Bootstrapping PRISM adoption with a tool to build Educational Credentials

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Henrik Metsämäki

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Requested funds in ada

228000

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

6

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

Fairway's SSI solution aims to simplify the process of issuing edu-credentials for schools and offer a practical incentive for Ethiopian IT-students to bootstrap the process through European IT-hires

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

Yes

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

Project Co-Proposer is Proofspace. Technical implementation exists to Atala PRISM through Proofspace and relies on Proofspace

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

Technical implementation mostly exists already prior to this proposal. The proposer is a tech company. Governance framework, trust registry and incentive model will be open source.

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

• 8.5 - By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value
• 8.6 - By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training

SDG Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.

SDG Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

Summary: We're bootstrapping the use of PRISM and VC’s in Africa. Our focus? Offering our easy to use edu-credentials builder tool for coding schools, and a real incentive for the schools and IT professionals to utilize it to access European IT hires. 

Background: Despite the vast and growing numbers of talented software developers in Ethiopia and the wider sub-saharan Africa, the potential of this region often goes unnoticed by recruiters when it comes to filling their talent needs. From the outside, for example from the EU, the market may seem foreign and unfamiliar, leading to a lack of understanding and trust in the capabilities of software developers from this region.. Among the reasons for this is lack of exposure and awareness of the software development industry in this area, the potential language and cultural barriers, and the lack of trust in the skills and educational quality. 

However, there has been a rampant growth in producing internationally competent software developer talent in Ethiopia. The country has witnessed the establishment of international training programs and the presence of locally licensed firms offering education that meets global standards. Although many strides have been taken to develop quality talent, The lack of verified data about the candidate’s past education, certifications and experience does not make the remote recruitment experience any easier.

About Fairway: Fairway is established in Ethiopia with Fairway platform that has close to 1000 job seekers and dozens of registered businesses and job postings (also available in Telegram: https://t.me/fairway_jobs_ethiopia). The existing platform contains two interfaces: one for job seekers and one for businesses. Both of these interfaces contain important functionalities such as cv generator and job listings for job seekers and candidate filtering and processing for businesses.

Additionally, the features include the ability to connect job seeker DID to the job seeker account through Proofspace technology. Job Seekers can verify existing Educational credentials with their account and request and receive Proof of Employment Credentials, while businesses can issue verifiable Proof of Employment credentials through Fairway DID. We have introduced Employment credentials to the Ethiopian Market for the first time. You can find more about our previous Project Catalyst project on our website under Projects and Catalyst resources:https://www.lidonation.com/en/proposals/employment-credentials-on-prism-f8 & Employment Credentials on PRISM).

As a natural progression of our previous projects, we have identified a conjoined group of job seekers, educational institutions and businesses in the IT sector that together would benefit the most from the use of Educational and Employment credentials. Ethiopian IT developers are a tech-savvy and capable group that are well-suited to be early adopters of blockchain-based identity and wallets for building reputable CVs and finding remote and global work opportunities. Many of these developers are graduates of specialized coding schools that prioritize talent development and job opportunities. These schools, being more advanced and less bureaucratic than traditional universities, are ideal for embracing student and graduate data as VCs. Focusing on this group as the initial first adopters/users of the technology, we are building for ourselves the best chances to solve the complete problem described.

Our proposed solution is to expand the capabilities and usability of our jobs platform (https://fairway.work/) by building an additional dashboard for educational institutions such as coding schools and universities to easily manage their available courses and credential programmes, view graduate's requests and to issue Educational VC's through Proofspace DID. This will serve as easy to use "EDU-credentials for jobs"-builder tool for any educational institution in the world. Although many SSI platforms and tools exist, such as Atala PRISM and Proofspace that we use, they alone are not simple and straightforward enough to onboard these types of educational institutions to the issuing process. Simultaneously, these tools are not yet widely adopted and need a usable incentive.

Furthermore, we provide the job seekers who are graduates from these Ethiopian coding schools a real, practical and highly valuable incentive to request such credentials and to utilize them: the access to European IT jobs provided through Fairway Finland. The project contains a piloting phase where we aim to match graduates with newly issued educational credentials to real IT jobs in Europe. To put it in simple terms, Fairway has IT-clients in Finland that are interested in hiring Ethiopian talent. These educational credentials are used to verify the candidate's background and education, to build trust with a potential employer in Finland.

