From no job to 21st century job in 12 weeks: Competencies Boot Camps
How can we help a growing number of working-age young and older adults that have been unemployed or out of school for more than a year to get into the workforce and reintegrate into their communities?
This billion-dollar question now has a new answer.
The multi-billion-dollar cost of unemployment insurance and the long term unemployment impact on health and social capital can be now reduced and targeted to the high-impact skills, knowledge and attitudes that matter for the new 21st century jobs.
The National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) has tested this over the past decade in different programs across communities in the US . This new approach is now being proposed by the Systemic Innovation Lab (SIL) for the Technological Institute of Buenos Aires (ITBA) in Argentina.
The "Ni-Ni" ("Ni trabaja Ni estudia")-as Argentinian call a growing number of young high-school and college-age that are unemployed and out of school-
that pose a great challenge to traditional education programs and employers. The skills they can learn in traditional tech training programs are often obsolete by the time they are acquired through a 2-year conventional program. Furthermore, most unemployed young in this critical group need jobs to support themselves and stay out of trouble, immediately if possible.
For this age group, there are additional risks of falling into poverty and crime traps, particularly in inner cities. Drugs, crime and even terrorism can prey on dissafected, isolated and marginalized youth.
In developing countries like Argentina, shantytowns or "villas miseria" like Vill,a 31bis a few blocks from downtown Buenos Aires gather thousand of "Ni-Ni" in a no-man's land of marginality, insecurity and crime.
The City of Buenos Aires has started an ambitious plan to urbanize its shantytowns. However, without educating Ni-Ni youth and providing sustainable jobs, those plans risk failure like the others before them.
When employability requires specific skills for tech-heavy 21st century jobs and time is scarce, conventional tech education is not a good option.
Drop-out rates -already high for the children of the employed- skyrocket with Ni-Ni groups.
Similar challenges -compounded by age discrimination and skills obsolescence- affect millions of older workers driven out of the workforce after the 2008 global economic slowdown, These workers need to complement or replace their reliance on unemployment benefits or subsidies with productive, better-paying jobs.
Once accustomed to holding traditional white-collar middle-class jobs that have now been wiped out by automation, the older unemployed experience the discouraging "double whammy" of starting over and age discrimination.
Older workers often feel out of place and at a disadvantage in fast-paced classes with millennials that grew up immersed in 21st century technology.
The Systemic Innovation Lab (SIL) proposal presents a radically new response, tested by a decade of experience at NACCE.
By focusing strictly on the skills, knowledge and attitudes (SKA) required by new jobs, SIL's 21st Century SKA Boot Camps dramatically shorten the training time to 6 to 12 weeks and help participants wihtout previous background to meet the requirement for new jobs such as coding or Web development.
The Boot Camp approach tailors each program's design to actual employers needs, helping the unemployed meet their requirements and speed up the job placement process, giving both employer and employees a reliable framework in which to cooperate.
With the dissemination of smart phones, developing countries are catching up the skills gap and "leapfroging" from agricultural or subsistance-level jobs to 21st century jobs.
From Africa to Latin America, 6-to 12 weeks boot camps offer a unique opportunity for leveraging competencies and competitiveness.
SIL BOOTCAMP PARTNERS (EXAMPLES)
Workforce & Economic Development
Programming Examples
Provided by Amy Schulz, Walter Di Mantova & Ahmad Mansur
The International Economic Development Council (IEDC) is a non-profit, non-partisan membership organization serving economic developers. With more than 5,000 members, IEDC is the largest organization of its kind. Economic developers promote economic well-being and quality of life for their communities, by creating, retaining and expanding jobs that facilitate growth, enhance wealth and provide a stable tax base. From public to private, rural to urban and local to international, IEDC’s members are engaged in the full range of economic development experience. The IEDC provides training globally on the intersection of workforce and economic development
The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (Originally National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship), also referred to as NFTE (pronounced Nifty), is an international non-profit organization providing entrepreneurship training and education programs to young people from low-income urban communities. Through the organization's patented entrepreneurship education,[1] NFTE helps young people build entrepreneurial creativity and skills. Since 1987, NFTE has reached more than 500,000 young people, and currently has programs in 18 states and 10 countries. ]NFTE provides a highly academic programs, working with established universities such as Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania, in order to inspire young adults to recognize opportunity and plan for successful futures, by pursuing educational opportunities and by encouraging starting their own businesses.
Center for an Urban Future is one of the primary policy organizations around the intersection of workforce development, entrepreneurship education for very low-income populations
Postsecondary Partnerships in Collective Impact, this white paper illustrates how critical partnerships are in developing workforce training and education programs in the U.S.
