 30 OECD countries in social mobility - it takes 9 generations for descendants of bottom 10% income families to reach the country’s average income. This sticky floor persists and perpetuates one of the most severe social inequalities worldwide – the country is the 89th most unequal out of 93 in a 3-year average of Gini Index. While 25 million young people are currently disengaged, 15% of current jobs tend to be substituted by technology until 2030, affecting especially low-skilled vulnerable workers. Despite progress from redistributive policies, systems have failed to promote sustainable social mobility, especially due to weak quality of educational services accessed by broad population.

Transforming a generation through digital empowerment, our mission since 1995, requires coordination of multiple actors – governments, educators, communities’ representatives and employers – to create an ecosystem to digitally connect youth. Through Recode's educational programs we aim to inspire autonomy in our students to be agents of social transformation who make ethical use of technology to impact their communities, promoting civic entrepreneurship and economic inclusion. 

In 2018, we've reached 23.000 students through 689 digital empowerment centers located in all of Brazilian states. These students are young people from 14 to 29 years old, mostly women (55%), half are non-white and 52% are coursing or haven't completed primary formal education. 

Our solution can be delivered to millions of people in Brazil and around the world because of our capillarity. Our new technical educational track will scale up our partnerships with tech employers to capture 15-20% of the unmet demand for labor with digital skills, creating 250 thousand job opportunities over 5 years with salaries 5x higher than the average of our students’ households. For every student employed, we expect ten applicants to the selection process enrolling in introductory courses and three additional people in their households benefiting from their income.

We developed a highly successful and awarded pedagogical approach that effectively provides students with professional, social and emotional competencies for the 21st century. The millions of youngsters we reached with our courses are empowered by ideas on how technology can transform their lives and surroundings, feeding our funnel for technical education. 

The phase one of our solution will provide students from poor socioeconomic backgrounds the opportunity to take Recode's introductory courses on technology, including introduction to the digital world, project management and apps for impact, and exponential technologies. This content also focuses on developing student's socio-emotional competencies. This processes finishes with an ideathon that offers the opportunity to develop, test and apply their own ideas to change their reality in pressing matters, while offering them mentorship and validating their learning process. In the short term, we aim at changing not only the digital and socio-emotional skills of economically disengaged young people in Brazil, but their capacity to understand and apply technology in a responsible way to transform their society. 

To promote medium term impact on education policies and on corporate employment practices, among other initiatives, we formed Coalizão Rio Digital, a coalition of 24 firms committed to upskill and employ young talents in Rio de Janeiro, having impacted 956 people since 2018. In 2019, we are launching phase two of this initiative to offer youngster who have little access to high quality formal educational and who want a career in technology the necessary technical training and job opportunities. 

This pilot's business model was validated by Accenture by a thorough assessment of the organization's internal proceedings which led to a solution to further develop youngster's competency. Atento and Accenture are currently financing our next 400 students to be employed until the end of 2019 either as full stack programmers or data analysts. 

A large scale initiative will involve a campaign and selection process for students with guaranteed jobs by the end of a free course of 6 months, forming diverse cohorts in economic, racial and gender terms. A comprehensive process of mobilization will entail dialogue with the young people from different communities, technology companies and other stakeholders like Brasscom, a Brazilian association of companies working with information and communication technology. We have established a partnership with Centro Paula Souza, a government autarchy which offers public technical training in both secondary and superior levels for over 297 thousand students. 

Recode Pro is bringing technology into the lives of young people who would otherwise probably be excluded from the job market and wouldn't have access to digital tools that could positively impact their lives and the social problems faced by their communities. Supported by Accenture's mentorship, we designed a business model for a social venture that will successfully address important social problems (economical inclusion and access to transformative community-driven technology) while providing a relevant service to corporations who need to qualify and reskill their professionals as well as fill up new job openings that require specific technological expertise. 

This solution is innovative for a number of reasons. Firstly, it has an unique approach that combines market oriented services with a communication strategy targeting young people in situations of vulnerability because it draws from Recode's own educational methodology. This process is also unique because if offers students a completely free and high-quality education, since the employer will fully pay for the student's qualification without any expenses for the selection and HR process. The educational content developed by this pilot will be available at Recode's online platform and it will be a program oriented by the "train the trainer" methodology so it can be easily re-applied anywhere and it will have immense scalability potential. These are the factors that lead to a brand new form of use technology for social inclusion, connecting employers and talents in a mobilization and training process that derives from Recode's proved experience and operation capacity.  