Also included, is setting up a governance framework and trust registry of the coding schools, and education/training for the coding schools to use Proofspace DID and to issue verified educational credentials

Results: At the end, we aim to achieve 100 onboarded developers from 2-5 different Ethiopian coding schools, who are issued educational VCs. Additionally, if the project is proven to be successful our bonus goal is to achieve MoUs that indicate 1000+ additional students being onboarded within the next 12 months after the project.

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community.

With this project, we aim to foster a community of coding schools/educational institutions and talent that use our tools and Proofspace for issuing verifiable credentials that enhance the credibility, transparency, and trustworthiness of IT developers in Ethiopia making them more approachable in the global market. Furthermore, our project offers these coding schools one year license to ProofSpace platform for issuing credentials as an institution and provide training to utilize ProofSpace credential issuing platform for project scope, and also for other activities outside of this project.

Our goal is to secure the betterment of students’ career prospects through the adoption of DID and VC technology. We will do this by combining structured ecosystem design, resulting in an ecosystem governance framework, with proven technology to create a community of trusted educational and training institutions and talent.

After the completion Fairway aims to provide jobs to as many talents as possible in the European job market remotely through the use of these credentials in the Fairway recruitment process. Once these hires are successful, we will be able to boost the adoption of our previous proposal theme working with these Finnish Employers to provide Proof of Employment credentials for hired candidates.

This is how we build SSI based work history and candidate ID on top of Cardano and boost real adoption Globally.

This project focuses on increasing the number of actual DIDs created and VCs issued as well as studying and piloting concrete incentive model and governance. 

The project will:

• First and foremost: bootstrap the actual use of PRISM based credentials in recruitment that expands from the African tech schools to Finnish businesses and employers.
• Convene stakeholders from the entire ecosystem value chain: administering authority (Fairway), schools (issuers), students (holders), employers (verifiers) and technology vendors (ProofSpace and Fairway);
• Incentivise their participation in a ToIP working group focused on delivering a publicly available ecosystem governance framework (EGF) to provide “rules of engagement” for the ecosystem, including the following key components:
• Governing Documents
• Trust Assurance and Certification
• Credential Types and DID methods
• Credential Schemas
• Trust Registries
• Assurance Levels
• Risk Assessments
• Governance Requirements
• Interoperability Requirements
• Business Requirements
• Information Trust Requirements
• Inclusion and Accessibility Requirements
• Develop a clear case for the alignment of incentives in the ecosystem, which is a prerequisite for ecosystem sustainability.
• Enable the implementation of the EGF through Fairway, ProofSpace and PRISM technology.

The proposal builds on top of existing technology and project delivered through the Catalyst. The results are real and tangible and align very closely with IOG’s work in Ethiopia. The process of launching a blockchain based system for education VCs with the Ministry of Education has been long and massive for IOG. This project aims to build directly in their footsteps to leverage the existing groundwork and progress and accelerate the goals of the initiative for blockchain based education and employment data in Ethiopia. This accelerates Ethiopia’s role as one of the first adopters and examples of this technology. 

Additionally this project can be used as a case study for DID solutions and serve as an example use cases to help businesses and companies to understand the benefits and utility of this technology

This proposal builds on existing product and initiative funded by The Project Catalyst, aligns directly with this challenge and is achievable given the existing commitments of participating stakeholders.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

The capacity to deliver is very high. The project team consists of two reputable companies Fairway and ProofSpace who have both successfully delivered previous projects in The Project Catalyst.

Fairway is already established in the target market and has been working with similar initiatives for two years. The company has also received funding twice from the Finnish foreign ministry through Finnpartnership (we can verify this info in a video call or email), which is also in support of Fairway building more trustful job market to Ethiopia for the long term. Our platform is already somewhat known in the market and we have already opened discussions with local tech schools about Hiring processes and the use of SSI. Two Fairway team members have graduated from one of the reputable coding schools we target and we know the founders.

ProofSpace is a technology provider who solely focuses on delivering this type of technology and has, crucially, held commercial accountability for implementing the rules of ecosystem governance frameworks in its technology. This experience with Atala PRISM and Student Reader, whose EGFs are the source of the EGF content summaries above (see “Governance Documents” on this page), provides unique value to the project. Additionally, both of the companies have websites and other resources to show proof of their other work and team.

