Digital Starling

Digital Starling addresses the dual challenge of gender inequality and limited access to talent faced by businesses worldwide. In Europe, for instance, where 43% of startups have frozen hiring since the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for cost-efficient digital support remains critical for their sustenance and growth. Meanwhile, with 73% of managers turning to freelancers amidst projections of continued hiring freezes, the necessity for affordable digital solutions is ever-evident. This trend, further fueled by pandemic-induced economic strains, highlights the importance of addressing systemic barriers hindering especially women’s participation in the workforce and providing businesses with access to essential talent.

Digital Starling is a new venture of The Code to Change, a nonprofit organization that aims to close the digital divide by empowering women with digital skills. Whereas currently available platforms do not offer accessible entry to women in marginalized communities, especially in developing markets, Digital Starling is pioneering a talent marketplace where these skilled yet often overlooked professional women can access meaningful job opportunities in tech-related fields, such as web development, UX/UI, data science, and machine learning engineering. Leveraging an advanced NLP- and Generative AI-powered platform, Digital Starling effectively matches these professionals with startups and businesses facing budget constraints, enabling them to achieve their digital goals and drive business growth. In bridging this gap between talent and demand, Digital Starling fosters economic empowerment for women, contributing to the global pursuit of gender equality and inclusive economic development. The platform is complemented by our academic offerings, including courses in AI and ML using Python, virtual assistant training, and digital skills training bootcamps. With a commitment to accessibility, focused learning, and providing the latest technology and data skills, our solution facilitates women in scripting their own futures, and ultimately achieving financial independence.

How it works:

1. A pipeline of skilled professional women: In Pakistan, there is a pool of highly skilled women seeking quality employment opportunities, often constrained by local limitations or unfamiliarity with the freelance market.

2. Pipeline of Global Startups: There are numerous startups worldwide in need of digital expertise but constrained by budgetary constraints or difficulty in finding suitable talent within their local markets.

3. Pairing with AI Power: Digital Starling is building an intelligent NLP-powered algorithm, incorporating semantic extraction techniques and other NLP methodologies with Generative AI, to match female talent from emerging markets with career opportunities spanning the globe and various industries. We currently have a proof of concept which we seek to further develop.

Our solution is dedicated to directly and meaningfully improving the lives of women, including refugees, migrants, and other vulnerable populations, where a pronounced digital divide persists. These groups face significant barriers to accessing digital resources and opportunities owing to limited access to technology, financial constraints, inadequate education, and cultural and legal norms restricting their participation in the workforce. As a result, they are often excluded from the benefits of the digital revolution, perpetuating cycles of inequality and limiting economic empowerment. 

The Code to Change team embodies a deep commitment to empowering women. We have a proven track record of empowering nearly 15,000 women through digital skills training programs over the last 10 years. Our operational team, comprising professionals in project management, curriculum development, and training, actively engages with the communities we serve to understand their needs, preferences, and aspirations. This collaborative approach ensures that our work is appropriately informed and has earned The Code to Change a nomination for the UNESCO Prize for Girls and Women's Education, showcasing our significant impact on gender equality. 

The organization has won the ITU's EQUALSinTECH 2023 award for their 10 years of service to bridge the digital skills gap and the associated gender digital divide. 

The Code To Change has made significant strides with the Digital Starling platform even before its official launch. In our 2020 Fall digital skills training session piloted in Pakistan, we received over 300 applications for just 200 available slots, showcasing strong demand and interest for the program. Of these participants, we matched 10 to female founded enterprises for paid assignments. Furthermore, the platform has already received job requests for brand and website design, animations, and video creation from startup founders worldwide, indicating widespread need in the global market. 

Beyond the development of Digital Starling, The Code To Change has provided artificial intelligence and machine learning training to over 75 women in the Netherlands and Germany and empowered refugee and migrant women with digital skills in six European countries. Furthermore, our global trendsetters and indigenous women campaigns in the United States have raised awareness and provided training opportunities for over 600 women. In Pakistan, our digital skills bootcamps and financial inclusion strategies have impacted thousands of lives. With a focus on curriculum design, implementation, and job placement support, our commitment to long-term impact is evident, with over 45% of graduates entering the job market within three months of completing our programs, resulting in a cumulative impact on over 20,000 lives worldwide. We aim to increase this percentage to above 80% of graduates applying for and finding jobs within 3 months.

We are applying to this Challenge in order to leverage the MIT Solve network and resources to overcome key barriers hindering the expansion of our solution. Financial constraints are especially limiting our ability to expand our training programs, enhance the platform's technology infrastructure, and increase outreach efforts. Solve's connections can help us access partners who can work with us to address technical challenges related to platform optimization, cybersecurity, and scalability, enabling us to better serve our community of users. With our priority on building up the platform through iterative testing, we are keen to find the right partners to scale and ensure we meet our impact targets.

Digital Starling's innovation lies in its integrative approach to addressing the gender-based digital divide and economic empowerment of women and girls.  In contrast to conventional programs, which often present barriers to access and navigation for these populations, our solution is designed to overcome these challenges. We prioritize equipping individuals with skills specifically tailored to meet the demands of the job market, facilitating their access to meaningful employment opportunities, and advocating for their inclusion and accommodation in the workforce. This approach ensures that our solution not only addresses immediate skill gaps but also fosters long-term economic empowerment and societal change.

