Virtualahan

We eliminate employment barriers for People with Disabilities, former sex workers and drug addicts, persons in jail, indigenous people, and other disadvantaged groups who experience workplace exclusion. We do this through virtual education, remote work, life-coaching, and community building using cost-effective and transferrable social technology.

Our program uses universal and human-centered design aligned with the UN SDGs. It uses low cost and transferable technology and can be replicated in any demographics or geographic locations at will.

Virtualahan ensures that the most excluded populations of society are given equal opportunities in the digital economy to get people out of poverty while promoting diversity and inclusion and the future of work that leaves no one behind.

According to the ILO, People with Disabilities (PWDs) make up an estimated one billion (15% GP). About 80% are of working age. The right of people with disabilities to decent work, however, is frequently denied. They experience higher rates of unemployment & economic inactivity & are at greater risk of insufficient social protection that is key to reducing extreme poverty. They are already left behind, but even more, as automation will take over.

This problem is also experienced by former sex workers and drug addicts, persons in jail, indigenous people, solo parents, and other groups because of stigma and discrimination and outdated labor practices.

The root cause is mostly on attitudinal barriers and misconceptions in employment and readiness of talents from these backgrounds for competitive employment.

Virtualahan eliminates employment barriers for People with Disabilities through virtual education, remote work, life-coaching, & community building using cost-effective & transferrable social technology. We do this through:

1. Five-weeks of online training in data & automation, digital marketing, website development & design, & customer service. The training caters to all types of disability & conducted in our learning portal;

2. They are then provided with two-weeks of tailored job coaching & three-weeks of apprenticeship where they are mentored by industry experts to find competitive employment. Some graduates are directly employed by our impact sourcing arm that provides outsourcing services to impact driven organizations around the world;

3. They also receive weekly life-coaching through our well-being sessions led by our in-house psychologist to restore dignity & facilitate healing;

4. We also work with our employment partners to augment their technology, process, culture, & infrastructure.

Our goal is to produce graduates and impact sourcing workers that will help us change the education & labor system in the country & to help more PWDs get out of poverty.

We primarily work with individuals from low-income backgrounds that experienced workplace exclusion or has been displaced because of their conditions. About 70% of our scholars lives below poverty line and are from the rural areas in the Philippines when they join our program. When we started, majority of our scholars are from our inner networks since we already belong to these communities. As we are growing, we started accepting referrals from support group organizations like disability groups, rehabilitation centers, cooperatives, and city jails. We also have virtual communities that we regularly engage with.

The leadership team are the first beneficiaries of the project and our lived experience enabled us to relate to our community and co-create the program with them. We do focused group discussions, community days, home visits, and surveys. We also do an accessibility audit for every new project, course, and platform that we develop. We make sure that we practice the philosophy behind Nothing About Us Without Us.

Community building is at the core of the work that we do and our solution not only impacts our scholars but also their families and bigger community.

Virtualahan ensures that the most excluded populations of society are given equal opportunities for high-level work in the new digital economy using an impact formula that integrates well-being sessions and community-building with digital job skills training.

Our work from home model created jobs and opened countless doors of opportunities for our scholars even before the pandemic. We have long acknowledged that the 4IR will leave Persons with Disabilities behind hence we pioneered a program in the Philippines to move away from handicrafts and embrace digitalization.

Now our impact formula is being replicated to also help displaced workers because of COVID-19.

Imagine a person with autism, blind, deaf, and quadriplegic inside a traditional classroom? It's impossible for them to learn at the same time. Now put technology in between through virtual learning then captions for the deaf, image descriptions for the blind, simple clickable buttons for people with autism, and no writing needed for a quadriplegic. That's what we built. A fully accessible classroom for people regardless of their disability to learn together while building a supportive community that empowers them to shine. We also educate their employers so that they don't get overwhelmed & can truly benefit from the talents of Persons with Disability without compromising business outcomes.

Our holistic approach integrates life-coaching to our curriculum with a strong focus on self-awareness, restoring dignity, and advocacy which was proven to improve their learning outcome and employability. Our program also runs 100% online which breaks down a lot of barriers like transportation or the need for personal assistance and enables our graduates to work from home even pre-covid.

