1. Digital technology is a key force for change today and is transforming economies, governments and civil society, thus affecting almost all aspects of development. However, building digital skills is good but it doesn’t mean much without access to the Internet. Mobile data is king, and families are sharing a single mobile phone or computer to work/do homework/study. / 2. Technology adoption. In rural and semi-rural areas, digital literacy is very low and still emerging. Women need technology adoption support and educational courses that can provide information on the use that they can give to technology in their businesses. Business owners also lack the awareness to use specialised social media, software, etc. Illiteracy, language barriers (Quechua and Spanish are primarily spoken in these areas), or a misunderstanding of the benefits of digitalization, as expected, played key roles in whether clients and business owners were able to access and use technology. / 3. Digitalization is a pathway for formalization, but becoming digital requires both structured support from a recognized organization as well as informal support at home or within the community such as a son, daughter, niece or younger sibling that can help with accessing digital tools or even lending equipment. / 4. Our CO is committed to building an inclusive digital transformation journey and underlines the importance of digital as an enabler to achieve and accelerate change, expand development results, and scale solutions across the country with leaving no one behind. There is a strong interest in building internal digital capabilities and in applying to global initiatives that support funding in digital initiatives. / 5. A better and deeper understanding of users and their needs, as well as the consequent improvement of product and services characteristics, resulted in desirable value propositions that naturally boosted digital engagement, participation and stakeholders’ support.

The Lab received a request by the Digitalization Secretariat of the Prime Minister's Office to support their efforts in assessing the existing digital capabilities in the country to kickstart a nation-wide digital transformation process. There was an interest to implement the Digital Readiness Assessment (DRA), which aims to identify and prioritize digital interventions as part of the country's digital transformation process, allowing the identification of digital strengths and weaknesses to take advantage of the scope of the SDGs.  Also, there was an interest to support Peru's participation in the DPGA to improve visibility and accelerate the implementation of Digital Public Goods (DPG) for Development. Peru received an invitation from UNDP Administrator to attend the UNGA 77 Side Event: The Future of Digital Cooperation on 21 Sep 2022. The following step was to plan a session to acknowledge specific actions and current digital public goods as well as commitment to Peru's DPGA roadmap for the next few years. However, due to the political situation and the internal rotation of counterparts, both initiatives, the DRA and the DPGA, were left on stand-by.    Regarding the private sector, even though we signed a MOU with Internet para Todos (IpT) to facilitate the deployment of internet access in rural areas, we were just able to experiment with a smaller process. With the Prosperity team, UNDP Peru and IpT evaluated the impact of SAMI, a digital microlearning platform through WhatsApp, in strengthening the capabilities and transferring educational content to digital non-natives. By the end of this first intervention (expected April 2023), we hope to generate more insights to work on larger experiments with  IpT. Ipt is a joint initiative between BID, CAF, Telefónica and Facebook in order to shorten the digital divide and bring connectivity to rural and highly complex geographic areas.

1. GPS: We chose this to understand how digital capabilities are geographically distributed among migrants in the country, and how to grow the CREANDO pilot with local partners that have greater engagement with the migrant communities in their zones of influence. / 2. Social network: We used this type of data for project design and to validate insights from our pilots, since official data tends to be outdated, doesn’t respond to the immediate needs in user-centric project design, or doesn’t have enough information on communities that are fairly “new” to the country such as Venezuelan migrant entrepreneurs. / 3. Citizen data/focus groups/interviews: Given the gap of data on migrant entrepreneurs in Peru, we needed to take on a participatory approach to understanding their pain points and needs in order to design projects to promote social cohesion and financial inclusion simultaneously.

