EQUALS Digital Skills Badges

EQUALS Digital Badges responses to the urgent need to bridge the digital gender divide and equip girls and young women around the world with the requisite digital skills to access formal employment & entrepreneurship. The project offers girls and young women access, free of charge, to a high-quality, universally recognized digital skills training & certification program, through online training -via the International Telecommunication Union Academy- and offline hands-on STEM workshops to reach girls and women in underserved areas, with a dual objective: to encourage girls’ and women’s further pursuit of tech studies and careers and facilitate girls’ and women’ access to formal employment and entrepreneurship, including in tech sectors. The program also connects girls and young women with role models and mentors. Our goal is to scale up the project globally to promote the digital (and social and economic) inclusion of millions of girls and women around the world.

The Covid-19 pandemic & responses highlight the prejudicial impact of the global gender digital divide: girls & women are missing out on tech-enabled measures to mitigate the health, social, and economic impacts of the pandemic. Approx. 3.6 bn people remain offline, and the majority are girls and women (52% of women, compared with 42% of men).  Research shows this gap is widening, and it is largest in the least-developed countries. Similarly, a gender gap in mobile technology ownership and usage exists. Women are underrepresented in tech sectors globally, while digital technologies are shaping the societies and economies we live in and the values we live by. Meanwhile, it is predicted that the majority of future jobs will require at least basic digital skills (e.g.,90% in Europe, 80% in Asia). Multiple barriers hold girls and women back: lack of affordable access to infrastructure; lack of digital skills; lack of relevant content; online safety concerns; poverty; gender discrimination; entrenched stereotypes; cultural norms; and a lack of visible role models against a backdrop of male-dominated tech sectors. The stakes of ensuring girls’ and women’s digital inclusion are extremely high: impacting girls’ & women’s lives & wider socio-economic progress. 

 Sources: ITU, European Commission, GSMA

EQUALS Digital Badges offer girls and young women, aged 16-25, access to a free, high-quality digital skills training & certification program, via an online training platform, plus offline hands-on STEM workshops to serve girls and young women in underserved areas who do not have regular access to Internet & digital technologies. The pilot program is a foundational digital skills program, with intermediate & advanced levels planned for year 2. The program aims to stimulate girls’ and women’s interest in tech studies & careers, build girls’ and women’s digital skills to facilitate employment, provide a widely recognized digital skills certificate, and connect girls and women with mentors & role models, including from the corporate sector. It combines an online platform with adapted, gender-responsive multimedia training materials, which allows for self-paced learning & issues certificates, a global mapping of resources to connect girls and women with further learning/training opportunities, & offline training through hands-on workshops. A unique strength, which promises global impact, is the cross-sector collaboration in design, onboarding and roll-out: the project will be implemented as part of the EQUALS global partnership for digital gender equality, and can benefit from the momentum of the growing partnership to promote maximum outreach.

Our ambitious goal—over the next 10 years—is to reach 5 million girls and young women aged 16-25 across the world. The pilot phase includes 5 low- and middle-income countries, with roll-out in more languages and countries planned in later phases. The project is a response to findings from various research and evaluations, including those of our global EQUALS partnership of (grassroots) NGOs, international organisations and private sector members who work to promote girls’ and women’s digital inclusion and equality. The project takes into account many of the barriers to girls’ and women’s digital inclusion, and girls’ and women’s specific needs & aspirations, sourced from a wide range of contexts, and particularly addressing girls and women in marginalized and underserved communities: free access to high-quality digital skills training; adapted gender-responsive training materials and pedagogy; self-paced learning; access to a support network by connecting girls with mentors & role models; a focus on practical skills that will enhance women’s employability/entrepreneurship; a prestigious, widely recognized training certificate; connecting girls and women, through the mentoring program, to the world of employment; targeting girls and women in remote, offline settings & challenging contexts (such as girls & women in informal settlements and refugee camps).

Our solution addresses the challenge of ensuring girls’ & women’s access to quality education in our digital age to facilitate women’s access to formal employment, including tech sectors. A global digital gender divide persists and yet digital skills are increasingly indispensable for girls & women to access safe, formal employment. Decades of research have demonstrated that girls’ & women’s access to education and employment improves girls’ and women’s lives and drive wider socio-economic progress. Our project will enable girls & women, aged 16-25, particularly from marginalized, underserved communities, to acquire digital skills & earn a recognized qualification facilitating their employment.

The EQUALS Digital Badges solution is innovative in several ways, with the potential for global impact. While the project harnesses and builds on existing digital technologies, it is unique in its methodology, its global, collaborative framework, and its potential for global scale and impact. The methodology combines: online and offline outreach and training using adapted, gender-responsive training content that focuses on practical digital skills to boost young women’s employability; a digital skills training program designed for girls and women aged 16-25 that can be accessed in a variety of formal and informal learning settings; self-paced learning; access to a support network of peers, mentors, and role models. The project is designed to enable girls and young women, particularly from marginalized, underserved communities, to access free digital skills training and acquire a prestigious, widely-recognized digital skills qualification. It is also designed to connect girls and young women with the world of tech-related employment through the mentoring and role[1] model component of the EQUALS global partnership and its members’ expertise. Many worthy initiatives (government, private, civil sector) are dedicated to girls’ and women’s digital skills training, but it is difficult for them to scale up to meet the urgent demand. The EQUALS Digital Badges initiative is unique and unprecedented in its potential global reach & impact, thanks to its collaborative nature: the project is being designed and implemented by a global, cross-sector (private, academic, public sector) team of 100 partners & experts, within the framework of the growing global EQUALS partnership.

The delivery of the online training will use an integrated learning management system with software tailored to the needs and unique requirements of the courses, through the ITU Academy.  Over 500 plugins are available to enrich the activity and resources. The classes can be instructor-led, self-paced, blended. Tutors can add interactive videos, images, quizzes, etc. The system includes collaborative tools and activities, such as forums, chats, wikis, glossaries, database activities, and it tracks learners’ progress on activities and overall course completion.  The system manages user roles and permissions. Current roles: students, tutors, coordinators, administrators, superusers.  This component is key to keep the partners of the program at the local level engaged in the implementation of the course. A versatile grading system is also available, including CBM (certainty-based marking), Rubrics (criteria-based assessment), in-line marking, competency based-marking, etc. The platform will also include an integrated badges issuance system with a custom certificate plugin. E-Certificates, similar to badges, can be awarded to learners upon completion of activities and course achievements.

In addition to the proven benefits of e-learning, particularly self-paced e-learning (Source: UNESCO),  one of the key features of the EQUALS Digital Skills Badges is the issuance of digital skills certification in the form of a digital badge. As Philipp Schmidt, Director of Learning Innovation at the MIT Media Lab said within the frame of MIT’s work on digital credentials and with regard to the potential advantages of digital credentials: “If you think about the way that universities manage credentials, it really hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years.” Digital badges can provide multiple benefits in our age of digital literacy and learning and research has shown that badges provide benefits beyond traditional credentials: representing skills as a badge gives learners a means to share their abilities online in a way that is simple and trusted—and can be easily verified easily in real time. Many organizations that apply badging have a strong learning success record. For example, IBM established a badge program that has issued over 2 million badges in 195 countries for employees, clients, students,and partners, with impressive results:

• 87% of their employees reported that they were more engaged thanks to badging
• 72% of managers use badges “to recognize employees for achievement” 76% of respondents said digital badges motivated employees to build current skills

Millions of girls and women around the world today are deprived of access to crucial digital skills education while digital skills are increasingly indispensable for life and work: as digital skills become increasingly embedded in all manner of occupations, it’s estimated that the majority of future jobs will require at least foundational digital skills proficiency. Meanwhile, countries face a supply-demand mismatch in digital skills as tech-related employment opportunities are growing (sources: European Commission, UNESCO). Our ambition is to provide girls & women, particularly from marginalized and underserved communities, with access to a high-quality, free digital skills training and certification program to facilitate their access to safe, formal employment. Our goal is to enable 5 million girls & women aged 16 to 25 in the next 10 years to benefit from digital skills training (initially foundational digital skills), educational & employment support services (access to mentors, role models, further training/employment opportunities, also via corporate networks), and a universally-recognized qualification, all of which will facilitate girls’ & women’s access to employment. We aim to achieve the targeted qualitative and quantitative impact thanks to the strength of the training model and methodology, which are specifically designed to cater to girls’ and women’s needs and can be implemented on a large scale, at a relatively low cost. The project combines online and aligned offline outreach and digital skills training and support services that are specifically designed to address the barriers to girls’ & women’s digital skills education and will be rolled-out globally, with the support of the EQUALS Global Partnership network (spanning 115 countries), via national, regional and community networks. As decades of evidence have proven (sources: WEF, UN Women), there is a positive correlation between girls’ & women’s increased educational and employment opportunities and a range of positive social, economic, & health outcomes for girls & women, as well as wider socio-economic progress. Our EQUALS Digital Skills Badges collaborative endeavor aims to catalyze progress towards girls’ & women’s digital inclusion & equality globally which will positively impact not only millions of girls’ and women’s lives but also wider communities, societies and economies.