1. We are using a life-long learning approach through independent learning & live coaching using our virtual classroom hosted in Azure. We have developed our own learning portal integrated with open source tech like Moodle and uses third party technologies like Microsoft Education to deliver an accessible and effective individualized learning experience.

2. Our holistic approach integrates life-coaching to our curriculum with a strong focus on emotional intelligence, growth mindset, adaptability, and relationship building. We call this community-based therapy and also done virtually via Zoom.

3. Our model allows our graduates to work on high paying digital jobs from the comfort of their home. This removes barriers like the need for a personal assistant, transportation, & reasonable accommodation request from employers. We are using our own online portfolio and job matching portal to facilitate employment support.

4. We also provide services to our clients in the field of blockchain, machine learning in solar technologies, AI for language translation, and data analysis tools for regenerative agriculture.

1. World Summit Awards Global Winner for Young Innovators Category for Using Technology to Address the UN SDG. Virtualahan in 00:39-1:00

https://www.facebook.com/world...

2.  Globe Future Makers by the Singtel Group

https://www.facebook.com/Globe...

3. Social Impact Accelerator by UNDP, Australian Embassy, and ISIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfkEGbIBgIU

4. Google Business Stories Award

https://youtu.be/pVkMO-8U15o

We have four core activities at Virtualahan that works with each other to achieve our desired impact: 

1. Innovative Learning- our training uses life-long learning approach that equips our students with technical skills as well critical thinking, problem solving, and communication. This increases their chances of getting employed, promoted, and have their voice heard as they champion our causes in their respective organizations and communities in promoting inclusive employment. This example encourages policy makers to adapt virtual learning and democratize it.

2. Remote Work- our graduates works from home which increases their chance to be hired because a lot of stigma and misconception brought upon by their condition is minimized. It also builds confidence for employers and significantly lower their cost in providing reasonable accommodation. This creates an evidence to change our outdated labor practice and embrace remote work as well diversity and inclusion in the workplace. 

3. Life Coaching- helping our scholars go through the healing process unleashed their potential to thrive. Once dignity is restored then they can adapt better to the ever changing world and transform from being recipient of help to giver of opportunities.

4. Community Building- educating our scholars about self-advocacy, UN SDGs, and governing laws enables us to build more leaders who can champion our cause, start their own movement or enterprises, and ultimately create the ripple effect of our impact formula.

Evidence:

1. Paper published by the University of Manchester- https://bit.ly/2YbBxgx

2. 2019 Mid Year Social Impact Report- https://bit.ly/2BkdGm0

3. Impact Stories- https://www.virtualahan.com/impact-stories/

1. We have graduated 400+ People with Disabilities and other disadvantaged people.

2. We working to graduate and provide employment support at least 500 people per year starting next year.

3. We aim to produce at least 3,000 graduates in the next five years.

1. We are rolling out our Basic Education (K-12) program for children with disabilities as our school system transition to online education. We are doing a pilot for 20-30 students this school year and triple it for our full launch. 

2. We aim to train at least 3,000+ by 2025. We do this by expanding our community members to former drug dependents/sex workers/incarcerated, solo parents, indigenous people, & out of school youth.

3. Scale our tech platform so we can also host content from other organizations that we are training to replicate our solution.

4. Complete the groundwork in institutionalizing our program in different local governments in the country.

5. Start expanding internationally through social franchising.

1. Financial- Disability Inclusion is under funded for decades and more so now that our clients and funders are focused on addressing the impact of COVID-19.

2. Technical- COVID-19 accelerated the demand for our services and our technology cannot keep up.

1. Financial- Increase our volume to lower our cost. We will also improve the automation of our impact formula to further lower the cost. We are currently exploring new business units to monetize our job matching platform, well-being sessions, and accessibility services.

2. Technical- we would be needing technical partners and consultants to help us build a more robust and scalable platform. 

We have six people in our leadership taking care of training & employment, legal & finance, HR & Community, Technology, & Fundraising & strategy. We have 7 business leaders in our informal advisory board from across industries. We have 18 full-time employees, 12 contractors, & 6 consultants including our in-house psychologist & job coaches.

