professional development | TechChange | The Institute for Technology and Social Change

Over the past twenty years, it’s estimated that the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has saved twenty-five million lives in more than fifty countries through a wide variety of efforts to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This vital, complex work requires an immense amount of data tracking and analysis, much of which is made possible by the Interagency Collaborative for Program Improvement, or ICPI. For the last three years, TechChange has partnered with ICPI and DigitalSquare to support the dedicated professionals responsible for the data crucial to the realization of PEPFAR’s mission.

TechChange uses our community building and knowledge sharing expertise to provide PEPFAR’s data synergy hub at ICPI with four main ways of connecting and collaborating.

Learning Collaboratives that Bring Agencies Together

Learning Collaboratives are 2-hour monthly virtual forums that bring together field and headquarters staff from USAID, US Department of State, Peace Corps, US Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These forums serve as a key touch point for sharing, learning, and identifying areas for technical assistance and tailored follow up. TechChange uses digital whiteboard tools such as Miro to facilitate interactive activities and knowledge sharing, but it’s the expertise within the community that takes center stage in these sessions. For example, in January 2023, an interagency team from Côte d’Ivoire shared how they were doing data quality assessments, including best practices for using a newly updated tool. This allowed the ICPI team to see what the new assessment looked like in practice, and highlighted valuable local expertise in implementation.

Onboarding Trainings to Bring New Hires Up to Speed

Detailed onboarding to the tools and policies of PEPFAR is critical for data professionals joining the relevant agencies. TechChange provides twice-annual virtual training to support the capacity building of new PEPFAR staff. These multi-day sessions involve roughly a dozen configured breakout rooms, 30+ facilitators, 16-20 learning presentations, 5 government agencies, multiple Zoom links, and nearly 100 participants from PEPFAR-supported countries around the world. The training prepares new staff from the five related agencies for success in achieving PEPFAR’s important mission. One participant from the May ‘23 training shared that “the interactive exercises were great and helpful in understanding the content, while another termed their session “well-paced, informative, and empowering.”

Strategic Meeting for Goal Setting and Visioning

TechChange also provided technical support for a hybrid event hosted by ICPI where leaders from each of the PEPFAR-involved agencies shared their priorities and concerns for the year. Attendees communicated elements of the learning initiatives that were working well, such as the white-boarding exercises during onboarding, and those that need further support in the future, such as guidance for volunteer facilitators to take on more sessions. This convening allowed for goal setting and visioning for 2024, including planning for future Learning Collaboratives, Onboarding Training and a Strategic Retreat.

Ideation Sessions Refresh and Reorient Work

In a multi-year partnership, it’s easy to continue business as usual. But in the fast moving field of international development and public health, its crucial to continually align stakeholders to ensure that community building and knowledge sharing initiatives– such as those provided by TechChange to ICPI and Digital Square– meet new needs and demands, as well as continuously bring in new formats and engagement strategies to keep things fresh. In 2024, TechChange will host a series of in-person and virtual Ideation Sessions and Strategic Workshops and/or Retreats with key ICPI and other agency stakeholders to plan for the future of these learning and collaboration initiatives, as well as to support their teams to connect with one another.

This article was originally published on Stanford Social Innovation Review.

By Nick Martin & Christopher Neu

On November 3, 1961, John F. Kennedy’s universal call to fight poverty was formalized in the creation of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Today, the rising cost of education means only a select few can answer that call. At USAID and implementing organizations, higher levels of leadership are mostly closed to those with only a bachelor’s degree. An elite master’s degree is especially costly—a two-year master’s in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School costs $154,688.

Students passionate about building a better future are increasingly being asked to mortgage their own in return. Students share the growing burden of student debt across the country: The median level of indebtedness for a Master of Arts degree jumped from $38,000 in 2004 to $59,000 in 2012, after adjusting for inflation. But the ability to repay debts is not equal across fields: Social workers are, in comparison, highly unlikely to make a salary sufficient to repay those debts without hardship. The result is that students are getting squeezed between inflated education requirements and constrained salaries at a time when the world most needs them to tackle complex global challenges.

To overcome the barriers of insufficient access to education, universities are turning to massive open online courses (MOOCs) to teach about sustainable development. For example, Wesleyan developed How to Change the World, Stanford created Mobile Health Without Borders, and even UC Berkeley has a new initiative to build a Philanthropy University with Acumen and NovoEd. But scaling a lecture hall through video content is easy; it’s creating an affordable and effective classroom experience that’s hard.

