Over a two year period, RCG colleagues Scott Rankin and Stephen Parsons provided Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) support to the MIT Solve Challenge from early 2019 to late 2021. The Challenge was a partnership between the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Atlassian Foundation. Its focus was to support educational technology innovators to better support and prepare disadvantaged youth around the world for the workforce of the future.

With Covid-19 preventing travel from early 2020, RCG moved to providing technical advice and support entirely via online platforms such as Zoom and MS Teams, phone calls, emails and file sharing through Dropbox, Confluence and Google Docs. Stephen and Scott monitored and evaluated the performance of partners and grant recipients operating in Cambodia, India and Indonesia, gathering information and recording lessons learned.

The Challenge proved to be a fertile learning environment for all stakeholders, and facilitated exciting new opportunities for disadvantaged youth to access educational technology they otherwise would not have had a chance to engage with. Word of mouth has now led to RCG being contracted to support a similarly focused ‘MIT Challenge’ program.