[Project Milestones] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

MILESTONE 1: Market research and building partnerships & adding Edu-dashboard to Fairway platform

Duration: 2 months, months 1-2

Milestone conducts market research and executes a sales funnel to build the required list of partner institutions. Milestone also conducts expanding the capabilities and usability of our jobs platform for the easiest possible user flow for educational institutions to manage courses, connect proofspace DID and to issue educational credentials

Main tasks and activities:

• Conducting comprehensive market research to identify specialized coding schools and institutions.
• We already have identified 3
• Analyzing the challenges and surveying the coding schools and their graduate’s challenges in the job market. Creating engagement with the identified institutions, establishing contacts, and gathering and surveying relevant information.
• Creating a Fairway-based dashboard for universities to:
• Manage available verifiable tracks that can then be requested by the graduates
• Easily manage all the graduates' requests to their credentials
• Building a seprate connection for the Proofspace DID (only job seekers/graduates have one available now)
• Building and publishing a credential schema in Proofspace that will be utilized by all the partners
• Minor updates for Job seeker CV-generator

Deliverables and Outputs:

• A list of potential partners (2-5 partners) for issuing of edu-credentials
• Building of MoU's, signing as many as possible
• Reporting how many institutions were reached and analyzed
• Showcase the advancements in Fairway Platform

Outcomes:

• Improved understanding of the coding education landscape and the needs of coding schools, students, and employers.
• Establishment of initial partnerships for the credential issuing project, paving the way for future collaborations in the complete initiative.
• Enhanced Fairway platform with Globally and universally usable easy to use "edu-credentials for work"- dashboard

Governance

Duration: 1 month, month 3

Milestone works to publish a governance framework

Main tasks and activities:

• Establish or join a Governance Framework working group at Trust over IP with Fairway & ProofSpace.
• Organize a series of governance workshops with partners, including pilot school(s), gather advice, and set up a Governance framework and parameters, including governance prerequisites. Validate the governance framework by conducting reviews,obtaining feedback and demonstrating that the technical attributes (e.g. credential schemas) can be delivered.

Deliverables & Outputs:

• A published Governance Framework tailored for coding schools.

Outcomes:

• Improved governance structure addressing unique challenges in credential issuance and verification within the coding education industry.

Onboarding of schools and Establishing the Trust Registry

Duration: 2 months, months 4-5

This Milestone focuses to onboard developers to the platform and assisting developer schools and graduates in the issuing and receiving of the student credentials. Establishing the trust registry.

Main tasks and activities:

• Marketing campaign to onboard developers to the platform.
• Assisting coding schools in issuing credentials.
• Assisting developers in setting up Atala PRISM or ProofSpace identity wallets.
• Establishing a process and help desk for smooth onboarding and continuation of the process.
• Establishing a trust registry

Deliverables & Outputs:

• A Trust registry with onboarded coding schools integrated into the governance framework
• Established help desk and support system
• Aim of 100 developers from 2-5 coding schools
• Reporting the number of developers onboarded and the number of credentials created

Outcomes:

• Transparent and reliable information about coding schools, course offerings, available through the trust registry
• Verified accuracy and integrity of information in the trust registry
• Verification processes validating the trustworthiness and effectiveness of the trust registry
• Increased number of developers onboarded to Fairway and utilizing the technology to request credentials from their coding schools
• Reporting of the number of tech schools and developers onboarded and the number of credentials created

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A Pilot Project and MoUs

Duration: 1 month, month 6

This Milestone focuses to piloting the hiring process with Educational credentials. During the project Fairway seeks potential job opportunities for the graduates and in the final milestone, executes multiple hiring processes with the graduates to test the application of the credentials with Finnish businesses

Bonus: The creation and Signing of additional Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with the coding schools.

Main tasks and activities:

• Pilot multiple hiring processes with edu-credentials
• Suggest a plan to move forward based on the findings.
• Create additional MoU document to onboard specialized coding schools.

