Team4Tech recently partnered with Zendesk to engage 14 employee volunteers in a 2-day Design for Impact Workshop to co-design technology solutions for our Cambodia-based NGO partner, PEPY Empowering Youth (PEPY).
Providing Pathways for Student Success
PEPY provides personal and professional development training to rural youth in Siem Reap and neighboring provinces in Cambodia. Their team, led by local Cambodians, works to help young people starting at the high school level identify their goals and find pathways to success in school and in the professional settings of their choice. PEPY’s impactful work includes:
- Life skills development supporting students grades 10-12 to identify their dreams and prepare for next steps in higher education, vocational training, or work readiness
- Scholarship support for rural students attending university or vocational school
- Job readiness, English language, and ICT training helping students access skilled employment
Design Thinking to Support Cambodian Learners
During our 4-hour virtual workshop, Team4Tech led volunteers through the design thinking process to ideate and prototype potential solutions to PEPY’s design challenge: “How might PEPY use technology to better connect students with scholarship opportunities?”
Zendesk volunteers engaged with staff from PEPY to learn more about the organization’s work; understand the pain points and opportunities with the current scholarship application process; and ask questions to inform their ideas in response to the design challenge.
In small groups, volunteers collaborated virtually, brainstorming and rapidly prototyping their solutions for PEPY. In a first round of pitches, they gathered feedback from PEPY and incorporated this feedback to refine prototypes and present solutions. Volunteers had to be flexible and innovative to adapt their prototypes for the needs of PEPY’s users, including access in remote environments, limited devices and connectivity, and functionality in the local language, Khmer.
Volunteers’ deliverables included:
- A prototype for an app that PEPY staff and volunteers can use to fill out scholarship applications offline, which can sync later and connect directly to tools PEPY already uses.
- A flowchart of the scholarship application process, with identified opportunities for proposed enhancements with OCR for scanning and processing paper applications; AI language translation and voice AI automation for accessibility; and Power BI for data reporting.
- A concept for a bot that scholarship applicants can use to upload their documents and communicate with PEPY via Telegram, integrating OCR technology to automate data extraction and processing from images and PDFs.
In their deliverables, volunteers included next steps and other future opportunities as PEPY moves toward implementing the proposed solutions. If implemented successfully, these solutions have the potential to reduce application barriers and allow more students to connect directly with PEPY’s scholarship opportunities, thus expanding education access for rural youth.
I like that there are so many people from different backgrounds coming to the workshop. They bring in different perspectives to solve our problems. The volunteers that were brought in are very capable, in just two sessions they were able to create very polished prototypes which is very impressive.”
—Data Management Coordinator, PEPY
Skills-Based Volunteering Builds Valuable Leadership Skills
This Design for Impact Workshop created space for Zendesk employees to sharpen communication, decision-making, and presentation skills. Skilled volunteers also had the opportunity to foster team cohesion while driving positive change for an impactful NGO.
Participating in the Team4Tech workshop was an inspiring experience that showed how quickly a passionate team can create meaningful solutions. It’s a powerful way to use technology for social good and connect with like-minded colleagues who want to make a difference. I loved how Team4Tech brought together people passionate about social impact and turned ideas into workable solutions in just a few hours.”
—Zendesk Volunteer
Team4Tech is proud to facilitate connections between volunteers and education-focused NGOs like PEPY, improving education that ultimately prepares learners for better jobs. Our Design for Impact programming is just one example of how Team4Tech leverages skills-based volunteering to accelerate the impact of nonprofit organizations globally.