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SDG Awards 2024

Finalist Profile

Welcome to the SDG Awards, a distinguished recognition program honoring the remarkable contributions of individuals, organizations, and initiatives in championing the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Finalist Profile

Fobizz

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Fobizz
About Company
  • Company Type: IT Services
  • Founded in 2018
  • Located at Germany
  • Employees: 11-50

SDG Awards 2024

Category - SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
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Digital Literacy: Provides professional development and resources for educators, helping to reduce digital literacy gaps reducing educational inequalities.

➜ Digital Literacy: Provides professional development and resources for educators, helping to reduce digital literacy gaps reducing educational inequalities.
➜ Inclusive Access to Training: Affordable and accessible online training, ensures that educators from various socio-economic backgrounds can improve their skills.
➜ Bridging Educational Gaps: Supports schools and teachers in integrating digital tools effectively, which helps reduce disparities in the quality of education.
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1. What is the local impact your organization has achieved regarding your selected SDG? (No Word Limit)

fobizz was the first company in Germany to offer high-quality professional development courses with a digital focus in a flexible, asynchronous format. From this start in 2018 we have grown and become the biggest provider of digital professional development and tools for German-speaking educators. At this point the German-language catalog has over 300 courses on various topics. Our digital tools, particularly those leveraging artificial intelligence, have been instrumental in alleviating teacher burnout by streamlining administrative tasks and enabling educators to scale their efforts effectively. This reduction in workload addresses a key factor contributing to teacher shortages, which disproportionately affect underfunded areas such as rural and inner-city schools. Our solution not only mitigates these shortages but also empowers teachers to integrate digital skills into their classrooms, fostering an innovative and scalable learning environment. By the end of 2022, we incorporated AI into our courses and tools, equipping teachers to both utilize AI with their students and to help them understand this vital, emerging technology. This approach ultimately promotes equitable education for all. In Germany, nearly 50% of teachers have used or are actively using fobizz. 3 of the 16 federal states have state-wide licenses for all their educators. Our goal is to have state-wide licenses in all 16 states in Germany so that all teachers, and in turn all students from all areas and backgrounds, benefit from access to this information and technology

2. What is the global impact your organization has achieved regarding your selected SDG? (No Word Limit)

We have started building a catalog of courses in English and our tools are now available in English as well. We are looking to expand internationally and while we are growing organically, we are trying to make an impact in areas that need it the most. One example is our initiative with Ukraine. As the war impacts schools, there is a fear that there will be a digital and educational gap for both teachers and students. We have joined forces with one of the pedagogical universities in Ukraine, supporting 6 most impacted war zones. fobizz has committed to providing free and unlimited access to courses and tools to help teachers get access to digital tools as well as courses about AI. This will not only help them build up critical skills, but will also enable them to utilize our tools to enhance remote lessons, which are unfortunately the safer solution to classes in the war zones.

3. What is the scalability of your innovation and how do you plan to achieve it? (No Word Limit)

We see a lot of potential in growing and scaling the fobizz system. AI is the main tool that will make this possible. One of our most recent innovations was the addition of customizable AI assistants (Chat bots). This allows schools and teachers to create tutors for their students based on the needs of the group and based on the standards of the school/district/state. An educator can train their assistant on their own teaching materials, a new curriculum, a particular course, etc… Our implementation allows the teachers to share this with each other and share it with students in a secure way. This alone is a game changer for bringing equality to education. A teacher can give access to a customized AI tutor to any of her students who may need it (while still having access to review the work that the student is doing with AI). This can really help reduce inequality in education and bring the best of AI technology to those who can benefit the most from it. To continue to scale the languages beyond just English and German, we plan on using AI as well. For tools this is already possible by simply instructing the AI to respond in a language of your choice. With the above-mentioned assistants, I already created this for a few for the teachers in Ukraine, ensuring that all responses are in Ukrainian. This scales quickly and easily. Though most LLMs are trained in English, they still respond in other languages and quite well. For our professional development courses we will look for a balance between leveraging AI and working with subject matter experts around the world. We are looking at using AI for the courses we produce in house to make sure those scale quickly. AI can also translate subtitles and transcripts for courses already in our catalog. Additionally, we will see which of our contributing authors would approve the use of AI to translate their courses in full and make them accessible to educators around the world. Last but not least, we will continue to work with subject matter experts and teachers around the world to continue the organic growth and value-add of our course catalog and to ensure our tools are meeting the needs of all the diverse user groups.

