Youthentic

Youthentic is a platform that connects scholarship seekers and scholarship granting institutions which aim to empower students with non-academic abilities.

Youthentic is a website for students who want to search for scholarships. Scholarships that Youthentic provides are focused on non-academic fields. Youthentic also provides a filter feature that can help students to easily search for scholarships that match their skills.

Youthentic connects institutions that provide non-academic scholarships to students that have interests or talents in those fields. We will collaborate with many institutions so that students have many options of scholarships to choose from and can easily apply to many scholarships without the hustle of going from one website to another.

Youthentic also allows students to expose their abilities in non-academic fields through the portfolio, CV, and essay features that we provide. This will  help institutions easily find the qualified students that match their requirements. 

The institutions can put up the requirements for the scholarships on our website. Students then could insert the required data in the “my resume” features that contain portfolio, CV, personal data, etc. Lastly, the institutions can select the students that will receive the scholarships by looking at the data they have entered.

Youthentic uses existing technology such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to operate (upload data, search engine, etc.)

Youthentic aspire to raise awareness regarding the stigma that a student is considered smart only if they excel academically. This has been normalized by society that eventually creates injustice or lack of opportunity for students with non-academic abilities to hone their abilities. They often find it difficult to find or access non-academic scholarships that match their potential.

This has been an ignored problem in Indonesia. Many students are affected by this stigma and the inequality that it caused. Every talent is unique and worth developing. If we force everyone to develop their academic skills even when they have no interest and little-to-none ability, then their true potential will go to waste and restrain their contribution for the growth of Indonesia. 

The target communities that will be directly improved by the presence of Youthentic are students with non-academic ability and scholarship granting institutions. With the ongoing stigma regarding how students with non-academic abilities are perceived as “unintelligent” and being underestimated, their opportunities to enhance their skills also become more limited. With Youthentic, these students could expose their skills so they can be seen as equal to those with academic abilities. Most importantly, they will have more opportunities to hone their potential by applying to many scholarships that Youthentic provided.

Next, one of the stakeholders that have a big role and will be greatly impacted by this platform is the scholarship granting institution. Due to society’s lack of appreciation for non-academic talents, not many students have the interest to apply for scholarships to sharpen their skills. By collaborating with Youthentic, these institutions will get access to students who have the potential in their respective field. In the long run, these young potentials could be harnessed as national development assets that will benefit the students, the institution, and our country.

In order to develop Youthentic, we participated in DIC, a workshop conducted by Markoding and Unicef Indonesia. During this program, we delved deeper to further understand the needs of the population we want to serve. We've interviewed a few target users about their experiences and find out how our digital solutions can help them. One of our interviewees is passionate about playing football but his family is not very supportive because they think that this field cannot guarantee a future, especially when it costs money. Youthentic can provide him the opportunity to hone his potential as a contribution to developing the country

From this research, we have fixed and improved our solution so that it could serve our target users better. We also conducted some tests with some potential users regarding the UI design and UX flows of our solution.

Youthentic is still in concept stage because we haven't deployed our platform yet. However, we have explored our solution by making a lean canvas, business model, doing some research and testing with some potential users, etc. Although  we already make the prototype for our platform, it hasn't been fully developed, and hence it couldn't be classified into prototype stage.

Youthentic uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to operate the website. We use these existing technologies to run our website’s function, such as the interaction of generating scholarships data, creating a student's profile and resume, storing data, etc. Youthentic uses a website to create convenience for Indonesian students who ought to search and apply for non-academic scholarships. It can be easily accessed by Indonesian students and it will not take up any memories of phone or laptop.

Youthentic has not been launched for public use yet. For next year, we plan on serving around 600 students that want to apply for non-academic scholarships. Not only the students, we will also serve and collaborate with approximately 12 scholarship granting institutions to distribute more than 70 non-academic scholarships to students. Our platform could be a game-changing solution for these institutions to increase the number of applicants with suitable potential.

Youthentic impact goals include empowering students with non-academic skills and giving them the platform to gain opportunity to expose and hone their talents. We want to give them the same opportunity to be appreciated and to grow as those with academic talents. This platform will not only solve the difficulty of finding the right scholarship but also a reminder for society that every child is capable of giving their own contribution through their passion and potential.

In order to achieve our goals, we will reach out to both students and scholarship granting institutions. Cooperation and collaboration are needed for Youthentic to fulfill its goals. To appeal to every party involved, we also have plans for Youthetic development. We will conduct counseling and campaigning regarding the importance of honing potential and focus on branding our platform to thrust promotions. In the near future, we plan to add some features such as filtering, online magazine, and chat features to fulfill the needs of the users. With these steps that we have thought of, we believe we could achieve our impact goals.

To measure our progress and plans towards reaching the impact goals that we wanted, we will use some indicators. Mainly, the indicators that we will use are the quality of education and the rate of reduced inequalities. We are going to measure our progress by assessing the reachability and quality of education for every field of study, especially those categorized as non-academic. We will also evaluate our success rate of giving equal opportunities for students with non-academic skills to develop their potential. This could be seen from how many students that enrolled in our platforms, how many scholarships that we could provide, and how many of these students that got the chance to be accepted in the scholarships.

For the measurements of our platform's development, we will also have some indicators. It includes the research that we have done, the promotion, and most importantly the web-development (e.g., add some features, upgrade existing functions, etc.)

Youthentic barriers are in collaboration with institutions and universities as well as procedures for distributing students’ data to institutions so that institutions can easily select and provide scholarships to students who meet the requirements through the technology on our platform. In the future, we will make the possibility of international scholarships available on our platform to be reached by the students. For financial barriers, we need some money to launch and to develop our platform.

Since all of our team members are students, we ourselves have felt the stigma of intelligence which ultimately creates educational and social inequality. Hopefully, we have some skills to be the agents of change such as public speaking, problem analysis and solvers, and abilities to use technology. Our team has experience participating in youth digital innovation programs organized by Markoding and Unicef. And Youthentic is very inspired by our fellow student representatives who have shared their experiences with us during our interview session. Youthentic’s goal of creating equality in education so that every student deserves the equal opportunity to hone their potential and abilities, plays a big role in our brand concept and website design —Youthentic raises the theme of youth and cheerfulness.

We do not have a partner. But we joined Markoding’s challenge and bootcamp. From this, we learn a lot regarding how to grow our solution and expand our network by being the apprentice of a skilled UI/UX designer and web developer. 

Our solution is qualified because Youthentic addresses sustainability issues and is led by girls aged 17-18. We make this platform as our voices to become agents of change in our education environment. We believe that academic and non-academic abilities are equal, because every student has their own potential and it cannot be compared. With Youthentic, all students can have the same opportunity to hone their abilities. This HP Girls Save the World Prize can be one way of empowering women through our platform because Youthentic provides an equal opportunity for both women and men with non-academic abilities to get an education and hone their potential. We will use this prize to develop Youthentic so we can better achieve our goals to help students. We will do some promotion and cooperate with web developers to improve our technology.

We are qualified for The Pozen Social Innovation Prize, because Youthentic is a platform created by youth to solve the problem of equality in education related to academic and non-academic abilities. With our solution, every student will be able to channel their potential and abilities properly and appropriately. We will use this Prize to make Youthentic as a real website that can be used by Indonesian students. We also will use it to do some promotion to institutions (to give scholarships) and investors (to support Youthentic finance).