Social Capital Credits for Digital Workplace Inclusion

Most people, especially women and children in marginalized communities, have little access to the training they need to prepare for the transition to the 21st century workforce. Current education systems and workplaces measure the meaning of labor in terms of return on investment (RoI) but only for financial capital, ignoring both costs to social and ecological capital and potential opportunities. Social Capital Credits (SoCCs) leverage the social capital of communities to redefine the nature of work, building social and environmental capital along the way. While social capital is critically important to wellbeing, it has not been fully leveraged because before SoCCs, it was difficult to measure and impossible to exchange. Through Asia Initiatives’ methodology, people earn SoCCs for doing social and ecological good. Users can spend SoCCs on accessing education, digital skills and healthcare that enable marginalized people to become competitive in the digital economy. 

According to the 2018 United Nations Digest on Education Data, only 20% of youth and adults globally have the skills to work at any level in the digital economy. The problem is exacerbated for women and girls, the population we primarily serve, who are even less likely to have basic tech proficiencies. Asia Initiatives works in Lucknow, India with adolescent girls who live in informal settlements, or ‘slums.’ None of the 1,200 participating girls had ever sat in front of a computer before we set up digital literacy training and computer labs through a donation program that has sent 3,500 laptops to centers throughout India. 

The scale of the problem is massive and it persists because marginalized communities do not have access to the resources they need to upskill. The global proportion of schools with access to basic infrastructure like computers and internet is only 31% and yet the World Economic Forum predicts a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in which 133 million new jobs will emerge by 2022 that require digital literacy. Asia Initiatives has been working for years to help the most disadvantaged people bridge the gap through Village Knowledge Centers, skill empowerment, and other innovative solutions.

Social Capital Credits are open to anyone, but Asia Initiatives focuses on women and girls in marginalized communities who are disproportionately affected by the skills gap. In our project sites across India (in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand), Ghana, Kenya, and the United States, social norms limit women and girls’ access to digital training and resources and so this population is our focus. Asia Initiatives has impacted over 50,000 people, including farmers, artisans, youth, students, and the unemployed, including 24,000 people in 2019 alone. 

We believe that people closer to the problem are also closer to the solutions. Each SoCCs program begins with a “SoCCratic Dialogue” in which members of a community come together to discuss what changes they want to see and to strategize solutions. The dialogue is facilitated by our team through games and conversations, and by the end SoCCs Earning and Redeeming Menus are created. Participants can choose from the menus what they want, which ensures that each program is driven by grassroots knowledge and engagement. This is also how we effectively replicate and scale up the model in geographic locations as different as Washington, DC and Kumasi, Ghana.

Social Capital Credits (SoCCs) is a community currency that incentivizes social good. The methodology, which was the regional winner of the MIT Inclusive Innovation (Tech for Good) Challenge, winner of the Government of Andhra Pradesh Happy Cities Competition, and as a finalist of the Buckminster Fuller Award, has been successfully implemented in 18 sites across India, Ghana, Kenya and the United States. Participants earn SoCCs by performing an act of social good, like planting trees, tutoring peers, or cleaning up neighborhoods. SoCCs can then be redeemed for critical skill empowerment resources, like digital literacy sessions, career counseling, and occupational training. We are poised to improve the concept even further this year with the launch of an app and web platform so users can earn, redeem, and exchange SoCCs anywhere, at any time. 

SoCCs leverage persuasive technology for social good to incentivize behaviors that build and nurture communities, transforming social capital into a currency that can be traded and exchanged. People in marginalized communities may not have access to financial capital, but they have limitless opportunities to contribute value to their communities and SoCCs transforms that value into something they can capitalize on. For women who spend an entire day gathering water, cooking, cleaning, and working in the fields with no formal compensation, SoCCs provides liquid capital (in the form of SoCCs as currency) to access job training resources, including digital and financial literacy, that will make possible a better life and a place in the modern workforce.

Keeping up engagement with elements of fun and gamification, the SoCCs app will increase the tech skills of users and help us scale sustainably, rigorously track impact and assess trends in program participation. Equipped with this new technology, users from marginalized communities can access training and education resources of their own choosing, allowing the free market to work as it does best — but with social capital as the primary asset instead of money.