Deliverables & Outputs:

• Created edu-credentials
• Publication of the results from the hiring pilot
• A plan for further steps based on the findings.
• Reporting the number of signed MoUs
• Reporting of the number of developers onboarded and the number of credentials created

Outcomes:

• Increased understanding of the effectiveness of edu-VCs in hiring
• Increased understanding of the effectiveness of different incentive models to issue credentials in coding education.
• Awareness and knowledge dissemination within the coding education community through publication.
• Actual Hiring achieved
• Signed MoUs with specialized coding schools, indicating successful onboarding.

Completion:

• Fairway has managed to deliver the project deliverables:
• Enhance the platform to provide globally and universally usable, easy-to-use, edu-VC builder for educational institutions
• Onboarded 100 IT graduates and 2-5 coding shcools
• Helped to issue 100 VCs of education
• Created real Job opportunities for Ethiopian IT graduates in Finland
• Published Governance Framework
• Published Trust Registry 
• Publicly shared numbers on onboarded developers and created DIDs
• Publicly shared numbers on issued VCs 

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Project lead: Henrik Metsämäki - Co-Founder & CEO at Fairway. Henrik has successfully led multiple similar projects funded by the Finnish government and The Project Catalyst. He has participated in Cardano Community 2+ years and regularly met with IOG experts such as Mandeep Birdi, Tony Rose and John O’Connor about these business initiatives to make sure to understand the developments in the space. Henrik has planned this project and identified strategies and methods for its execution. He will also be in charge of the reporting.

Partnership & Network Manager: Gemechis Marema - CCO at Fairway. Gemechis’s role is to build connections with the specialized coding schools, local businesses, investors and partners. He will be in charge of the surveying and studying of the local partners and establishing the pilot project parameters as well as initiating the MoUs together with Henrik.

Technical lead at Fairway: Kidus Wendimagegn Mammo - CTO at Fairway. Kidus was the technical lead of the previous catalyst project helping the team to deliver needed changes for the project. Kidus will be in charge of the tech changes and make sure that the tech stays compatible as well as giving technical help for the partners on the ground.

UX changes for the technical CV implementation upon this project: Ermias Bunaro - Head of UX at Fairway. Ermias will help with the UX related changes that are required to transform the existing Fairway CV’s to have better and more flexible utility for different developer and IT educations and certifications.

Marketing, partnership help and developer education: Henok Alemayehu - Marketing Manager at Fairway. Henok will help Gemechis in reaching the coding schools and surveying them as well as arranging the incentivized pilot. After signing of the MoUs Henok will set up and update educational and marketing materials for the developer onboarding.

Developer onboarding and helpdesk: Abrham Bunaro - Full Stack Developer at Fairway. Once the developer onboarding starts Abrham will be assisting the developers credential process. Being a graduate from one of these coding schools Abrham will be troubleshooting issues and coordinating challenges and solutions for the team.

Operational help in Finland and matching of pilot Hiring businesses: Heikki Ruhanen - Co-Founder & COO. Heikki will conduct sales process in Finland to meet business for IT Hiring and piloting to maximize the results

More about Fairway.

ProofSpace is a multi-network identity platform, wrapped with no-code tools for building and scaling decentralized ID workflows and ecosystems. Our goal is to eliminate the barriers to adopting Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) and proliferate the range and volume of use cases on production. Our vision is to power global digital inclusion and cross-chain commerce with interoperable verifiable credentials, and in so doing expand use of blockchain as a medium of trust. We are live with Hyperledger Indy, on testnet with Atala PRISM and reviewing SSI protocols on Polkadot, Ethereum and Solana.

ProofSpace Team working on this project:

• Viktor Radchenko - CTO and mobile dev for ProofSpace. 20-year R&D track record. Skilled in project and product management, solution architecture, science consulting, blockchain, mobile, web, game, and embedded development. 6 publications in peer-reviewed journals. 
• Nick Mason - CEO for ProofSpace. Experienced social entrepreneur and venture analyst with a proven track record of social venture funding and of starting and growing ventures in Europe and Africa. Background as Consultant venture analyst at Toniic, Head of Portfolio and Operations at BeyondMe, UK Director for Sierra Leone based education charity and Trustee for Street Child. Co-Founded ProofSpace (formerly ZAKA in 2019).

