Work4Progress India

#SDGAction42855

Description

Intro

A key challenge in the 2030 agenda is to create decent jobs, particularly for women and youth. Innovation and multi-stakeholder partnerships can make a change in addressing this complex issue. To contribute to this challenge “la Caixa” Foundation launched Work 4 Progress program to promote innovative solutions for employment in India, Peru and Mozambique especially for young people and women. W4P wants to move beyond traditional approaches limited to isolated projects into platforms for innovation and socio-economic change, working through multi-stakeholder partnerships including private sector, civil society, academia and beneficiaries, to build tailored programs adapted to each geographical circumstances.

Objective of the practice

Work 4 Progress India aims to promote innovative solutions for employment among vulnerable women and young. The program wants to move beyond traditional linear approaches limited to isolated projects into Open Innovation Platforms for the creation of employment by means of collaborative partnerships between local civil society organizations, pri¬vate sector, administration, universities and NGOs. Work4Progress incorporates new tools and methodologies in 
- listening and identification of community needs, 
- co-cre¬ation and prototyping of new solutions, 
- exploration of instruments for scal¬ing, 
- governance of social innovation platforms, 
- developmental and impact evaluation systems 
- collective impact strategies and 
- new communication tools 
 
Work4Progress India is part of a bigger program, implemented also in Mozambique and Peru that has been designed with a Think and Do Tank mentality. The member organizations of the platforms are experimenting in the field, while a group of international experts helps to obtain this knowledge and share it with centres of thought and action at international level. Work4Progress is offered as a “living lab” to test new methodologies that may be useful for other philanthropic institutions, government or entities specializing in international development.

Partners

Work 4 Progress is promoted by la Caixa Banking Foundation which coordinates globally and provides methodology and funds.
In India Work 4 progress is implemented by Development Alternatives, together with a network of 3 civil society organizations, 2 academia institutions and governmental actors (mainly Panchayats), among others.
The beneficiaries are vulnerable women and youth that lives in 40 communities in Bundelkhand and Eastern Uttar Pradesh (approximately 3.000 per year).
All these stakeholders, including beneficiaries, constitute the Work 4 Progress India platform.

Implementation of the Project/Activity

Work4Progress India has two main phases that includes elements to ensure sustainability. During the first one (2 first years; starting in 2017), the partner organizations work in a coordinated way, and with the active participation of the beneficiary population, in 1) a listening process to determine needs and the challenges of the population in terms of decent work; 2) a co-creation process to design innovative solutions that respond to the needs detected in the diagnosis and 3) a process of massive experimentation of prototypes aimed at employment generation.
During the second phase of the program (2-3 years more) Work 4 Progress India will continue with the implementation of prototypes and will start to accelerate those initiatives that show greater impact. This second phase also includes the connection with other financing funds in order to promote the sustainability of the platform.
In terms of monitoring and evaluation a system for ongoing evaluation (developmental evaluation) is conducted by a figure called “external coordinator”, a person who doesn’t belong to any of the partner organization buts works very closely with them (embedded). This ongoing evaluation enables changes to be made while the action is being implemented.
In addition, a system for impact evaluation is planned with the objective of gather evidences of the methodology and assess the impact of the program.
Furthermore, a global evaluation of the Work4Progress program is being implemented in order to promote the harmonization of methods and indicator design among the 3 platforms (India, Peru and Mozambique), as well as design a protocol for developmental evaluation that can be employed by each of the three platforms to ensure that the platforms are adequately capturing the developmental processes and learning throughout implementation.
As part of the Think Tank strategy, an online global platform is being designed in order to catalyse the learnings and promote coordination among the involved actors in all the Work4Progress platforms.
The Work4Progress program is an example of intervention designed according to a life cycle model. It includes partnerships and co-financing, contemplates a rigorous evaluation, and it is expected that the escalation of the intervention will be carried out by other parties, after the model is transferred.

Results/Outputs/Impacts

Since it has started in 2017, Work4progress India has put in practice new methodologies of listening, community engagement and co-creation as for example focus group and trainings with participation of 1,050 women and 1,600 young people; structured interviews with 344 entrepreneurs; regional events on job creation for more than 200 stakeholders; a launch event of the program in New Delhi in November 2017, with the presence of high government officials; and the contest "Kaun Banega Business Leader" to capture business ideas in 40 communities (1,000 applications), among other.
Till November 2018, the program has supported 157 enterprises (152 individual and 5 group entreprises) creating a total of 401 jobs and generating increase of an average of 30% of the income of the entrepreneurs. A compendium of the enterprise packages developed is attached.

Enabling factors and constraints

The Work4Progress analysis and listening platform enables to continually adjust the employment initiatives to the needs expressed by beneficiaries in real time. The co-creation and prototyping lab allow to undergo a process of permanent adaptation to the local setting before the initiatives of generation of employment are scaled up. All proposals must always be subject to the consideration of local agents so that they can be perceived as their own and linked to the opinions obtained through the analysis and listening platform.
The W4P Programme maintains a model of shared and distributed leadership, in which there is no single person or organisation overseeing the entire process. It seeks to create a new culture of collaboration between the entities that work in the same geographical area - local and international
organisations - that provide sustainability to the action. The ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation provides technical and training support to the platforms. The technical support includes the option for organisations working in the programme to access personnel who are experts in the methodologies used, and support in all stages of the process. The training support includes the design and implementation
of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) to which all the members of the platforms access, as well as the holding of work meetings between the members of the three platforms and training seminars.

Sustainability and replicability

Regardless of the typology of employment initiatives supported by the program, all of them must be scalable and evaluable. They must hence include a feasibility plan enabling their products or services to be improved, proving their ability to access the job market and a connection with a micro-financing system.
The employment initiatives that are considered fully developed and linked with the local agents will be able to join a specialised acceleration programme for job creation in these contexts. The accelerator will distinguish between small-scale or community projects, medium-sized initiatives that involve pre-existing organisations in the area and large-scale actions involving local institutions and private businesses.
In this respect, the “la Caixa” Foundation and it investment partners will also offer different products for scaling the projects that could include anything from non-reimbursable subsidies to investments through financial products on the market.

Conclusions

1. SOCIAL INNOVATION PLATFORM: Work 4 Progress India is an "Open Innovation Platforms” for employment generation that includes local entities, NGDOs, academia and government authorities. The platform introduce new tools for managing employment interventions collaboratively, introducing large scale co-creation and prototyping systems in 4 levels of activity (community interventions, small and medium size employment generation initiatives, large scale public and private partnerships and public services and policies redesign). 
 
2. IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING AND IDENTIFYING: The main innovative aspect of this programme with respect to other similar activities aimed at generating employment is that all consortiums are developing new instruments to understand community needs and aspirations before connecting them directly with co-creation and prototyping processes in real time. 
 
3. DESIGN THINKING in rural areas: Work 4 Progress India has developed its own design thinking tools to better connect supply and demand in rural areas that have difficulties to apply these processes within communities that have low levels of literacy and limited external support. 
 
4. TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION: The program also promotes innovation in production processes, technology transference, and goods and service provision as tools for economic empowerment, with an especial focus on new technologies (for example communication technologies to facilitate connection with markets). The program incorporates an annual challenge to detect and support technology solutions for youth and female employment connected to the prototypes generated in each country. 
 
5. GENERATION OF EMPLOYMENT: in the following 2 years Work 4 Progress India platforms will generate around 2,500 jobs in the two implementation regions. 
 
5.- INVESTMENT. Work4Progress generates an investment channel for the employment generation initiatives identified through the listening and co-creation process. This investment channel allows other institutions to multiply their investment strategies under a collective impact approach. 
 
By incorporating these elements in an integrated manner, the W4P programme makes the most advanced social innovation tools available to international development.

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