Our team has recognized that the digital skills gap is not driven by lack of content, but by barriers to access. SoCCs are innovative because they tackle the issue of access head on. Functioning similarly to a voucher or an airline point program, SoCCs participants will gain the power of consumer demand, even as they are shut out of financial systems. This not just empowers each individual who can earn SoCCs, but entirely changes the ecosystem of what kinds of training and skilling sessions will be available to marginalized populations. Putting the power back in the hands of people who know best what they need, services and accessibility improve to meet the unique conditions of each community.  

The beauty of SoCCs is that they empower communities to rise up together. Recognizing the importance of social capital that has gone ignored for so long, SoCCs reward those who do work that may otherwise be invisible to society by setting tangible, fungible benefits and elevating social and environmental capital to the same level as financial capital. In Lucknow, adolescent girls are using SoCCs to access skills on their own terms. Participants earn SoCCs by tutoring younger children in their own communities, and spend SoCCs on digital training. ‘SoCC-stars’ who have made exceptional contributions become eligible to apply for grants to start small businesses. SoCCs enable individuals to rise up themselves and take their communities with them.

Our theory of change is that rewarding people for doing work that helps their community with “social currency” will enhance the effectiveness of development programs and link marginalized groups to critical digital upskilling resources. 

This method has been shown to successfully multiply impact in our projects. To give one example, Asia Initiatives supported the women’s garment producer cooperative Ruaab SEWA based in New Delhi both before and after we began to implement SoCCs in 2015. With SoCCs, the number of women who attended cooperative planning meetings more than doubled. The number of cooperative savings accounts increased from zero in 2015 to 34 in 2016 and attendance at health awareness centers nearly doubled, all in just one year. The purpose of the SoCCs program with Ruaab was to increase productivity and reduce defective products submitted by coop members. Between 2014 and 2015, Ruaab lost Rs. 1,08,612 worth of business due to poor quality products and late deliveries. In 2015, that number dropped over 50%. After one year of SoCCs implementation, lost revenue dropped to zero, completely eliminating initial productivity issues. 

Women in Ruaab traded the SoCCs they earned for digital literacy for themselves and their daughters. Skill empowerment sessions enhance women’s abilities to effectively manage their garment cooperative and open up a world of new opportunities for their daughters. Not just a tool for digital literacy, SoCCs are a changemaker in fostering entrepreneurship and encouraging digital upskilling that is vital to ensuring that people succeed in the digital economy.

Social Capital Credits (SoCCs) have been successfully implemented in Ghana, Kenya, Costa Rica, India and the United States to alleviate poverty in underserved communities. SoCCs targets communities without access to financial capital, emphasizing that everyone can contribute to society, whether it be through skill, personal knowledge or simply the precious resource of time. Women especially contribute endless hours of labor to their families and communities that go unrecognized by financial measurements of development. 

Our eighteen active projects serve 24,000 people currently and over the past twenty years, Asia Initiatives has served over 50,000 people in a wide range of communities. In the region of Bundelkhand, India, women plagued by drought and food insecurity have stepped up to take leadership in water advocacy organizations, using SoCCs to promote digital literacy and kitchen gardens. In Kumasi, Ghana, market women have traded in their SoCCs for learning digital record keeping and other business skills and schools facing severe absenteeism due to teen pregnancies used SoCCs to encourage attendance and use of contraceptives. SoCCs gives us incredible flexibility to address each locality’s unique needs. In the coming year we plan to serve 40,000 people and in five years our goal is to increase our impact to several million individuals through a web and app platform which will enable communities to set up their own SoCCs exchanges. Increasing the use of SoCCs as a community currency will facilitate improved access to digital skilling, tech services, eGovernment, remote education and a limitless range of online services. 

We are planning to launch the SoCCs app this year and our goal is to roll out the program in each of our projects by the end of the year. This process will include a series of trainings and feedback from local partners and users, followed by customizations and adjustments. Once we have implemented and worked through the problems of the app in our current projects, we will strategize on making it available around the world in the next five years. With the help of PriceWaterhouseCooper, we are also beginning to explore blockchain technology to manage a vastly larger SoCCs network. This will enable our users to exchange SoCCs as currency and for SoCC managers to record and approve SoCC transactions with ease. Five years from now we expect to have a working blockchain system for our users to exchange SoCCs with each other and with local businesses and organizations, without Asia Initiatives or a local partner having to act as a mediator. 

We also have plans for programming expansion and replication. Asia Initiatives has implemented SoCCs in Washington, DC and Stamford, Connecticut, and is planning to expand to New York in a joint project with the New York Housing Authority. Existing programs are also scaling up with increased reach and number of beneficiaries. 

One barrier that we are facing is that in the short term development of Social Capital Credits, the list of items on the Redemption Menu, including digital skilling sessions, job training, and entrepreneurial development, are funded by Asia Initiatives through our fundraising, consulting and grant revenues. This is an impediment to scale, since cost per person does not significantly decrease with increased population usage. 

Second, the SoCCs app and web platform is ready for an initial launch, but there is still much room for improvement in technological development, like incorporating blockchain and other cutting edge innovations. Funding and finding expertise for this project and its future maintenance and development are two issues that we need to tackle. To reach the scale that we are planning, we also need funding for staff trained in overall management, communications, fundraising, help desk management, accounting and translations.  

Asia Initiatives is developing a model for corporate sponsorship that will establish sustainable funding for SoCCs. The model, which is called CorpSoCCs, which will allow business employees to earn SoCCs for volunteering and works of community good. Employees who earn SoCCs will be able to donate their SoCCs to a project of their choice, with matched funding from the corporations and a small fee charged by Asia Initiatives for each transaction. Employees who earn SoCCs will be recognized and applauded.  We are confident in the appeal that this will have for corporations, many of which are actively expanding their corporate social responsibility activity, encouraged by legislation and civil society organizations like B Corp, which are changing the conversation on how companies can be socially and ecologically responsible. We have already partnered in India with Oxygen, a digital service provider, and in conversations with Mastercard, Synechron, PwC and others to adopt this concept.

To build a more sophisticated app and web platform that will be flexible to our needs, we are working with tech companies like Groupement to incorporate technological expertise. We have also partnered with PriceWaterhouseCooper to investigate blockchain applications and have hired new staff with expertise in tech and product launch. 

Asia Initiatives is currently active in the United States. We have already completed two projects in Connecticut and Washington DC, and we are currently working to grow a project we piloted last year with  the New York City Housing Authority. We have been working with the local Police Precinct in the Polo Ground project with the goal of implementing SoCCs to improve the quality and safety of public spaces there. Women and youth in the project will be able to exchange their SoCCs for digital and other skills needed to succeed in the workplace. SoCCs will also be exchangeable for internships and one-to-one mentoring provided by partner companies and enable people to find meaning in their lives by helping others, taking on leadership roles, and working towards high quality jobs.  

Asia Initiatives also partnered with a summer program to serve junior and high school children from Northwest Portland who didn't have opportunities for summer camps or other enriching extracurricular activities. The program, which strengthened STEM subject skills, was run within one of the schools with the teachers they knew. Students earned SoCCs for completing worksheets and for helping younger children. Students redeemed their SoCCs for visits to museums and an amusement park. 

We have plans to provide similar services in NYC to Hour Children, a halfway house organization that supports formerly incarcerated women and their children. SoCCs will encourage them to feel capable and respected for helping their community and they will redeem SoCCs for digital upskilling and job placement.  

Full Time:

Dr. Geeta Mehta, President

Surabhi Prabhu, Project Director

Annesha Chowdhury, Program Associate

Part Time:

Robin Wilson, Project Associate

Shreya Malu, Technology Manager

Terrence Green, Project Associate

Besides our staff, we also have capable groups of people on our Board of Directors, Board of Advisors and Junior board who help us in many ways, including accounting, outreach and fundraising. We also have over 25 active volunteers who help us with their skills in design, technology and more. 

Our team is passionate about helping poor communities realize their own potential. Our emphasis on social capital as key to all development efforts distinguishes Asia Initiatives from other teams. We have over two decades of institutional experience running digital literacy and livelihood training programs in Africa and Asia. 

Dr. Geeta Mehta is the founder and president of Asia Initiatives. She is an Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Columbia University in New York and received her PhD in Urban Engineering from the University of Tokyo. 

Surabhi Prabhu is the Program Director at Asia Initiatives and previously worked as an Independent Equities Trader. She holds an MBA in Finance from Cleveland State University.

Annesha Chowdhury is an AI Program Associate and a PhD Scholar at the Academy of Conservation Sciences and Sustainability Studies at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. 

Shreya Malu has an Urban Design degree (Columbia University). She has lead design projects for institutional and industrial campuses and her research focuses on urban sustainability, equitable planning and inventive data analysis. 