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

MILESTONE 1

• Henrik: working 75% managing the project and meeting and negotiating with the universities 0,75 x 4000€ x 2 = 6000€
• Gemechis: 2 months of work doing sales and negotiation 3500 x 2 = 7000€
• Henok: Working one month 50% to establish marketing materials to reach coding schools 0,5 x 3000€ = 1500€
• Cost of phone calls, transportation and practicalities for 2 months 1000€
• Kidus: Project Backend and integrations 75% time 0,75 x 4500€ x 2 = 6750€
• Ermias: Project UX & frontend lead, full time 50% time 0,75 x 4500€ x 2 = 6750€
• TOTAL =29000€ 

MILESTONE 2

• Henrik: Studying governance and developing Governance framework = 4000€
• Gemechis: Preparing governance for partners: 2 weeks = 0,5 x 3500€ = 1750€
• Abrham:, testing and frontend tasks 1 week: 0,25 X 3000€ = 750€
• ProofSpace (hourly rate €135)
• Supporting governance frameworks: 3 x 2hrs =€810
• Running schema updates based on governance frameworks = 2 x 2hrs = €540
• Updating Fairway-ProofSpace workflows = 1 x 4hrs = €540  
• ProofSpace Sub-Total: €1,890
• TOTAL = 6500€ + 1890€ = 8390€

MILESTONE 3

• Henrik: full time coordinating the project, setting up trust registry and aiding negotiations and onboarding, and documenting: 2 x 4000€ = 8000€
• Kidus: setting up trust registry and tech integrations 2 weeks = 0,5 X 4500€ = 2250€ 
• Gemechis: full time work with negotiations, meeting partners, and educating about the technology: 2 x 3500€ = 7000€
• Abrham: full time work for establishing the help desk and assisting the onboarded students: 2 x 3000€ = 6000€
• Henok: 50% time working on onboarding marketing materials and marketing efforts to ensure the project continuation: 2 x 3000€ x 0,5 = 3000€
• ProofSpace
• Support formation of trust registry: 1 x 6hrs = €810
• Onboarding 2 schools (workflow design, interaction set-up, training and support): 8hrs per school = €2,160 
• ProofSpace one year licenses for 6 Universities: €1470 per license (Build subscription) = €8820€
• ProofSpace Sub-Total: €11,790
• TOTAL = 26250€ + 11,790€ = 38040€

MILESTONE Final

• Henrik: full time meeting with Finnish Employers, plioting the Hiring process and signing the MoUs and documenting = 4000€ = 4000€
• Gemechis: full time work with negotiating with Partners about MoUs and piloting/studying the incentives 3500€
• Heikki: Heikki will conduct sales process in Finland to meet business for IT Hiring and piloting to maximize the results 4500€
• Henok: working 1 week per month to assist the team on the ground: 0,25 x 2000€ x 2 = 1000€
• Pilot incentives (will be used for sales and marketing if not used in the pilot): 1000€
• TOTAL = 13000€ 

TOTAL all € = 88430€

TOTAL all ADA = 228000 ADA

[VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

This project scope is similar to the initiative that IOG has had working with Atala PRISM and its implementation with the ministry of education in Ethiopia. Its goal is the real world adoption of DIDs and to increase the economic and social agency of the target group by simultaneously fostering decentralization as opposed to centralized systems.

The project aims to deliver to a focus group that would actually benefit from decentralized and verified data in the job market. There are a number of impactful positive effects upon project succeeding, such as:

• Cardano technology being used to help real businesses and job seekers with a real problem, Ethiopian developers accessing jobs, global impact
• Increased number of VC issuers: Ethiopian coding schools getting familiar with DIDs, VCs and offered tools and education to use them within and outside of the project scope
• Increased number of DIDs created and VCs issued: The group of early adopters helping to bring this technology to the wider audience of recruiters and workforce
• Increased number of future adopters: Foreign and Ethiopian based businesses getting familiar with VCs and their benefits through recruitment and Increased adoption of the technology by similar educational and certifying institutions upon seeing the progress
• A real world experience for the whole community the use of VCs in Hiring and the incentives
• The social and economic agency that the Ethiopian developers gain from being able to truly own their CV data
• The societal impact from increased work opportunities globally
• Reusable ecosystem governance insights and assets

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agrees to Fund Rules and also that data in the submission form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept