ivolunteer.

Technology in Indonesia will replace employees from some jobs and employees must develop their skills to match the new labor market requirements. Our solution is using artificial intelligence techniques to help employees to fill emerging gaps and direct people to volunteer opportunities that build the required expertise.

The solution is a global network for volunteering. It will record different volunteer opportunities and then direct volunteers to the opportunities that are most suitable for their skills and most responsive to future labor market developments. It proposes institutions and experts that provide optimal volunteering opportunities, and in return will provide them with the most appropriate person to provide the required services.

Our solution fetches all updated volunteer opportunities registered in it and sends them to the right registered person at the right time. The solution will work online and also as an SMS alert platform for those who have difficulty accessing it.

Depending on statitica website, Indonesia's unemployment rate for 2020 was 4.11%, a 0.49% increase from 2019.

About 1.8 million people became unemployed between February 2020 and 2021 and 2.8 million people fell into poverty. (Boosting the recovery report, June 2021).

The coronavirus shutdown of many offices and workplaces in Indonesia has ushered in a new era of remote work for millions of Indonesian employees and may herald a major shift in the way a large segment of the workforce works in the future. And because many people have lost their jobs and had to look for new job opportunities from home, it turned out that there were many problems they faced.

● Lack of practical experience in their CV.

● Gaps in their resume time frame due to their inability to find work quickly because of the pandemic.

● Difficulty obtaining a good position in the labor market.

● Absence of guiding and advising when they try to start their own businesses.

● Difficulty in communicating with certain people without previous relationships, because of the weak network of supportive relationships during this period.

● Because of the pandemic, many people tried to find an online job in different countries around the world and were confronted with a great difference between the work environment and its requirements in their country of origin and the requirements of the work environment in other countries, this makes it difficult for them to find a suitable job opportunity.

The aim of the project is to support people in Indonesia who suffer from instability in their jobs as a result of the Corona pandemic.

During the quarantine period. They find themselves without work and without sufficient skills to prepare them to enter the online labor market, a market with very high competition and has very different requirements in terms of experiences and skills, especially if they try to apply for job opportunities in different countries.

The system will work with volunteers, institutions and experts and can understand their needs by:

1. Volunteers record their experience and skills, and the system, through our skills anticipation tool, finds the optimal volunteer opportunity that fills in the gaps in their resumes and guides them to the most suitable opportunity for them in their career, so they can enter the online labor market anywhere around the world.

2. On the other hand, the system will provide institutions and experts with the convenient volunteers they need to complete a specific service.

3. After the volunteer period ends, a post-volunteer survey should be filled out by volunteers, institutions and experts giving their opinions about the work environment and experience they live together with all transparency which will be analysed to improve the system and its services.

4. A database with people who got jobs within 6 months of these volunteering opportunities will be created, so in the future there will be an analysis of the most in-demand volunteering opportunities to enter the labor market.

As The World Economic Forum (WEF) concluded in a recent report that “a new generation of smart machines, fueled by rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, could potentially replace a large proportion of existing human jobs.”

We believe that this wave of artificial intelligence and automation that has increased Significantly due to the spread of the Corona virus has created many job opportunities that did not exist before, so our role is to hold the hands of these people and direct them towards the skills they must acquire to keep pace with the current wave of development.

We suggest challenging the wave of Corona and the automation resulting from it, by using a service learning method which is a teaching method that combines all the usual learning objectives and community service. 

We implement this service learning related solution by:

Spreading sufficient awareness about the possibility of people's creativity and integrating them into useful projects through it.

Designing a smart skills anticipating tool to guide volunteers to the most appropriate volunteering opportunity that will improve their skills and prepare them to enter the new Online job market.

Hiring Specialized experts from various fields to start designing roadmaps that help volunteers predict the skills they should seek to possess in order to speed up their entry into the labor market and thus reduce the unemployment rate.

We believe that these three goals are in line with the United Nations sustainable goals and therefore are in line with the challenge.

Eng. Heba Alsayed Ahmad

Data Scientist with experience interpreting and analyzing data in order to drive successful business solutions. She was the project lead of a number of successful projects during the last 5 years, also she has a good knowledge of projects related to youth in the labor market.

The current wave of technological change based on advances in artificial intelligence (AI) has led to widespread fears of job losses and increasing inequality. We will try to address these concerns through a voluntary mechanism based on service-learning that provides people with the possibility of acquiring and raising skills, in addition to gaining appropriate experience, thus accelerating the process of their entry into the labor market, and the possibility of them obtaining the right job as soon as possible.

Volunteers can access the most suitable volunteer opportunity through mechanisms that our system will offer:

• By matching algorithms, volunteers can save a lot of time searching for the most suitable volunteering opportunity that fits their needs.

• Through a roadmap prepared by a team of specialized experts, volunteers will be able to get a complete idea of the steps they must follow to enter the new job market with confidence and fill the gaps in their experience and skills.

The network of relationships that will be established through volunteering will lead to:

• Volunteers will benefit from networking opportunities with highly qualified individuals. Volunteering can connect them with people who can help with a job search or provide valuable advice.

• A company that provides the volunteer opportunity can hire the volunteer if it has a vacancy and if the volunteer has demonstrated sufficient abilities and skills to fill the position.

The building blocks of the above ideas work together to create a society-wide innovation program.

Our solution depends on three main technologies: MySQL to store data, Loopback4 to serve data, ReactJS to display and interact with the data: MySQL is used for the Database management System. It is an open-source, mature, and widely available DBMS that is also free of charge.

Loopback 4 framework is used for the API server. It is an open-source TypeScript framework that provides flexibility, a wide range of security, authentication, and authorization features. It is supported by the IBM community and has regular updates and enhancements. It supports multiple data sources in a single application which widens the opportunities for application integrations.

ReactJS is used for the user interface and the user experience. It is an open-source JavaScrip library supported by the Facebook community and other individuals and companies. The free React CoreUI library is used to add UI components to the application. It also provides a smart-phone-friendly layout.

The solution is hosted on DigitalOcean infrastructure. 

The project plays the role of a link between:

• People who are full of energy and have great ambition, but they need additional skills and experience to enter the job market, well planned volunteering opportunities will increase their chances of developing their competencies to better match the future job market.

• Organizations and experts who need someone to provide services to them with the fewest number of resources and this will be of great benefit to them.

• Once we have the right solution to record volunteer’s data and volunteering opportunities, and the solution is supported with well designed upskilling roadmaps and a smart algorithm that connects volunteers with companies and specialists who request volunteers and directs them to the opportunity that fills the gaps in their CVs and enriches their careers, in addition to the presence of a capacity building unit that aims to complete any shortage of information or experiences They have and their presence in this environment ensures that they are advancing and acquiring skills and experiences that lead to constantly aligning their abilities with the requirements of the labor market.

• On the other hand, the solution will direct companies and experts to the most convenient volunteers to perform their tasks.

In one year:

We aim to:

• Achieving a growth in awareness among companies, experts and professionals.

• Focusing on the categories working in artificial intelligence and software engineering, these are the professions that offer a large number of volunteering opportunities, according to the report (Indonesia Emerging Jobs Report 2020).

• Increasing the percentage of the target population that has access to volunteer opportunities with a better understanding of the new set of skills and competencies required by the future labor market.

• Ensuring that the target population understands the recent changes in the labor market and plans their future accordingly.

• Preparing the target population with the skills necessary to adapt to changes in the modern labor market.

In five years:

• Increasing the number of companies, experts and people who have sufficient awareness of the importance of the idea of volunteering.

• Increasing the types of job specializations targeted by our project to raise the volunteering opportunities.

• The Indonesian authorities (Official Employment and Social Affairs Centers) are being strengthened to combat unemployment through evidence-based solutions.

In addition to developing the solution we are aiming to:

• Developing roadmaps of (digital transformation related jobs and digital-related talent such as content specialist) using the skills anticipation tool.

• Establishing a formal network of professionals and companies (supporters).

• Communicate with the Indonesian government and collaborate with related employment agencies to improve and implement the solution.

• Establish partnerships with institutions who are working with volunteers as part of their strategies such as educational institutions, organizations like UN, etc.

We will be measuring the work progress through a set of KPIs and measuring tools that will be designed especially to reflect the impact on different aspects of the project, like the impact on the community, job market, and the government. 

These KPIs will not only be based on the internal performance that can be measured by the solution (e.g. number of volunteers, gender, age, number of volunteer hours...), but also on government and social networking studies and statistics that focus on professional networking and career development such as LinkedIn,  etc....

We will also rely heavily on feedback from volunteers, companies and government through periodic focused group discussions, surveys and key informants.

The size of the database includes volunteer opportunities in addition to the people who were able to get a job within six months of completing the volunteering opportunity.

We are mindful of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and our project is aiming by design to support the UNSD Goal #8 which is (Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all).

• Cultural Barriers: We don't have an ongoing business in Indonesia at the moment, so we need to understand local norms and culture before we start rolling out the platform.

• Relationship Barriers: Although we have good relationships with companies and NGOs that will use our platform to find volunteers, we lack the relationship with the Indonesian authorities that would help us speed up our operations and lend credibility to our work. 

• ِNetworking Barriers:In our work we need to reach out to companies as well as be flexible to accept volunteers.

• Lack of information Barriers: We don't have enough information on the current situation in Indonesia about the target population.

• We will try to cross the cultural barrier of having some field offices with a local team leading the day-to-day work.

• We will try to overcome the hurdle of weak relations as we will start outreach activities as quickly as possible through our local team and build on the relations and public relations that MIT may provide.

• We will try to tackle the access barrier by building a network of relationships.

• We will try to address the obstacle of lack of information by attempting to access official studies and reports from the government.

Six staff as below:

Dev lead (part time), backend developer (full time), intern developer (full time), operations engineer (part time), team leader\project manager (full time), business analyst (full time).

The team leader is a successful young project lead that has worked on a number of successful projects during the last 5 years. She has also shown great growth in her management and communication skills in the recent year. This is why we believe that she is best suited to lead this project and has the full support from the co-founders.

Our team is best positioned because:

• We are a social enterprise and helping affected communities is our main aim. This is why our team is very motivated to carry out this project.

• We have a very strong team that has been working in the humanitarian and civil society domains and they understand the real needs.

• Our team contains experts in entrepreneurship, cyber security, business process engineering and artificial intelligence, software engineering, open source solutions.

• Our team has carried out other successful technical projects that are especially designed for humanitarian and civil society contexts. That's why they can handle the targeted population needs in a professional manner.

• Our team depends on the agile development methodology which focuses on the beneficiaries\stakeholders perspectives, ideas,needs and requirements. 

Diversity, empowering women, and achieving gender equality is essential for Simula to ensure sustainable development.

At Simula, we believe that our staff regarding their gender, religion and race have equal rights and opportunities, so we work hard to promote these principles by:

1) Diversity is an indispensable part of Simula, as it is at the center of the development agenda, which has increased efficiency in project and resource management, as it helps in generating valuable ideas which provides fundamental impact in all our projects.

2) We firmly believe that women go through special circumstances such as pregnancy, childbirth and the burden of raising a young child. Therefore, it is our duty to cooperate with them in overcoming these conditions, and thus a set of concrete measures have been taken. For example, at Simula, all women who went through pregnancy were supported and their health conditions were taken into account. After birth, a safe environment was provided for their children so they keep close to their mothers, which ensures the psychological and emotional stability of the mother and the child and we intend to spread those values to our partners by being a leading example.

We have worked a lot on this idea and held many workshops and meetings with youth to get a better understanding of the problems and demands they face to enter the labor market.

The idea was developed through them and then the meetings resulted in reports that confirmed the importance and impact of our project idea and that it would be used in the future.

The idea of our projects intersect with Goal #8 of the United Nations Development Goals (Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all), which falls under the main objective of this Challenge.

To ensure the success of our project, we need the support of the MIT-Solve project team to access a network of resource partners, mentors, and coaches across the sectors in which we operate so that we can best serve the community.

• Legal to make partnership with the government it is one of our main stakeholder and project enablers.

• Public relations, we will try to tackle the access barrier by building a network of relationships and we need some support in networking to reach out to companies.

• Business model to improve the stability of the business and effectiveness.

• Human capital to establish and facilitate employment in Indonesia in our office.