XPRIZE, the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, today announced that 8 teams from 4 countries are advancing to the Semifinalist round of the $5M XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling competition, a three year competition reimagining the future of work and transforming how we train and educate workers.
Launched in June 2020, XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling is sponsored by nonprofit venture philanthropy organization New Profit and in partnership with JFF. The competition incentivizes teams to develop and demonstrate the effectiveness of rapid training and reskilling solutions for individuals most vulnerable to employment loss. The solutions developed in this competition will reduce training time by at least 50% for occupations with a living wage and will be provided at no cost to the individual.
“The United States is going through a historic reassessment of labor across all industries,” said XPRIZE CEO Anousheh Ansari. “More individuals are looking to change careers than ever before, and the technology being developed in XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling will empower individuals to find new pathways to better education, better training solutions, ultimately leading to a better career.”
The eight Semifinalist Teams were selected from a pool of ten qualified teams. The ten qualified teams were paired with Workforce Development Boards across the United States to recruit new learners and deploy their respective training solutions to achieve training rates 50% faster than the current standard for their chosen occupation.
“XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling will be able to help individuals expand their skill set in unprecedented time, creating new opportunities and providing many more options for work,” said Dr. Monique Golden, Social Science Lead for XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling. “The technology from our Semifinalist Teams is already producing very promising results, and with another year left in the competition, I’m extremely encouraged to believe these teams will deliver on XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling’s original goal of quickly reskilling workers for the digital revolution.”
The 8 Semifinalist Teams are:
- Alelo, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Dignity of Work, Spokane, Washington, USA
- Pragya, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
- Practera, Sydney, Australia
- REAP, Dubin, Ireland
- VITAL, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- SHIFA, San Diego, California, USA
- HireMEE, Bengaluru, India
The Semifinalist Teams will now enter the large-scale field testing stage of the competition, in which each team will need to demonstrate their proposed solutions will rapidly place trained workers in 60 days or less, and then support the workers to ensure job retention of at least 90 days.
The Semifinalist Team solutions are a mix of online learning management systems and digital apps to train for occupations such as Community Health Worker, Medical Assistant, Machinist, Construction Laborer, Medical Equipment Preparer, and Sales Representative.
After completion of the Semifinalist Round, a milestone award in the amount of $1,500,000 (USD) will be shared equally between up to five Finalist Teams whose solutions received the highest scores from the Judging Panel for successful implementation of their solution.
XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling is powered by New Profit and JFF as part of the Future of Work Grand Challenge, which aims to achieve broader systemic change to help prepare 12 million Americans from underinvested communities for workforce success by 2025. The Grand Challenge is made possible by lead funders, Walmart.org and Strada Education Network. Additional funding is provided by Accenture, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Comcast, Imaginable Futures, Joyce Foundation, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Lumina Impact Ventures, Morgridge Family Foundation, Schultz Family Foundation, Siegel Family Endowment, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The initiative also brings together a consortium of design and operating partners driving positive change in workforce development including Accenture, Brandeis University, Education Design Lab, Goodwill Industries International, and Jobcase.
For more information on the competition guidelines, advisory board, sponsors and partners, judging panel and more, visit rapidreskilling.xprize.org.
About XPRIZE
XPRIZE is a global future-positive movement of over 1M people and rising, delivering truly radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. XPRIZE inspires and empowers a global community of problem-solvers to positively impact our world by crowdsourcing solutions through large-scale competitions, tackling the world’s grandest challenges in exploration, environment and human equity. Active competitions include the $100 Million XPRIZE Carbon Removal with Elon Musk, $20 Million NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, $15 Million XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion, $10 Million XPRIZE Rainforest, $10 Million ANA Avatar XPRIZE, $5 Million IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, $5 Million XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling and $1 Million Digital Learning Challenge. Donate, sign up or join a team at xprize.org.
ABOUT NEW PROFIT
New Profit is a nonprofit venture philanthropy organization that backs breakthrough social entrepreneurs who are advancing equity and opportunity in America. New Profit’s investment strategy focuses on building a breakthrough portfolio to take on entrenched systemic challenges in America, particularly by driving resources and support to Black, Indigenous, and Latino/a/x social entrepreneurs who have unique proximity to solutions, but face stark racial funding disparities in philanthropy; investing in social entrepreneurs with new systems change models across a range of issues; and creating jobs and opportunity by funding Future of Work innovation.
ABOUT JFF
JFF is a national nonprofit that drives transformation in the American workforce and education systems. For more than 35 years, JFF has led the way in designing innovative and scalable solutions that create access to economic advancement for all. Join us as we build a future that works. www.jff.org
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