Dignified opportunities for women

In sub-Saharan Africa more than 49 million girls are out of primary and secondary school, early marriage and teenage pregnancy are significant factors where teen pregnancy prevalence in East Africa is 21.5%. This undermines their rights and limits their opportunities. Our program aims at mitigating challenges that young women face due to lack of quality education. Our solution consists of training young women on computer literacy/skills. This will enable them access information on job offers and get accurate information on SRH that will help them to prevent teenage pregnancies. This will also enable them to have access on a wide range of opportunities such as online courses where they can also learn about entrepreneurship. If the project is scaled globally, it will reach many disadvantaged young women and open doors to educational and employment opportunities for them. Thus they will be able to pull themselves out of poverty and unemployment

In 2018, the global unemployment rate of women was approximately 0.8 percentage points higher than that of men. In developing countries, 58% (116million) of those who didn’t complete primary school are young women aged 15-24. The unemployment rate in Rwanda is 15.40% and youth unemployment rate is of 19.60% where women in urban areas rank higher than men. In 2010/11, the median monthly salary for men was 22,000Rwf compared with 13,200Rwf for women.

Reasons associated with these differences are lower education level because of women perceived responsibilities in communities which also results into lack of skills. Another reason of this gap is lack of information on SRH which may result in consequences such as unwanted and unplanned pregnancies. In order to achieve sustainable and inclusive development, we must remain committed to advancing universal access to quality sexual and reproductive health and rights as a foundation.

My proposed solution will contribute to the freedom to work by choice, in conditions of dignity, safety and fairness to young women. From an economic perspective, reducing gender gaps in labor force participation could substantially boost global GDP even on lower scales such as regional and country levels. 

Our solution consists of educating and enhancing digital literacy and skills to adolescents and young women from rural communities in Rwanda. We will teach them computer skills; how they can search for information, access and analyze it and use it for their advantage. As they can’t all have their own computers, we will use the youth friendly centers rooms; they have computers. We will have online learning where adolescent girl and young women will sign up to free online courses. We will have a database of courses chosen based on what is more needed on the world’s market. Entrepreneurship and sexual and reproductive health education will be mandatory for everyone. Our solution will have 2 processes: the theoretical and practical parts. The practical part will include having online meetings with the employers and job recruiters in order to learn what they are looking for in employees, and virtual meetings with business owners to inspire them and teach them entrepreneurship core skills. All the knowledge and skills acquired will help them to secure an employment and/or become entrepreneurs with healthy SRH habits. 

We are targeting adolescent girls and young women aged 7 to 24 years old, from rural communities of Rwanda. Rural women play a key role in supporting their households and communities. Yet, every day, around the world, they face persistent structural constraints that prevent them from fully enjoying their human rights and hamper their efforts to improve their lives and those around them. In this sense, we came up with this program that will help them to acquire information on employment, entrepreneurship and SRHR. The program will also help them to get knowledge and skills that will help them to achieve growth and success.

Digital literacy increases productivity, allows one to improve their efficiency, access to things and information. Nowadays things are constantly evolving and digital technology is slowly becoming an essential component of many people’s lives. As time goes on, more and more people are utilizing these technologies in their everyday lives, whether for work, or in the home. Being able to keep up with the news happening across the world, or accessing resources from libraries tens of thousands of miles away are just some of the perks you can enjoy with digital literacy. 

About 5.4 million out of its estimated 11.8 million people under 18 years old. Rwandan children have almost universal access to primary education. Although the net enrollment rate is 98%, approximately half of students are still not acquiring an adequate foundation of knowledge. Our program offers extra curriculum learning opportunities on digital and entrepreneurship skills that will help young women aged 7 to 24 years old to acquire more knowledge that will open more opportunities for them.

In Rwanda, there is one organization that has the same program. They train young people on digital literacy so that they can create social enterprises, self-employment, and jobs in the digital economy. Our solution uniqueness is that we have a specific target group; adolescent girls and young women whom statistics show that they are less included in education programs. Another thing that makes our program unique is that we will also address other challenges that women face frequently in their lives, so that they get healthy lifestyles. Those challenges are teenage pregnancies, early marriages, maternal and new born deaths. Our innovation is also unique because we are open to all fields of work after the completion of the program and the graduates will continue to get follow up after the program completion. We will continue to guide and assist them to get job and/or create their own jobs.

