Intensive After-school Program
Examples of innovations and/or disruptions in the social services space focused on increasing job training and reducing poverty include Learning Lab Ventures‘ (LLV) — intensive after-school program, which prepares disadvantaged students for college and future careers. Likewise, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) runs STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) centers for innovation. The next sections uncover the full details of how these non-profits are innovating and disrupting poverty and education in the social services space.
Intensive After-school Program
- LLV is disrupting education through an innovative and intensive after-school program to prepare students to be among the first in their households to join college.
- Students apply to join the LLV program from ages five and above, and when accepted, they attend the intensive after-school program daily, from 3 to 8 p.m. The program continues until they graduate from high school.
- During the week, the program, through counselors help the students meet their tutor’s assignment goals, while also participating in enrichment activities like art projects before dinner. However, during weekends, the students attend “guitar lessons and coding classes” powered by Apple’s Genius Bar.
- Students spend 25 hours a week in the program, which focuses more on their commitment and motivation to keep them engaged. The program is also full-time and not part-time as many non-profits programs. LLV promotes student accountability by setting standards for them to fulfill.
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- Unlike many other programs that incentivize students to score high grades, LLV prepares them for success in the real world. The preparations include enhancing intrinsic motivation, promoting responsibility, and instilling a strong career ethic in the students to make them self-sufficient.
- This program has proven to achieve a 100% high school graduation rate and assures that these students will get out of poverty through education and career development opportunities. One beneficiary narrates how it has helped teach personal responsibility and organizational skills to her siblings, which is an indicator of declining generational poverty.
BGCA STEM Centers For Innovation
- Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) partnered with Raytheon to create STEM facilities for innovation. The STEM centers aim to support military-connected youth in Colorado, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Washington, D.C., to access advanced technologies in STEM.
- Raytheon contributed $5 million as a multi-year commitment to BGCA for creating the STEM Centers of Innovation. These centers focus on offering professional training to keep the military youth on the correct path to better futures and careers in STEM.
- The military-connected youth will be among the individuals who would fill up the expected 9 million jobs to be created in STEM. Through the program, they will have access to cutting-edge technologies that foster innovative approaches to STEM exploration.
- Some advanced technologies the youth learn are 3-D printing, conferencing tools, robotics, and high-definition video production. To date, over 4,300 military youth have undergone training at the STEM Centers of Innovation since 2015 to acquire essential skills for success and impacting society.
- Unlike ordinary families, military families move up to nine times before their children finish high-school; therefore, BGCA seeks to promote consistency and continuity to the lives of military families.
- The non-profit’s STEM centers for innovation provide a conducive learning environment for military-connected students during school holidays. More students can now access STEM jobs, and the BGCA can keep them on track to graduate high school with a plan for a career.
Research Methodology
In finding the two examples of innovations and disruptions in the social services space focused on job training and poverty, your research team searched through reports and news articles focusing on non-profit innovations. We then narrowed down our search to focus solely on reports and news articles, providing examples of non-profits disrupting poverty and job training. The examples presented above are from reports published by BGCA, Forbes, and The Atlantic. Importantly, the examples are disruptors because they are innovating with their services to provide more opportunities to disadvantaged individuals to access more education and career resources. Again, these examples are disrupting the traditional non-profit ecosystem that relies solely on donations and fails to innovate. For instance, the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula (BGCP) started innovating early by introducing more “educational and vocational training programs” aimed at preparing kids for career opportunities in Silicon Valley. Overall, profiled above are the comprehensive analyses of the examples of innovations and disruptions in the social space to fight poverty and enhance job training.