Robin Wilson-Jayaraman has over 10 years experience working in microfinance and economic development both internationally and domestically. She has a B.A from Emerson College in Boston, an M.S. in Global Affairs at NYU and M.B.A from Baruch College. 

Terrence Green has a background in consulting with clients in financial services and customer experience. Terrence holds a Bachelors of Science in Information from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor.

Asia Initiatives is partnering with CampusGroup, an online platform for university students, that we are rebuilding and customizing for the purpose of building the SoCCs app. 

We also work with over ten local partners, including the Shohratgarh Environmental Society, Parmarth Samaj Sevi Sansthan, WomenStrong International, the Self Employed Women’s Association, Save Indian Farmers, and the M.S. Swaminathan Foundation. These organizations work with us to select a target population for SoCCs and co-implement programs. 

Our work with Social Capital Credits currently hinges on the effort of our users (social capital), a strong tech infrastructure, and financial capital from our sponsors and our own consulting revenues. We leverage our strong partnerships with local NGOs to offer training for digital upskilling to our users, and establish relationships with for-profit service providers. Establishing SoCCs in major markets requires an initial SoCCratic Dialogue where we conduct outreach to gain users and sponsors. Users contribute their time to perform acts of social good that benefit their communities in exchange for SoCCs, which are redeemed for skill empowerment. This service will be further facilitated for all categories of  users through the SoCCs app.

SoCCs is open both to youth and adults in marginalized communities who do not have access to financial capital for job training and skills resources. The value added to sponsors is the access to  an improved labor pool. Our revenue currently comes from private and grant funding, corporate support and consulting with other donor organizations such as WomenStrong International. Based upon our experience of consulting with the Mayor of Curridabat in Costa Rica and the government of Andhra Pradesh, we also plan to partner more with governments. The value proposition to governments is that an improved labor pool is also an improved tax base. 

The long-term plan for financial sustainability hinges on a few different sources of revenue. First, although most grassroots partners and sponsors will be able to use the platform at no cost, larger companies can be charged a small fee to use our platform to distribute their services. This aligns with the CorpSoCCs model that allows corporate employees to volunteer to earn SoCCs, and donate them to the project of their choice, with matching funds from the business. Strategic social responsibility is becoming more and more important to corporations and the value of our distribution channels to reach beneficiaries has value that we can put a price on. 

Second, we will expand our requests for government funding. There is a clear cost-benefit analysis for public funds to be spent on SoCCs for a Digital Workforce, since equipping people will employable skills will increase the employment rate, which will in turn increase the tax base. This program also does not require significant additional governmental bureaucracy, since SoCCs will allow participants and sponsors to engage directly with each other without making central planning necessary. Third, we are also exploring the option to let companies advertise through the SoCCs app and web platform, since we work with the upwardly mobile demographic which is becoming an important consumer group for many businesses and advertisers. 

Asia Initiatives is poised to radically scale its impact and transform the lives of millions of people. At this critical juncture, being selected by the Digital Workforce Challenge would boost our ability to reach the scale and impact that we are aiming for in a few ways.

First, our goal is to establish the SoCCs App such that groups of people will be able to set up their own SoCCs communities as a part of a grassroots movement that changes the culture of work and service. To accomplish this, we need to initiate a media campaign and the opportunities for this through ServiceNow will kickstart that process.

Second, building the app that we need will require a initial influx of capital expenditure. Prize funds will assist with this one-time costs and updates and maintenance can be covered by sustainable revenue models. 

Third, at a time of transformation for the organization and for our model, mentoring insights will be invaluable, especially when it comes to building revenue into the service itself. Mentorship and strategy assistance from ServiceNow will help us as we implement new revenue models and choose what our priorities are. 

There are three types of partners that we are searching for. First, we are looking for corporate partners who will engage in our new employee volunteer engagement model, CorpSoCCs. We have already established conversations with Synechron, PwC and Mastercard.

Second, partnerships with tech companies will boost our capacity to build a stronger app and web platform that can scale and be flexible enough to meet our needs. Google, Microsoft, MIT and blockchain startups would all be great potential partners for this purpse.

Third, local nonprofit and implementation partners are vital for establishing relationships on the ground and making SoCCs a success. In the US and Ghana we are looking for high quality nonprofit organizations that can implement SoCCs to multiply their impact.