Beyond the Business Suit

Community colleges such as Delaware Technical Community College and Lorain County Community College offer short-term certificate programs that are more accessible to adult learners and students with families. In 2022, the Delaware college awarded roughly 4,500 certificates and credentials.

An Irish-based company, ALISON, provides free, high-quality e-courses to people around the globe in order to help close the gap between education and workplace skills. Particularly focused on providing access to areas where more traditional forms of education and job training are difficult to get, this approach is helping to change lives and the economy for the better.

ACCESS Development Services trains women to drive electric auto rickshaws, providing them with marketable skills that help them earn a living independently. The all-women Pink City Rickshaw Company employs the women to provide tours throughout the city and has since trained over 200 women.

Nonprofit SolarAid trains repair technicians who can fix solar energy kits. In the 2023-24 financial year, SolarAid’s teams across Zambia and Malawi repaired 2,422 solar products, reducing electronic waste, increasing the lifespan of products, and improving access to solar lights, as well as creating job opportunities

Teach Minnesota is a six-week alternative licensure program that provides hands-on classroom experience and intensive training in topics such as literacy and culturally-responsive education, allowing future teachers to earn their license more quickly and at a lower cost than in traditional degree programs. The New Teachers Project, which facilitates Teach Minnesota, has trained 37,000 teachers in 25 states and Washington, D.C.

Los Angeles Community Colleges are now offering subject-matter courses taught in students’ native languages, including Spanish, Russian, and Korean. The tuition-free vocational classes allow students to earn certificates in a trade or work toward a GED, all while learning in the language they’re most comfortable speaking.

An electric bus manufacturer, Proterra, is providing training and jobs - especially for people from populations that typically have a harder time getting hired. The program was made possible through a Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) between Proterra and a local union. 

An all-female mechanic staff is turning heads in Nigeria. Their workshop provides jobs to dozens of women who have limited work opportunities in the region. The female staff also breaks barriers in a society where only men have typically worked as professional mechanics.

Hopeworks is providing a paid job training program along with internship and employment opportunities in any of three businesses owned by the nonprofit. Hopeworks also provides living arrangements in a residential program where students, alumni, and interns can all live together. The nonprofit adopted a trauma-informed approach that allows participants to learn healthy coping mechanisms.

The Fire and Forestry Recruitment Program serves as an intermediary between formerly incarcerated people trained as firefighters and the agencies they seek work from once they have been released from prison. California has long used incarcerated firefighters in its wildfire-fighting work, paying them poverty wages and then usually denying them the jobs they're trained for outside prison. FFRP has helped more than 100 such people find jobs, using training, certifications, and job-searching help. Its services are in high demand as a lower prison population coincides with record wildfires.