Wrapping Up Our GitLab Foundation AI for Economic Opportunity Grant

We are coming to the end of our GitLab Foundation funded project “Bridging skills and Opportunities for Navajo People with AI-enhanced Employment Matching”. We have entered into our initial user evaluations phase and this will be completed within the next 8 weeks.
 
We have just relaunched our website (edtechforlearning.org) and it now includes a lot of support information about our Navajo project. If you want to find out more about our Navajo project then use the link: Navajo Workforce Services App. In fact, you can try out our new proof-of-concept Workforce App at: edtechforlearning.app.

GitLab Foundation Announces Inaugural AI for Economic Opportunity Fund Grantee Cohort

Gitlab grantee

So, we have very exciting news. Our first application for funding has been successful and we have secured funding from GitLab Foundation. The title of our project is: “Bridging skills and Opportunities for Navajo People with AI-enhanced Employment Matching“.

The summary of the project is:

Our objective is to place 200-500 Navajos into net-new ‘Thriving Wage Jobs’ or better paying jobs in 2024 and for this number to increase annually as the range of jobs with validated competency maps and the number of Navajo job seekers complete guided upskilling plans increases. Traditional methods for creating job competency maps and job-seeker profiles are labor-intensive. Usage of AI and large job-related data stores will accelerate the gathering of data about both jobs and job seekers. We will create matching reports to show job seekers the jobs for which they are best prepared and provide them with pathways in learning aligned with their missing competencies. We will scale and localize job candidate data with novel, AI-driven “interview” tools. We anticipate a factor of 10 increase (cf. the current manual process) in the number of job maps and job seeker profiles created in the Navajo context and beyond.

Introduction

We are a new non-profit, called EdTech for Learning, established to champion access to, and the usage of, education technologies (EdTech) to improve teaching and learning.  EdTech for Learning will create a range of EdTech solutions that are low cost, easy to deploy, manage and use.

These systems will be built upon open source technology and use EdTech interoperability standards to enable the establishment of EdTech Ecosystems.

More importantly, the emphasis will be on identifying, enabling and supporting local social entrepreneurs who will improve teaching and learning in their communities around the World through the use of these new EdTech Ecosystem solutions.