On the basis of our project onboarding and country-roll out strategy, we estimate that the project will be able to directly reach and benefit the following number of girls and young women, aged 16-25, within the next 5 years:

Current n°: design phase - 0

Year 1: 5,000 girls and young women aged 16-25, across  5 pilot countries (approximately 1,000 young women and girls per country) who will benefit directly from the EQUALS Digital Skills Badges online & offline digital skills training program

Year 5: 1,000,000 girls and young women aged 16-25 across 100 countries (approx. 248,750 girls & young women per year) 

The first year will be dedicated to piloting the EQUALS Badges project across 5 low- and middle-income, English-speaking countries, with the aim of reaching approximately 5,000 girls and young women. While the target number of students for the pilot year could be significantly higher, our main goal in the pilot phase is to test the qualitative impact of the project, not just the quantitative impact. The pilot phase is crucial to gather insights, draw lessons, and identify challenges, opportunities, and best practices in implementing the project. These lessons learned will enable us to resolve any major challenges & refine our methodology before the global roll-out of the project and this process will enable us to optimize our subsequent impact in the country onboarding and roll-out phases. Our target in terms of impact over the next 5 years is to reach and serve 1 million girls and young women around the world. This will entail the translation & adaptation of the online and offline digital skills training program and workshop methodology, to make it available in at least 3 of the 6 official UN languages (English, French and Spanish) and  across a minimum of 100 countries over 5 years. We consider this a feasible target given the potential reach and impact of the project through the extensive international EQUALS partners’ network. We can further scale up the project and increase outreach and impact by drawing on the international network of EQUALS partners (public, private, civil) with presence in over 115 countries.

There are a number of current and potential barriers to achieving our projected impact, which our project team has carefully factored into our risk analysis in order to take appropriate, timely measures to surmount them. Our team has forecast the estimated funding requirements to implement the pilot phase of the program and  scale up the program over a 5-year period to achieve our targeted impact of reaching 1 million girls and young women by 2025. The funding requirements are relatively low compared with the immense potential for return on investment (please refer to the business model & funding section). Nevertheless, one potential barrier is financial: our team is still seeking funds to cover the pilot phase and project scale-up. Another potential barrier is obviously the technical one: a lack of adequate and affordable digital infrastructure. By definition, the challenge of reaching and serving digitally excluded girls and young women lies at the heart of our project. Other potential barriers are the various additional factors that account for/contribute to girls’ and women’s digital exclusion, such as gender discrimination, entrenched stereotypes, cultural factors, and norms. Finally, there are potential legal issues that need to be addressed to enable girls under the age of 18 (aged 16 to 18) to be on-boarded to the EQUALS Digital Badges platform and project. Our team has carefully thought through all these challenges in order to anticipate them and implement appropriate measures to overcome them.

Regarding the project’s funding needs, the project team has already successfully raised approximately 50% of the investment costs in the form of grant funding. Our current and longer-term financial strategy aims to generate revenue streams through a mix of public and private partnerships. Regarding technical barriers, i.e., a lack of adequate and affordable digital infrastructure, the EQUALS Digital Badges model and methodology are specifically designed to enable outreach to girls and young women from marginalized communities/in underserved areas, notably through offline workshops that are aligned with the online training program. The country onboarding and roll-out strategy factors in this key challenge and will rely on solutions to overcome potential technical barriers, for example, solar-powered mobile classes, solutions for accessing/delivering the training course without regular access to the Internet, including the offline workshops. The program is specifically designed to address multiple additional factors that contribute to girls’ and women’s digital exclusion (poverty, gender discrimination, entrenched stereotypes, cultural factors & norms, the burden of care work that falls disproportionately on girls and young women, and a lack of visible, relatable role models) through a range of solutions: training that is free of charge; self-paced learning; gender-responsive content; connecting girls & women with role models & mentors; community outreach through schools; and offline workshops that can take place in a variety of formal and informal learning settings. Finally, online safety and protecting girls’ and women’s online rights is a key component of the training program.