Further progress will require a revolution in online pedagogy as much as improved technology, or possibly even an unbundling of the graduate degree from the traditional 40 three-credit courses. As employers better identify the discrete skill sets and competencies they need, students will be empowered with clarity about where they want to spend their time and money to enter the workplace. Education and accreditation have never been more important for workplace success, but the in-person college experience may soon become an unaffordable luxury.

Chris Neu and Norman Shamas facilitate a TechChange course in the TechChange studio

At TechChange, we believe that we can achieve a guided student experience, a network of dedicated alumni, and an expansion of career opportunities all online. Fortunately, our students believe the same. In the last month, we’ve seen record enrollments in our new low-cost online diploma program, with more than 120 applicants from more than 40 countries already signing up for our 16-week program on technology for monitoring and evaluation. These students come from organizations and governments such as UNICEF, Mercy Corps, Peru, and the World Bank. Employers have similar confidence in this model; several are sponsoring group enrollments in the diploma program.

Online educators have much to learn from one another. In building out the program, we have drawn heavily from in-person and online models of education that are pushing boundaries, including:

Amani Institute: Has a five-month post-graduate certificate program in applied skills for changing the world (now in Kenya and Brazil).
General Assembly: Known for its intensive, 12-week boot camps in computer programming and design, and has a great track record at placing graduates in better-paying jobs.
Khan Academy: Set the standard for engagement in online learning through quality content and personalized learning paths.

There is no clear answer to the problems of unsustainable careers in sustainable development. Universities are expensive, and these jobs are highly complex. However, by unbundling the graduate school experience, and examining how we can recreate and improve it online, educators might just find new methods for launching the next generation of development practitioners unburdened by lifelong debt.

Last week, the United Nations hosted the Sustainable Development Summit in New York and convened interactive dialogues on six themes including ending poverty and combating climate change. Perhaps it’s also worth discussing how we ensure that the careers of the people required to address these problems are also sustainable. Rethinking graduate school seems like a good place to start.

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Nick (@ncmart) is the founder and CEO of TechChange. He is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown and George Washington Universities.

Chris (@neuguy) is the COO of TechChange. He holds a master’s in democracy and governance from Georgetown University.

This article was originally published on Stanford Social Innovation Review. Featured image credit: Russell Watkins, DFID Flickr.

Tech entrepreneurs of the world unite! Last Friday, TechChange was proud to present on a short panel for The Tunisia Community College Scholarship Program (TCCSP) at the 4-H Youth Conference Center in Chevy Chase, MD. The Thomas Jefferson Scholarship Program, TCCSP “builds the workforce capacity of a diverse group of Tunisian students in technical fields through US-based training and practical experience in their professional fields through academic study, community engagement activities, and internships.”

TechChange has participated in similar student programs with TechGirls for #JobShadow day and IREX’s Global UGRAD-Pakistan program, but we found this topic particularly urgent given the continuing youth unemployment crisis in Tunisia. However, while the specific panel topic was “Journeys to Global Citizenship and Professional Success,” but the best part of the event was listening to the students pitch their ideas and professional goals during a poster session on “My Professional Self-Portrait.”

While walking around and chatting with the students, three lessons stood out:

1) Combine tech, design, and entrepreneurship

There was one moment while walking around where I saw three “Professional Self-Portraits” next to each other. The first was for graphic design, the second for network engineers, and the third was for starting a small business for IT solutions.

2) Pitch your ideas, but listen more

Turns out the idea of starting a business wasn’t unique! During the panel, I asked the audience to raise their hand if they intended to start a business someday. About half of the hands went up. But more impressive than those starting a business were those who took time in the event to connect.

3) Networking is key

A funny thing happened when I started talking to the three students mentioned earlier — they started to listen and talk to one another. Given that successful startups often require two or three founders with synergistic–not overlapping–skill sets, this gives me hope that the relationships will continue after the students leave DC.

If some of these lessons seem familiar, well, they’re pretty much spot-on for what the industry professionals came up during #EdTech for the last Tech@State. Thanks again to IREX for hosting us last week — we’re proud to take part and excited to see where this program goes next!

Photo credit: Images taken and provided by IREX.