Our program will use new application of an existing technology. It will be a digital literacy program that will help adolescent girls and young women to get knowledge, skills and information that they will use to get employment, create they own businesses and improve their lifestyles. The program is based on computer knowledge and its functionalities. It will also involve internet and research skills which the beneficiaries will develop along the program.

The key components of our solution are computer/ laptop devices and internet routers. They will be used to gain digital literacy skills which are considered as necessary or standard skills. The skills will used by adolescent girls and young women to get connected to our online database of courses that we will use to educate them to get other skills that will help them to get employment and become entrepreneurs. 

Our technology is less commonly used. In Philippines, they have adopted the same program for the same purpose of alleviating poverty. It is briefly mentioned in this piece https://www.diplomacy.edu/resources/general/teaching-computer-literacy-alleviate-poverty. Our program is also linked to the Global Education 2030 Agenda by the United Nations’ specialized agency for education UNESCO where they emphasize on the role of digital inclusion for the low-skilled and low-literate people. Here is the link to the report: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark...

How it will work: Our program is designed to educate and train adolescent girls and young women on digital literacy so that they can get necessary knowledge and skills that will help them to get employment and/or open their own businesses while living healthy lives. Our aim is to give women the basics so that they can earn higher wages and get equal opportunities as boys and men. On the long run, our program will be operating in 20 districts of Rwanda, where each district will have a trainer that will take the beneficiaries through the program. Each trainer will have 2 organization’s volunteers to help him/her in educating young women. They will meet regularly 3 times per week, for 4 hours per day. Each cohort will have 30-35 young women per district, who will attend the program for 8 months. After the graduation, we will continue to follow up with the graduates assisting and guiding them in transitioning from education to employment, creating their own business and maintaining healthy lifestyles.

• The activities: 3 times per week classes that will hold theories and practices
• The outputs: Adolescent girl and young women will gain knowledge and skills on digital literacy. They will also have knowledge on sexual and reproductive health rights and services as well as entrepreneurship
• The short-term outcome: Adolescent girls and young women will be able to get jobs, earn higher wages and create their own businesses. There will be decrease in numbers of teenage pregnancies and early marriages, and there will be lower maternal and newborn mortality rates.
• The long-term outcome: Improved lifestyles of adolescent girls and young women from rural communities of Rwanda

Evidence to support the existence and strength of those links

Digital literacy and employability. (n.d.). https://www.futurelearn.com/co...

Marcus, B. (2013). Digital Literacy and Employability. Innovation & Business Skills Australia Ltd, (April).

https://techboomers.com/import...

Our program have not yet started. But we plan to start with a number of 30-35 young women per year, per district, in selected 4 districts of Rwanda. Which will make it 120 to 140 young women. Within a period of one year, we plan to expand to 6 more districts which will make it 300 to 350 young women. In five years, we will be operating in 20 districts of Rwanda where we will be impacting lives of 600 to 700 young women per year.

Our goal is to provide training opportunities on digital literacy to adolescent girl and young women from disadvantaged communities in Rwanda. Our program aim at impacting lives of adolescent girls and young women, where they will get necessary information and skills that will help them to transition from education to employment and/or self-employment. We aim to scale up this program each year, where we will expand in more districts of Rwanda. We will start with 4 selected districts that will be representing each province of Rwanda. In the next five years, we plan to be working in 20 districts of Rwanda where we will be reaching between 600 and 700 young people per year. We will continue to explore options of expanding beyond our country’s borders, and work within the countries in the great lakes region where the need is eminent. 

Our program might face community structural, market and financial barriers. Speaking of community structural barriers, worldwide women especially those from rural communities are commonly perceived to belong to the kitchen and other house chores. This plays a big impact in the inequalities that are present in the education and employment, where men get more opportunities than women.

Considering the market barriers, as our target population are still young with low to no work experience. Nowadays employers are looking for people with experience to hire. It is almost impossible to get a job if you don’t have experience in the sector you are applying for thus this might result in delay for them to get employment or run the business successfully.