There are key technologies being applied in new and innovative ways in our solution. From basic technologies such as online courses offered to students and educators by an online platform, and the use of social networks to engage and mobilize new students in our targeted audience (from 14 to 29 year-olds) to pedagogical content on the digital world. The educational program offered by this solution is divided in introductory modules (which include general digital literacy, project management and impact apps, and exponential technology) and technical modules to qualify professionals for the job market (full stack developer and data analysis). 

Our two-phased solution is designed to reach different short term and medium term impacts. One output is the mobilization of young people from socioeconomic unprivileged backgrounds to be trained in Recode's educational program. We aim at promoting youngsters' capacity of analyzing their reality and promoting effective solutions with the use of technology. We also envision them with the autonomy and the socioemotional abilities to promote an ethical use of technology. They will work as agents for social change and create a chain of impact at the community level: their surroundings will be more aware of the challenges in the 4th industrial revolution and of the necessity of developing the knowledge and expertise of other young people. 

Part of the youngsters impacted by this initial phase will want to have career opportunities in the technology field and will be given the chance to further their technical training in Recode's Pro, the second phase of this solution. By giving them high-quality professional training, developing their skills and connecting them with their first job opportunity we expect firstly to provide them with high-paying jobs which will lead to certain economic inclusion in the medium to long term. This will lead to a more democratic and inclusive economy since the technologic market will no longer be unavailable for people from the lower social extracts of society. Also important is the impact this solution will have for companies who will invest efficiently in skilled labour with costs equivalent to a regular salary in the field.

In 2018, our organization impacted more than 23,000 young people in our 8 countries of action, taking the initial trail of Digital Empowerment, formed by 5 courses, held in the 689 community centers, libraries and partner schools of the project.

In 2019, our goal was to expand these possibilities with a focus on more advanced courses that build human capital for the opportunities of the 4th Industrial Revolution and with that promote a continuing education for these young people. In this pilot phase, the support of Accenture Brasil allowed us to deepen in a diagnosis, to understand context and opportunities.

With this in mind, in this first phase of the project, we expect to develop the training of 500 young people in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in addition to expanding the offer of courses according to the identified demands. Our desire is to create an employability hub capable of creating adequate bridges between the youth and the technology labor market in Brazil.

We want until 2024 to have approximately 50,000 young people prepared for the job market, through Recode Pro, filling more than 10% of the vacancy opportunities that will arise in the next 05 years.

This growth will be possible, thanks to the capillarity of Digital Empowerment Centers, Recode partners, for the multiplication of contents, as well as a team dedicated exclusively to the project.

Recode has different tools and strategies to amplify and scale its educational programs and different technology-based projects (virtual reality for impact, for instance). The first tool is the online educational platform in which we are constantly making improvements and designing new content on different technologies and related subject. We expect in the next year to make available on this platform the content of the technical programs used in this solution to train and skill young people for the technology market (courses on data analysis and full stack developer). In five years, we expect to have diverse content available for all Recode's interventions: gaming, digital marketing/SEO, social entrepreneurship, startup management and leadership, amongst others. 

In the next year, we expect that our employability program (Recode Pro) will have successfully implemented its pilot phase in two states (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) and will be scaling up to reach all of Brazilian states and filling out thousands of job opportunities in the technologic market, transforming the lives of poor young people and their communities country-wide. 

Lastly, we want to impact millions of lives over the next five years by amplifying our capillarity in different countries and investing in the translation of our online educational platform for english as well as spanish and investing in network coordination. Our mobilization strategies with different stakeholders - non-profit local-based organizations, schools, local and national governments, libraries, corporate social responsibility sectors and international private initiative - will help get us there.

The low quality of Brazilian public education is one of the great challenges to be overcome in projects of this nature, which, however, we identify as a great opportunity to act as an important social actor for the development of these skills and abilities required in this new scenario of the future of work. From the investment point of view, it will be important to create an excellent inter-sectoral articulation, capable of influencing companies across Brazil, to offer job openings to young people in social vulnerability, making work relations more equitable and diverse. This is in line with addressing global social responsibility agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

Unemployment in Brazil has been increasing, which increases the competitiveness of entry into the labor market, regardless of the socioeconomic levels of the youngsters. However, it is important to point out that when talking to the main technology companies present in Brazil, there is a demand for opportunities still not met, when we go to the specifics of the vacancies. We identify this as timely, provided that our focus is on high quality training development.

To work with young people in social vulnerability requires the introductory development of socio-emotional competencies and alignment of basic formative contents, so as to give adequate development conditions to meet the demands of existing opportunities. Breaking this paradigm is constant and promoting an influence in society on these issues is of great importance.

To create an excellent inter-sectoral articulation is possible through our efficient mobilization strategies, which include Coalizão Rio Digital (a coalition of companies in Rio de Janeiro to promote inclusive technology) and partnerships with strategic stakeholders such as Brasscom (an association of companies working with communication and informational technology), but also non-profit local-based organizations, schools, local and national governments, libraries, corporate social responsibility sectors and international private initiative. 