Our team has 30+ combined experience in coaching and outsourcing. 20+ years in tech and business, and 15+ years in community building. We also have experts in education and psychology, experienced executives, serial entrepreneurs and we are also mentored by seasoned tech entrepreneurs and C-level global experts and thought leaders.

We are currently working with three major type of partners:

1. Government- We are working with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) in rolling out a national program to train Persons with Disability to become online service providers.

2. Corporations- We are working with Accenture and Globe Telecom by providing scholarship to our skills training, curriculum upgrade, and infrastructure support like computers and internet.

3. NGOs- We are working with Leonard Cheshire Disability Foundation, Hemophilia Advocate Philippines, and other community leaders for sourcing of scholars and employment support.

1. 65% of our revenue comes from our training fee. Our scholars don't pay anything upfront with a condition that they pay off their scholarship loan within ten months of getting a job using our pay it forward model. Our scholarship sponsors initially pay the amount, and then we keep the funds rolling making their dollars having infinite value.

2. 35% comes from our outsourcing services. We provide a wide selection of virtual assistant services to impact-driven organizations all over the world.

We currently have two business models that are working, the cross-subsidy model for our training and subscription model for our impact sourcing. We are now exploring to add new business units and explore new revenue models based on subscription, software as a service, and recruitment fees.

We are applying for solve to:

1. Add more funds to our operations especially that we are still navigating the impact of COVID-19.

2. Add more credibility to our solution by being affiliated with Solve and its partners.

3. Network with more leaders and increase our visibility.

4. Make our solutions available for more people to replicate it.

These four areas is crucial for us in scaling our solution.

1. Employment Partners who can provide jobs to our graduates or will subscribe to our impact sourcing services. Examples are IBM, Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, and disability focused organizations. 

2. Scholarship sponsors. Mostly corporations with commitments to diversity and inclusion, digital inclusion, and impact sourcing. Examples are IBM and companies who joined the Valuable 500.

3. Technology/ICT partners

4. EdTech Experts

Our solution is currently being studied for replication in Baghdad and Mosul in Iraq to help refugees with disabilities get an online job. We wish to bring our solution in these areas but we lack resources.

We are also working with internally displaced individuals (IDPs)  in Marawi City in southern Philippines after a terrorist group which pledged allegiance to ISIS destroyed the city making it look like Aleppo. We are supposed to run the training in March but the pandemic happened so it was postponed. 

With the support from the Andan Prize, we will have the resources to deliver positive impact to the lives of these people.  Your $100,000 investment would enable us to train 300 refugees and IDPs with at least 70% employment rate and earning an average income that is 40-60% above the minimum wage.

We are working with single mothers and former sex workers using our solution to help them find competitive employment. More than 50% of our beneficiaries are women and we are committed to improving their state in The Philippines. The Innovation for Women Prize will enable us to invest in the skills development, employment support, leadership, and well-being of single mothers, former sex workers, and also sexually trafficked women.

Your $75,000 investment would enable us to train 200 women with at least 70% employment rate and earning an average income that is 40-60% above the minimum wage.

Our model is built for working adults ages 20-60 years old who have been discriminated from jobs because of their conditions. Recently, we extended this program to adult workers who lost their jobs because of COVID-19 pandemic in partnership with Accenture. 

The GM Prize of $75,000 would enable us to train 200 displaced workers with at least 70% employment rate and earning an average income that is 40-60% above the minimum wage.

One of our success stories is Sonya. She is 70 and was already retired but she still wants to be productive. After completing our program, she was able to develop her own website and start her online consulting companies for elderly who suffers from loneliness and anxiety. Our solution was proven to cater to adults regardless of their technical backgrounds to live a more empowered lives.

Our model is also built for working adults ages 20-60 years old who have been discriminated from jobs because of their conditions. Recently, we extended this program to adult workers who lost their jobs because of COVID-19 pandemic in partnership with Accenture. 

The The Gulbenkian Award for Adult Literacy would enable us to train at least 500 displaced workers with at least 70% employment rate and earning an average income that is 40-60% above the minimum wage.