4. What is your organization’s unique strategy for using technology to achieve your selected SDG? (150 Words Limit)

At fobizz, technology is the cornerstone of our offerings, seamlessly integrating artificial intelligence into our digital tools and professional development courses. From inception, our courses have been meticulously designed to equip educators with the essential digital skills they both need and desire. Our innovative digital tools have democratized technology, making it an accessible, easy-to-learn, and scalable component of the classroom experience. The allure of our solution lies in this technological prowess, ensuring accessibility to AI in a GDPR-compliant format that is perfectly suited for the educational environment. We have brought a variety of Large Language Models to the fingertips of the educators, allowing them to use those themselves and help their students learn how to work with this technology. Through this implementation, something only available to those who could afford it, became available to everyone who wanted to learn how to use it.

5. What challenges did you encounter while working for your selected SDG, and how did you address them? (150 Words Limit)

The idea behind fobizz started with focusing on teachers, as they would be the key to bringing technical skills to all of their students, regardless of the socioeconomic status of the student. The challenge came with making the tools, especially those using AI, GDPR-compliant and acceptable for German and other European schools. We had to get creative with our implementations and put a lot of filters in place to make AI suitable for use with students, but we managed to do this successfully. We anonymize all data that goes into the AI tools, we have filters in place preventing users from sending personal data to the AI providers, and all the data that AI providers get from fobizz is NOT used for model training. We have had many conversations at the federal & state level about data privacy, and we continue to keep this in mind as we evolve our solution.

6. How did you engage local communities and stakeholders in your work, and what was their feedback? (150 Words Limit)

The courses and tools that save teachers time, reduce burnout, and help teach digital skills to students had an overwhelmingly positive response from the educational community! We worked with teachers to ensure the courses are practice-oriented (from teachers for teachers) and the tools meet their evolving needs. The solution was great, but there is always a question of ‘who will pay for this?’. We started with individual teachers trying out fobizz for free and then seeing enough value in it to pay for the premium version. The teachers in turn went to their heads of schools and advocated to have school-wide licenses. From there we went to districts and federal states. At this point, 3 of the 16 federal states have state-wide licenses for all their school educators (we are in talks with additional states). Nearly 50% of all teachers in Germany have used or are actively using fobizz today.

7. Which organizational skills and resources did you use to deliver goods/services without harming the environment or society? (150 Words Limit)

The digital skills we teach and our digital tools, help reduce the amount of paper that is used in a classroom setting. Our tools enable additional ways for teachers and students to exchange assignments digitally, thus reducing paper waste. We know that AI Providers use a lot of energy and the emissions only add to the carbon footprint. We make sure we educate the AI users about this, as every technology has positive and negative aspects that users have to be aware of. At the same time, we try to leverage and scale what the AI providers already do without any significant additional energy waste. Last but not least, we promote diversity and inclusion in all that we do and being a female-led organization, we work hard to reduce inequalities (especially in the field of technology).

8. In your view what roles do businesses, governments, and civil society should play in achieving the SDGs, and how can they collaborate effectively? (150 Words Limit)

As we are focused on education, we believe it is critical to have businesses, government, and civil society working together to achieve improvements. Reducing inequalities starts with having a solid education and it is imperative that all students have access to a proper education regardless of their background. Ensuring that students get the necessary skills to successfully enter the workforce has to start in schools and has to be free and accessible to all. AI, for example, is one of the critical skills that will be looked for by employers in the future. We, therefore, will continue to do our part to educate teachers (who will educate their students) and parents (to take away any fears around AI). We will also continue conversations at the government level to make sure these courses and tools are available to all educators (who will then share the knowledge with all their students).

9. What advice do you have for individuals or organizations aiming to create positive change and support the SDGs? (150 Words Limit)

As you look at creating positive change, look at all three parts of ESG. Some companies can’t make a significant environmental impact (beyond basic best practices around reduction of the carbon footprint) and stop there. We all can make a difference with the Social and Governance aspects of ESG. We have the power to reduce inequalities, increase inclusivity, lead by example, and build a better society, regardless of what industry we are working in. This is something that should not be forgotten.

10. How would winning this SDG Award help you enhance your impact and expand your project? (150 Words Limit)

Winning the SDG Awards would significantly enhance our visibility, enabling us to reach a broader audience more rapidly than we could on our own. Increased awareness of our solution would expedite its implementation in schools across regions where access to equitable education is challenging and therefore needed the most.

11. What are your future objectives regarding your selected SDG? (150 Words Limit)

We strongly believe in the importance of equitable education and are committed to helping teachers and in turn students leverage technology to reduce inequalities and educational gaps. We plan to continue expanding our reach, and scaling our solution beyond German and English, so that it will be available in other languages around the world and accessible to a broader audience. As we emphasize quality of education, this expansion will be methodical and will not happen overnight, but we are confident that the value of our solution that has been recognized by educators in Germany, will be recognized by many others once they get access to it.
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