And lastly our program might face financial constraints. We are a non-profit organization and our programs and activities use funds raised through grants applications and fundraising events. This program will operate on a medium scale, in 20 districts of Rwanda where we think that we might expand to other countries in the region later. We will need a lot of money to help us run the program successfully.

We will address the community structural barrier where women are perceived to do houses chore only by raising awareness in the communities on the role that women can play in raising the country’s GDP if they are given equal economic opportunities as men. As women play also a key role in their families and the communities, if they are given the opportunities, this will contribute in their own development, their families and their communities.

We will address the market barrier where it is not easy to get employment without work experience by finding volunteering or internship opportunities for the adolescent girls and young women after they would have completed the program. This will help them to acquire required hands-on skills.

Our program might face financial constraints because we are a non-profit organization where our programs use funds donated and raised. We will address it by applying to grants and organizing fundraising events so that we can get enough money to make this program run, not only on a small scale but also expand it to most parts of the country. If we get enough, we plan to expand it in the region as well. 

We will have 3 full time staff that will work on the solution. They will work from the offices and visit the sites from time to time to monitor how the program is running. We will have 2 volunteers per district that will work full time at the sites in order to help the trainer. We will also have IT consultants that will train young people in the digital literacy and provide them with the guidance on the courses. We will have one at each site.

We have diverse backgrounds by education in ICT, BIT, public health, nursing and urban planning. By profession, our backgrounds are more in projects planning and implementation, research, operations and training. Through our paths, we have developed diverse skills such as leadership skills, organizational skills, critical thinking and management skills. The trainers and the project leader have received the training of trainers which develops training skills and position them well to the trainer positions. We have experience in similar projects implementation where we gained experience of working with young people from different backgrounds and dealing with education, SRHR and employment challenges. As a team, we believe we will deliver the solution successfully. 

There is no organization we are partnering on this solution.

Our business model is non-profit organization, this program will not make any revenue. Our intervention is a digital literacy education program which will provide adolescent with the information and skills that will help them to start a business and/or secure employment. The key activities will include providing trainings and courses to adolescent girl and young women, linkage with mentors, close follow up after the program completion so that we guide them in job seeking and job creation processes. The beneficiaries from this program will be adolescent girls and young women aged 7 to 24 years old where their development will impact their own lives and those in their communities. Our key resources are educational materials, facilitation fees, consultants, staff and volunteers. We will train them from the youth friendly centers at each district. We will collaborate with the local leaders so that we can get operating permission in the districts and be able to easily access the database on adolescent girls and young women in their districts. The money that will be used will be raised through grants and fundraising. The costs that will occur are facilitation costs for the trainer and volunteers (transport, wage), stationaries, other materials and operating costs that will help the program to run successfully. The program impact will be later measured by the number of young women who will get employed and/or start their businesses after they would have completed the program.

Our work will be sustained by funds that will be raised through grants applications and fundraising events. We will continue to raise funds through our partners and other donors. 

We are applying to Solve because we would like to address the consequences that results from inequality in access to quality education between young women and men. Women have always ranked lower in education enrollment worldwide and this hinder them from accessing many opportunities such as employment. We are also applying to Solve so that I may address issues that result from this inequity such as poverty, gender biases, teenage pregnancies, infectious diseases, early marriages, maternal and newborns mortalities. We will overcome these challenges by educating and training young women on digital literacy which will equip them with knowledge and skills that will help them to get necessary information on entrepreneurship and their sexual and reproductive health rights. The program will also give them knowledge and skills that will help them to get employment. I would like to impact lives of young women by providing them with opportunities that will help them to reach pivotal learning milestones and be a starting of a better future. We are applying to SOLVE because we are seeking financial support so that we will be able to deliver the program.

We will partner with the government of Rwanda, specifically at the districts level. We will collaborate with them so that we can get operating permissions in the districts. We will collaborate with them so that we can get first hand and accurate data on the adolescents and young women and where they are located. This will help us to sample our population. We would like to collaborate with Solve Members so that we can get financial support, technical guidance and capacity building in business model development. As Solve is working with many organizations and partners, we would like to partner with them on marketing and media exposure, so that we might meet, learn from each other and have a chance to collaborate with other organizations with whom we have the same vision.