Our theory of change is grounded in the belief that providing women and other marginalized groups access to digital skills training, tailored entrepreneurship programs, and a platform for showcasing their talents will empower them to engage fully in the digital economy, breaking down barriers to economic opportunity and gender inequality. Through our solution, individuals acquire the skills and resources necessary to secure digital jobs, whether as freelancers or within startups and businesses seeking digital support. This immediate outcome of enhanced digital literacy and job prospects directly contributes to long-term economic empowerment, gender equality, and social inclusion.

We anticipate that our solution will bring about transformative change by actively involving our target populations throughout the design and implementation process, ensuring direct responsiveness to their needs and aspirations. We prioritize meaningful community input and feedback, incorporating their perspectives into our programmatic activities and strategic decision-making. This participatory approach, which platforms like LinkedIn and Upwork do not fully embrace, not only strengthens the relevance and effectiveness of our solution but also fosters a sense of ownership and empowerment for the beneficiaries.

1. Bridging the digital gender divide: Our first goal is to significantly reduce the digital gender gap by increasing access to digital resources and opportunities for women and girls. We measure progress towards this goal by tracking the number of participants in our digital literacy workshops, entrepreneurship programs, and job connection opportunities, as well as monitoring the increase in the digital skills and confidence levels of participants over time.

2. Economic empowerment: Our second goal is to empower our beneficiaries economically by providing them with access to income-generating opportunities in the digital economy. Progress towards this goal is measured by monitoring the number of individuals who secure jobs through our platform, the average income they earn, and the overall increase in their financial independence and stability.

3. Promoting gender equality: Our third goal is to contribute to the advancement of gender equality on a global scale. We are committed to facilitating mentoring and creating more role models for women to enter the STEM space. To gauge our progress, we assess the representation of women and girls and the frequency of businesses actively seeking talent on our platform and track shifts in attitudes toward gender equality among the communities we engage with.

4. Financial Inclusion of Women: Our fourth goal is to ensure that our target audience has access to and control of their finances so that they can lead a more dignified and independent life and be able to support their families and communities. 

Digital Starling integrates AI technology into a talent marketplace, leveraging advanced NLP-powered algorithms to automate job matching while continuously learning from user feedback and data insights to adapt to evolving user needs and the dynamic digital economy. Enhanced by user-friendly interfaces and intuitive features, the platform maximizes accessibility and usability. Moreover, Digital Starling disrupts the freelancing landscape by including blockchain technology as a potential payment option. Digital Starling adopts an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), allocating 25% of coins to founders, 5% for referrals, and 70% for circulation. This strategy enables transactions within this ecosystem using our own cryptocurrency, convertible to ETHER or fiat currencies, thus eliminating the need for costly bank intermediaries and reducing transaction times. The roadmap to realizing this includes launching the ICO at the end of June 2024, followed by a test pilot of crypto transactions starting August 1, 2024.

Full-time: 2

Part-time: 6

So far we have spent 3.5 years, focused on testing and market research.

At The Code to Change, diversity, equity, and inclusion are core values that permeate every aspect of our organization. Under the leadership of Ms. Iffat Gill, a resilient leader from a persecuted religious minority in Punjab, Pakistan, we are deeply committed to empowering marginalized women facing economic challenges. Our staff and advisory board embody this dedication with the majority being women experienced in women's rights. Furthermore, we prioritize the employment of women from our training programs, providing internal advancement opportunities before external hiring. This intentional approach reflects our organizational ethos of being led by and for our constituents. 

The Code to Change operates as a diversity and inclusion nonprofit enterprise, focused on bridging the skills gap in the ICT sector and promoting digital inclusion for underrepresented groups, particularly women. We collaborate with a diverse range of clients (small to medium-sized enterprises, corporations, financial institutions, NGOs, and governmental organizations) to facilitate access to high-potential diverse talent and provide informational seminars, webinars, and advanced level bootcamps tailored to their specific needs. Among our offerings are bespoke B2C and B2B reskilling and up-skilling programs designed to equip participants with the digital skills required to thrive in the digital economy. Additionally, we provide consultation services for stakeholders seeking to acquire diverse talent and offer customized digital solutions to address their unique challenges in outreach to underrepresented communities. Our wrap-around services include trainings in: 

• AI & ML

• Python and Data Analytics + ChatGPT tools

• Full-stack web development

• Virtual assistance and basic IT tools

• UI/UX design

• Digital skills 

• Web development

• Video editing

• Content writing

• Blogging/SEO

• Online freelancing

• Female tech entrepreneurship 

• Financial literacy

• Introduction to blockchain literacy

Alongside these tailored programs and services, we are steadfast in our commitment to empower women to program their own futures by providing access to professional mentorship, uplifting community support, and career opportunities in the technology industry centralized in our Digital Starling platform. In 2024, Digital Starling is set to scale across Western Europe, with ambitious targets in tow. By the year's end, we envision a digital talent pool comprising 2000 women freelancers and 500 clients. By 2025, we anticipate reaching 1000 clients, 4000 freelancers, and 10,000 projects across Europe. This period will also mark the addition of two employees to the team, as well as expansion of our offerings, incorporating analytics into our vertical and upskilling in data science. 

Our financial sustainability plan for Digital Starling is built on a diverse revenue model. We aim to generate income through fees from reskilling programs, consultation services, and job-matching offerings. Similar to our pursuing the Solve Challenge, we are actively applying for donations and grants, and planning to raise investment capital. Our current goal is to raise a sum of $500,000 to fuel platform development and expansion for a period of 2 years. This funding will be allocated as follows: 

• Platform development and scaling: $150,000

• Personnel (including both operational teams and development staff): $250,000

• Partner and member acquisition: $100,000.