Our advocacy strategy will support and provoque improvements in primary and secondary public education, artifulating for the successful inclusion and offer of technology courses in the national comum curricular base. This will imply a medium term strategy with federal and state governments as well as legislative advocacy. The support of different stakeholders and Recode's ambassadors is essential here. 

Finally and most important, successfully addressing young people's vulnerability means improving and developing our methodologies and educational contents and communication, but also our relationship with the different communities we want to impact and our method of listening to young people and getting them involved in our projects, from design to implementation and evaluation.

All employees of the organization work full time. Recode has approximately 30 employees and collaborators. The solution team includes a fully dedicated project manager, and the partial dedication of different sectors of the organization: a communication coordination and staff, and operational director and staff including the evaluation team, an administrative team, a CEO and the president of the organization.  

In 2018 alone, Recode impacted 23,000 young Brazilians to achieve the necessary skills and digital empowerment through our own tried and tested methodology. We have developed a way to identify the potential of each individual from the recognition of challenges and the ability to solve social problems. We propose creative digital solutions and collaborative processes, so that participants recognize each other with more opportunity and tools for decision making. Our content also develops some of the key socio-emotional skills of the 21st century among young people. 

With the support of Accenture, we have developed a social business model, RecodePro, which will allow us to take the next step towards digital empowerment in Brazil: to connect young talents who are part of the Recode community with the available positions in the market, offering technical training.

This service generates considerable savings for employers in recruitment and training budgets, creating space to charge a fee and finance operations in the long run. The average tech firm in Brazil expects to take 6 months on average to on board entry-level programmers, however our proprietary methodology aims to reduce it to one month. Savings for employers enables this social venture to charge with a markup to guarantee the long-term sustainability of the whole organization and integral reinvestment of earnings. Current business plan to be constantly sharp- ened by learnings forecasts total revenues12 at $40 million over 5 years and $10 million in net profits to be fully reinvested in this social venture. 

Recode has a department of institutional development responsible for managing different fundraising strategies and relationship with partners and donors, both in Brazil and internationally. Recode is part of Global CDI, an international network of centers of digital empowerment that apply our methodology and our resources, although fully applied in Brazil, can impact this network that accesses our educational content. Specifically for the solution proposed here on Solve's challenge, we are dedicating the organization efforts to raise donations and grants to implement the pilot and growing phase of the project. The solution is a social venture that will sell a special and innovative service that will assure its sustainability and growth, according to our business model. 

We know our potential to impact millions of lives through digital empowerment. Through careful evaluation of impact, we have proven that our educational track is efficient and transformative. Nonetheless, we are aware of our necessities for institutional development and to grow towards our long term goal means furthering our access to other innovative hubs and ecosystems. We have been forming an alliance in Brazil to advance our solution and bring about a method for economic inclusion of poor young people through the use of technology. We carefully designed this solution with the help of Accenture, but Solve MIT could certainly be a catalyser. Through mentorships, new contacts with investors and enhancement of our social media and public exposure, we would benefit from a priceless communication strategy and improve our relationship with international partners who we don't yet access. 

Secondly, to face the barrier of Brazilian low quality public education we need to provide equal conditions to young people of lower income. Through perfecting our evaluation methods and assessing the necessary support we need to provide, we believe we would maximize our impact and guarantee the efficiency of a scale model for our solution. We believe Solve mentors, community and experts are the right fit to help us get there. 

Advancing our solution through mentorship, peer review, sharing our practices with other teams working with technology and education, and other Solve proposed processes, like Brain Trust, will be differential in our final results and the sustainability of our initiative.

The highlighted prize will allow us to deepen the development of new training contents in line with the context analysis, providing that these contents are in adequate formats and with the highest level of quality and innovation. 

Investing in the structuring of dedicated and multidisciplinary teams for project operation, such as educators, managers, consultants in education and technology, will be very significant with the advent of this resource. We believe that this will allow us to dialogue with young people in social vulnerability of communities in Brazil, who in this case could be close to the GM’s factory plant. This would allow a meaningful dialogue between young people and possible mentors of the company, promoting the cultural exchange of these participants.

The resource also allows us to deepen our methodology of evaluation and social impact, creating focused research for the continuous improvement of the project, as well as to develop studies and analysis of best practices, meeting with focus groups represented by different social actors participating in the project, such as: young people, teachers, contractors, public authorities and others.

It will be possible to launch an impact challenge using technologies for social transformation and problem solving, stimulating the formation of transforming agents of realities.