With the help of Cloud specialists DotModus, the NPO Harambee now powers their mobi sites with the Google Cloud Platform, helping to expand their mission of connecting unemployed youth with jobs; and allowing more job seekers to apply with a mobile device. Harambee, a not-for-profit social enterprise, tackles the youth unemployment challenge through its Youth Employment Accelerator, using data, innovation, partnerships and on-the-ground experience to build pragmatic, implementable solutions that get results.
‘Harambee’ means ‘all pull together’ in Swahili, reflecting the African tradition of community self-help. With unemployment levels in South Africa exceeding 50% in the 18–35 age range, Harambee is an apt name for this organization.
Harambee works with local partners and government to match high-potential youths with entry-level positions. These applicants are hungry for opportunity, but lack the finances and networks needed to find jobs.
When Harambee needed to enhance its digital services, DotModus stepped in to assist. As a Google Cloud Partner specialising in data analytics, and committed to helping non-profits succeed, DotModus was able to provide the assistance needed.
Harambee needed to support new mobi site initiatives and make strategic use of the data collected from assessments conducted at multiple touch points along job candidates’ journeys. Consequently, they needed to move from on-premises data centres to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). DotModus was able to build a cloud-native architecture to provide the flexibility to meet these needs.
“Google Cloud Platform provides the capacity, capabilities and partner network we need to expand our services and our mission,” says Navid Erfani-Ghadimi, Enterprise Architect at Harambee. “DotModus provided excellent support from development through to production, helping us understand how our data flows and which machine learning algorithms would work best on Google Cloud Platform.”
As a result of this partnership, Harambee has interacted with over one million young people to collect, what it believes to be, the largest dataset on youth employment in South Africa. Over 400,000 of those young people have been invited to attend a face-to-face work seeker support session at one of Harambee’s centres; and 50,000 have found employment through Harambee’s interventions.
In addition, Harambee is using the data it collects to advance its mission and make more job placements. “Compared to our legacy IT costs, we expect to spend 70% less with Google Cloud Platform,” says Evan Jones, Harambee CIO. “That’s money we can use to develop additional resources and services to help disadvantaged young people.”
The power of technology to change lives is evident in this partnership and in much of the work done by DotModus. “Changing lives through technology is fundamental to our company, and a guiding value of the Dynamic Technologies group,” says Patrick Eriksen, Marketing Manager of DotModus.