AI & Economic Opportunity Fund
Impact & Learning
Supported by
Our Ambition
A core ambition of the AI & Economic Opportunity Fund is to build a stronger evidence base on how low-income young people without degrees can access technology careers – combining evidence on what works from the programmes we fund with new insights from our Intelligence Hub on how the labour market, skills needs and routes into tech are changing.
Through our Impact and Learning work, we will support independent evaluation of the programmes supported by the Fund, share what we learn across our partners and the wider sector, and use the evidence generated to inform employers, policymakers and others working to improve routes into technology careers.
Building evidence on what works
Each funded programme will take part in an independent evaluation, commissioned and managed by The Hg Foundation. We will work with programme partners and our independent evaluator to develop a consistent approach to measuring outcomes across the Fund, while tailoring the evaluation design to each programme and its stage of development.
We want to understand not just how many young people participate, but what difference programmes make. This will include looking at participants' progression into technology employment and apprenticeships, and – where possible – sustained employment and earnings over time.
Where the programme and available data allow, we will use robust impact evaluation approaches to understand what would have happened without the intervention. We will also explore the use of administrative employment and earnings data to strengthen the evidence generated.
Turning evidence into action
Throughout the Fund, we will bring together programme partners, employers and other experts to share emerging learning about what is working, where challenges remain and how provision can respond to a rapidly changing labour market.
Working with our public affairs and policy partner, we also hope to use evidence generated through the Fund to contribute to wider conversations about skills, employment and routes into technology for young people without degrees. Our aim is to help effective approaches reach beyond individual programmes – informing employer practice, future funding and decision-making where the evidence supports it.
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