Learning Unleashed

An integrated approach aimed at fostering empowerment and labour market readiness for disadvantaged youth. Learning Unleashed offers a tech solution and face-to-face support for both young people, community leaders working with them & employers in search for skilled human capital.

1. An integrated approach aimed at fostering empowerment and labour market readiness for disadvantaged youth. 

2. Learning Unleashed offers a tech solution and face-to-face support for both young people, community leaders working with them & employers in search for skilled human capital.

3. With 300 million young people between 15-24 years old not in employment, education or training (worldwide), our solution will help to bridge the digital divide, first in Romania and Moldova, and then around the world. 

With 300 million young people between 15-24 years old not in employment, education or training, about 1 in 5 young people in regions such as Eastern Europe, North Africa, Middle East or Latin America, and numbers increasing for the 25-29 age group, we are perpetrating an invisible generation. Furthermore, combined with insufficient opportunities that could ensure fundamental employment skills (due to limited infrastructure: schools, IT labs, or even teachers working in high-poverty communities feeling less confident using EdTech), disadvantaged youth are at risk of missing out on the main opportunities of the 21st century, thus widening the existing digital divide.

In order to have a lasting impact we propose an integrated approach involving: (1) piloting a mobile educational solution in a society where 70% youth browse the Internet through a mobile device (Romania); (2) bridging the core skills gap (literacy and numeracy – major challenge for many disadvantaged youth in getting their first job); (3) introducing computational thinking as a problem-solving skill, essential for the technologically-driven society (currently not addressed in many educational systems); (4) empowerment of community leaders (often reluctant in using technology or having low digital skills); (4) match youth interests and skills with local employers’ needs.

Our main target audience are young people with a disadvantaged background, between the ages of 16-20, who live in closed communities. They are predominantly part of the NEETs category - youth who are not in education, employment or training.

Our second target audience are community leaders, who will have two roles: brand evangelists for our platform, and soft skills trainers for the young people.

Our third target audience are companies who are looking to hire people with the sort of skills we are teaching through our platform. Our role will also be to connect the potential employees with the prospective employers.

Track how many community leaders are trained by us

- Train 1,000 community leaders

Track how many people download the application and finish the first module (basic literacy, numeracy and computational thinking). - 10,000 people finish the first module of our platform

Track how many people who used our platform get hired

- Match 200 people with jobs

The main differentiating factors for Learning Unleashed are: (1) initial assessment (evaluates existing competences, skills and interests, thus, allowing us to understand  the level of core skills and identify possible jobs/professional interests); (2) customizable learning path (2 modules, the 1st one will address literacy, numeracy - based on the standards of the International Baccalaureate - and computational thinking, the 2nd one digital skills); (3) gamification approach (to engage students); (4) tailored support (offered through the involvement of community leaders and investment in soft skills); (5) matchmaking (students with employers looking for skilled labour).

We develop skills for people; when enrolling for Learning Unleashed, users (young people from some of the most disadvantaged categories and often in “hard-to-reach” situations) know that in the end there are high chances for them to increase their employability overall and be connected with an employer that could offer a job opportunity, which is our ultimate goal. By bringing the platform at their fingertips, through the use of mobile phones, empowering community leaders as our promoters/facilitators, and by allowing them to create their own customizable learning path, our users are at the center of our app.

When developing this solution, our premises were: (1) young people have access to technology through their mobile phones (a resource still insufficiently explored in educational environments, particularly low-income), (2) disadvantaged youth live in closed communities, who usually have a community leader.

By creating a mobile platform (which can also be used offline) we can reach more than 70% of the world population. Community leaders (promoters and facilitators) will ensure a direct connection with the users. They will also create opportunities for our users to develop soft-skills like teamwork, communication, after they will be prepared following the “train the trainers” approach.

Our main sponsors will be companies looking to hire new talents. They will contribute a sum of money as a CSR donation, and in time, as we start rolling-out more qualified students, also a per-student placed fee, that will help us cover for the training and resources we invested in him/her.

While internet coverage is decent in many parts of the world (Romania holding a particular good broadband) we are aware that it will be challenging to reach rural/small urban areas (where disadvantaged youth live predominantly), due to the lack of infrastructure, overall access to technology and sometimes lack of practice to use technology in educational processes. We plan to bridge this challenges by investing in community leaders (who work at grassroots) and further explore development of online modules that would allow us to prepare and engage more local actors - transforming our solution into a 100% tech tool.

We are applying to Solve in order to get engaged with the ´change-makers´ that form its community, share best practices and learn from each other.

Particular support could be appreciated in:

1. developing the online computational thinking classes-where MIT already has experts in developing frameworks accessible to younger people, thus, supporting our efforts in developing a general accessible tool (not just in the context of computer science classes).

2. scaling up our solution and turning it into a full tech tool (testing & optimizing for mobile devices, including developing AI solutions that could offer users an easier & alternative support during the online courses)

LEADERS Foundation, Policy Center for Roma and Minorities, TechSoup, Google (digital skills - Growth Engine), McKinsey (soft skills - Generation), European NEET Coalition - a multi-stakeholders platform (offering the potential to test/scale our solution on a European level); Romanian NEET Coalition. 

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