The EQUALS Digital Skills Badges are being implemented within the framework of EQUALS Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age, a multi-stakeholder voluntary network co-founded in 2016 -by the ITU (hosts the EQUALS Hub), ITC, GSMA, UN Women & UN University— which includes over 100 cross-sector partners in 115 countries. A key goal is to ensure that 60% of girls & women around the world achieve at least basic digital skills proficiency by 2030. Enabling girls & women to acquire the requisite digital skills to ensure their digital inclusion lies at the heart of the work of EQUALS

Currently 10 part-time team members 

A strength of the core EQUALS Digital Badges team is the team’s range and depth of expertise,consisting of 10 people representing organizations from different sectors (private, public and civil) all dedicated to promoting girls’ and women’s digital inclusion, equality and leadership. In addition, the core management team is able to benefit from the extensive expertise and support of the global EQUALS partnership, which includes over 100 organizations across 115 countries. Another strength is our specific expertise in the domains of girls’ and women’s education and girls’ and women’s digital inclusion, and our familiarity with the specific needs of girls and women across the world thanks to the rigorous research of the EQUALS Global Partnership and the strategic, operational and technical experience and expertise of the project team’s member organizations (EY, ITU, GSMA, Plan International, Women’s WorldWide Web and Carribean Girls Hack) and whose insights and participatory approach have informed the design of the training model, methodology and implementation strategy. Our team is uniquely positioned to implement our ambitious project thanks also to our potential for global scale and impact: we can leverage the EQUALS Partnership network for roll-out. There are many organizations working to provide girls and women with digital skills education (and EQUALS Digital Skills Badges seeks to strengthen & boost their work) but our unique strength is our cross-sector collaboration and potential global reach which, we believe, can significantly catalyze the growing global movement to promote girls’ and women’s digital inclusion and equality, for the benefit of everyone.

Partnerships & collaboration lie at the heart of the EQUALS Digital Skills Badges project. The EQUALS Digital Skills Badges is a key EQUALS Global Partnership project. The project benefits from the expertise and perspectives of multiple EQUALS member organizations (whose expertise includes focus on ensuring girls’ and women’s digital inclusion & equality in the areas of access to infrastructure, research, and promoting gender balance and women’s leadership in tech). The core project management and implementation team is composed of EQUALS Global Partnership members who are contributing their time and expertise on a pro bono basis. These include Caribbean Girls Hack, Ernst and Young, GSMA, the International Telecommunications Union, Plan International, and Women's WorldWide Web. The core project management and implementation team is coordinating the country onboarding and roll-out strategy and mobilizing large networks of partner organizations (public, private, civil, academic) in the pilot countries in which the project is being implemented. These partner organizations are involved in onboarding and roll-out of the project and this is mutually beneficial as they benefit from the EQUALS Digital Skills Badges model and methodology.

The value proposition of the EQUALS Digital Skills Badges comprises:

• Providing high-quality gender-sensitive digital skills education for girls and women aged 16-25 years to boost their employability and promoting girls’ and women’s uptake of tech studies and careers on a large scale that can be harnessed by governments
• Providing an opportunity for organisations/companies to achieve their Corporate Sustainable Responsibility agenda
•  Connecting the corporate sector with emerging female digital talent

Given the urgent need to equip girls and young women with digital skills (in terms of girls’ and women’s need to be able to access formal employment and the costly supply-demand mismatch of digital skills for societies and economies) and the imperative of levelling the playing field in terms of digital skills education, particularly for girls and women from marginalized communities, the model provides the digital skills training free of charge to girls and women. The model relies on revenue streams from private and public partnerships, initially in the form of grant funding and in kind-support for the purpose of launching the project in its pilot year 

Our objective is to raise funds to cover the costs of the pilot program in year 1 through grant funding. Our team has raised 50% of the required funding to date. In terms of start-up costs, the funding requirement is relatively low, especially given the immense potential for return on investment in terms of the impact of the project (equipping 1 million girls and young women with digital skills that will enable them to access employment). The relatively low start-up cost is also thanks to the large in-kind contribution to the project provided by the project’s core team partners. We aim to generate revenues to further develop the project, beyond the pilot phase, through a mix of private and public partnerships’ support and funding. The project has already garnered interest and financial pledges from corporate partners, which is, we believe, thanks to the strong value proposition for corporate partners.

Our team would be grateful to benefit from the support of the MIT SOLVE community, not only financially but also through in-kind support. The project’s goal of ensuring girls’ and young women’s access to high-quality digital skills’ education, digital inclusion and access to formal employment, including in tech sectors, aims to promote gender equality and drive wider socio-economic progress. This is a goal that should concern us all, as everyone stands to benefit! We believe the objectives of the EQUALS Digital Skills Badges are aligned with the objectives of the MIT Solve community. A partnership could advance the project in several ways: MIT Solve faculty & members could share their expertise to support curriculum development & content creation, participate in the project’s testing & auditing phases, publicize the project, and support onboarding through MIT Solve’s global network. Together, we can catalyze progress for girls & women and wider societies.

MIT faculty and Solve Members with aligned goals as well as public and private partners who share our vision and who can support the EQUALS Digital Skills Badges project through financial and in-kind support, as outlined above.