1. We joined the CFA to learn about crowdfunding, an alternative finance option that has not been extensively developed in Peru. We understand that digital experiences need to be complemented by in-person events when it comes to populations with less exposure to digitalization, which is why we will have a festival called CREANDO FEST in Q3 to promote social cohesion among migrants and the host population. Crowdfunding will serve two parallel objectives: Financially support the festival and generate momentum among potential participants and attendees. / 2. Previous attempts at working with the migrant population in Peru had not been successful due to insufficient participants, which is why we piloted CREANDO with a user-centered approach and co-creation sprints with the users themselves (Venezuelan migrants and refugees). The outcome was a visually rich and adaptable journey for participants, who could participate in different types of modules depending on their needs and pain points at the moment. / 3. We have worked with social media analysis in two ways: We were looking to strengthen the CO’s preparedness and understanding of ongoing political crises in the country, but we also wanted to use social media data to support project design and validate initial insights we had from our projects. We have found that we can better tailor our initiatives if we have more data on the needs and interests of our target communities, such as entrepreneurs or digital nomads. / 4. As a first step to participate in the CREANDO journey for migrant entrepreneurs, every participant was invited to register their business in an online “migrant talent map” (using Citizenlab). This map, with 95 migrant projects and 124 interactions, locations and descriptions as well as contact information, revealed that 24% of migrant ventures were gastronomic businesses (validating the our initial framework of 8 main business categories). We used this information to build a tailor made program with mentors and contents for this specific type of migrant entrepreneurs. Moreover, we used this signal to keep researching and validating a hypothesis: Gastronomy is a gateway business, an entry point to generate value for the “host population”, a driver to social cohesion and integration factor among nationalities.

Veneactiva: Non-profit organization that works towards formalization and wellbeing of the Venezuelan migrant and refugee population in Peru. Together with Veneactiva we carried out a design research process of focus groups, in-depth interviews and sensemaking sessions. Their participation was key to build user profiles, as well as testing the pilot’s contents. Through Veneactiva and its allies’ social media channels we spread the word about the project and ensured greater participation through a social movement logic.

Universidad de Piura/Kaman incubator: The Universidad de Piura, specifically their Kaman incubator, joined the matchmaking event as part of CREANDO, where migrant entrepreneurs could choose to join incubators or business associations to continue strengthening their entrepreneurial skills.

1. Yape/BCP: Yape (a digital wallet) initially presented their services to CREANDO participants but, with the Lab’s support and mandate to work with unusual partners, the CO has further developed this relationship and in 2023 the full suite of personal and SME finance courses created by the BCP (the bank that owns Yape) will be accessible to all participants in the Innova tu Mercado and CREANDO participants. / 2. Learning by Helping: Developed a series of “social innovation snacks” (20’ long) as part of the CREANDO digital content for migrant entrepreneurs. These snacks complemented the content from other partners and particularly the Accelerator Lab sessions on business tools. / 3. Internet para Todos (IpT) https://ipt.pe/. A joint initiative between BID, CAF, Telefónica and Facebook in order to shorten the digital divide in Latin America by bringing connectivity to rural and highly complex geographic areas.

Prime Minister's Office - Digitalization Secretariat: We worked with PCM, the Digitalization Secretariat of the Prime Minister's Office, to develop the design of the DRA and DPGA. We exchanged experiences with other countries and we were able to showcase Peru’s digital transformation experience at the UNGA 77 Side Event: The Future of Digital Cooperation on 21 Sep 2022. Even though we had to postpone the implementation of the DRA and DPGA, we have centered on building a strong relationship with the team at PCM for future opportunities and further deployment of UNDP digital initiatives.

Learning by Helping: This environmental and social lab has pioneered the model of the social enterprise masters for 10 euros that has helped 10 thousand users launch their own enterprises that solve issues within their communities. This was the first time an official collaboration took place between Learning by Helping and UNDP.

IOM/UNHCR/ILO: These three UN organizations supported the design and rollout of CREANDO given their expertise with migrant populations, and will continue to support the growth of the project into in-person activities with a focus on local government.

We ran the first CREANDO experience developing a 16 module learning journey using Citizenlab online interaction platform, with the following improvements: -   From a lineal educational program, to a multi-format organic journey. -   From 100% live sessions to a hybrid at-your-own-pace model. -   From masterclasses, to a full program of diverse activities. -   From general content to on demand specific training sessions. -   From theoretical approach to practitioner’s best practices and hacks.     Through this interplay of new methods, data and partners CREANDO evolved from a vertical top-down individual learning approach to a horizontal bottom-up collective learning approach with a renewed value proposition that also re-focused the key pillars of the CO’s activities related to migration. As a result, we offered a meaningful experience that motivated our users to open up and transfer us a sense of “hope” and social movement.  Framing our challenge as a “cause”, and having a constructive/positive approach to develop new narratives of migration, boosted our stakeholders and users’ participation. Every step of the journey became a powerful source of insights.  The profound and meaningful understanding of our users and their motivations, hopes and roadblocks, was the base of the improved program’s value proposition: “An online learning community designed to boost entrepreneurship and social cohesion through an energetic and motivational learning journey, actionable and easy to follow, focused on resilience and networking opportunities.”