Helping NGOs Create Economic Opportunities for Learners In Under-Resourced Communities

In a Nutshell: To succeed in today’s world, it helps to have access to technology and training that allows us to build our digital skills and become more marketable. Team4Tech partners with organizations around the world to boost digital expertise in under-resourced communities. Its reach extends to more than 90 countries worldwide.   

Before I ever logged on to the internet, I had heard about it. In the 1990s, stories about how the internet was going to transform the world were shared on nightly news programs and in classrooms across the country. I eagerly anticipated the day I’d get my chance to step into the future and surf the World Wide Web.

But instead of the life-altering event I had expected, the first time I sat down at a computer with internet connectivity was somewhat confusing and disappointing. First, I was greeted by the jarring sound of a dialup modem attempting to connect to the internet. Weathering that audio disturbance, I expected to be whisked away to a digital wonderland where all knowledge was just a few keystrokes away.

But my internet connection wasn’t the fastest, and I grew frustrated by how long it took a search engine to return results for my search for a list of the top episodes of “Saved By the Bell.” Of course, I already knew which ones were the best, but I had to give the internet a test to see if it really was everything the experts said it was. Walking away from this experience, I wondered if the internet wasn’t destined to be forgotten like 8-track tapes and disposable cameras.

Technology has come a long way since then, but not everyone has equal access to tech tools or the internet to help build their digital skills. Team4Tech is a nonprofit committed to improving education in under-resourced areas around the world through increasing access to technology and opportunities to build employability skills. We spoke with Julie Clugage, Team4Tech’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, to find out how the organization uses its influence to help non-governmental organizations (NGOs) serving learners in under-resourced communities.

Team4Tech works with community-based NGOs that are striving to integrate technology into educational programming. The nonprofit provides annual grants that NGOs can use to improve access to technology in communities with below-average incomes.

“Providing grants to communities helps them set up their first computer lab or buy a set of tablets that they can share through their classrooms,” Clugage told us. “It’s a very meaningful investment that we make, and we offer it annually for three to five years. We actually help build entire digital infrastructures in the areas we serve, so it’s really a compelling offer that we make to these communities.”

How we’re raised can impact who we turn out to be as adults, including how we earn a living. Some of us decide to pursue a profession because we admired a parent or other adult in our community who had a similar type of job. Or maybe you had an experience growing up that you wanted others to have, or avoid, and that influenced your professional journey.

Clugage told us she came from a background where she didn’t have a lot of the resources that other children did. She moved 10 times between starting kindergarten and finishing 12th grade. 

Despite these challenges, Clugage attended multiple prestigious universities, including Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley, that prepared her for the meaningful career she sought. She worked on Capitol Hill for a year before moving to Guatemala to work with high school students in a small, rural village. A religious group had recently built a high school in the village, and Clugage taught there for two years.

“Before the school was built, students in the area didn’t have access to a secondary level education within 40 miles of the village,” Clugage told us. “I went there in 1992, and we had students who were in their early twenties coming into the ninth grade because they hadn’t had access to learning opportunities before. I helped some of them to go on to university, and seeing their successes lit my passion for education, which is the most meaningful lever to combat cycles of poverty.”

Clugage told us Team4Tech supports NGOs that help learners build the skills needed to achieve financial success. The organization works with more than 800 NGOs in more than 90 countries. In addition to grants that they can use to purchase technology, Team4Tech matches NGOs with skilled volunteers from tech companies that can help them integrate technology with their programming.

Team4Tech hosts an online community where NGOs can access tools and connect with other educators across the globe. There’s no need for an NGO to have their credit or debit card on hand when accessing Team4Tech’s digital tools — they’re free. 

The internet gives us a way to connect virtually, but sometimes it’s nice to communicate with people we work with face to face. Team4Tech has on-site regional hubs in Brazil, Kenya, and India.

“Our online community is a great asset for NGOs working in the education space,” Clugage told us. “We have teams that convene both in person and virtually to promote the exchange of knowledge and support the advancement of education for employability.”

Coming up with a list of jobs that don’t require any access to technology is tough — I tried. Even workers with jobs that are mostly completed with the aid of analog tools often use technology to communicate with coworkers and clients.

Clugage told us research reveals that 90% of the jobs that exist today have a digital component. She also said that 850 million people haven’t received the type of education that would allow them to build the digital, entrepreneurial, and socio-emotional skills necessary to work in the knowledge economy.

To address this problem, Team4Tech supports organizations that train teachers and help them build a plan to teach people the skills they need to get a job in the knowledge economy.

“The tech sector moves so fast sometimes that if you’re not there to train the teachers and build a plan that all the stakeholders can buy into, then programs can get neglected or fall into disrepair,” Clugage told us. “We work with NGOs as long as they still need our help and are growing in scale or scope. We want to be there to give them support so they can integrate technologies in a way that’ll make an impact in terms of educational outcomes.”

Team4Tech partners with a carefully curated group of NGOs. Clugage told us the organization conducts due diligence that spans four or five months before working with an NGO it hasn’t engaged with before. 

Team4Tech works alongside NGOs to develop goals to gauge its effectiveness across four categories: learner outcomes, learner engagement (including attendance and graduation rates), teacher and staff effectiveness, and organizational scale and sustainability. Clugage told us Team4Tech asks its partner NGOs to choose metrics by which the organization can measure its efforts.

“After we’re set up with a new NGO, we basically go on a journey with them for three to five years to help them reach their goals and make progress on those metrics,” Clugage said. “Once they feel like they’ve achieved what they said they wanted to achieve, they become what we call alumni mentors. And we give them ongoing grants of $5,000 every year so they’ll continue to share their learnings and expertise with our community of practice.”

Team4Tech offers such valuable services and resources to NGOs that we had to ask Clugage where the organization’s funding comes from. She told us Team4Tech receives support from tech companies whose employees volunteer their time to help advance the organization’s mission.

Individual donors also provide funding to Team4Tech and have supported the organization since its early days. Clugage told us the newest source of funding for the nonprofit are larger philanthropic groups such as the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

After such an inspirational conversation, we were anxious to hear about a specific challenge that Team4Tech helped a group of learners overcome. Clugage told us about Team4Tech’s work in Kenya with an NGO called Kenya Connect that provides support to more than 40 primary schools and three secondary schools located in rural areas.

Kenya Connect’s vision is to help rural Kenyan students succeed in the 21st century. To support this vision, Team4Tech provided them with grants so they could purchase Chromebooks. 

“A team of girls from one of the secondary schools there just won their first robotics competition at the World Robot Olympiad in Nairobi,” Clugage told us. “And now this team of three girls is eligible to go to Turkey to compete in a global robotics challenge.”

Team4Tech partnered with an NGO in Vietnam to mentor students living in government-run orphanages and teach them to develop apps. A group of these students entered a technology and innovation challenge and were one of 12 finalists chosen from more than 1,600 teams from more than 60 countries.

“These NGOs are doing incredible work,” Clugage told us. “We help them get more visibility and then scale. With our support, they’re able to achieve incredible things.”