Stella’s Child latest initiative, FirstEmploy, is bringing life-changing employment opportunities to disadvantaged youth of Bali. Piloted over the last two years, we have already seen great success in the outcomes of our graduates. Without your help, we will be unable to expand this program to more than 50 youth already making their way through our Life Skills and Entrepreneurship programs. FirstEmploy is designed to ensure their full potential is reached, that they are protected from unfair labor practices, and that they are equipped with the skills and confidence they need to break the cycle of poverty their families have endured for decades.
All children have a right to live a childhood in which they thrive, develop, are protected and participate in decisions that affect them. But for millions of children around the globe, including the children in the orphanages we work with, the reality of childhood is very different. Many are victims of violence or exploitation. Some have only one parent who, in desperation, sends their young child into the labor force to help put food on the table. Others have no family at all and find themselves abandoned.
For many of these children, finding a well-paying job is next to impossible, as they lack the skills required. While the orphanages provide basic food, shelter and protection, our Entrepreneurship Program provides the children with life skills and training to be more competitive in the job market or enable them to start their own business. Our focus is on building self-confidence, communication skills, creativity and problem-solving skills.
We believe this program is a rare opportunity to break the cycle of poverty by enabling underprivileged children to get jobs or start businesses where they can earn a fair wage and support their families. Ultimately, this gives them more independent and self-sufficient lives and enables better lives for their children.
Currently, school-based employment placement schemes for the required job training program usually place young people in menial roles with no compensation and no restrictions on the hours these 16-year-old boys and girls work. Stella’s Child’s Job Training and Internship Program works closely with highly regarded local businesses to identify their real needs, then finds the talented young people to fill those gaps. In return, the businesses pay fair compensation, recognizing the value the young people provide.
Stella’s Child also ensures that the young people in the program are fully equipped to make the most of future opportunities, through supplementary training in the following areas:
· entrepreneurship,
· personal finance and budgeting,
· office administration and management,
· creative thinking and problem solving,
· leadership and communications.
Two years in the making, this innovative program has launched with high reviews from the youth and the businesses engaged. The youth that opted-in to the program were commended by Stella’s Child and orphanage leaders for their pioneering decision to engage in a program never before implemented in Indonesia.
FirstEmploy was set up in recognition of the fact that Indonesian children from disadvantaged backgrounds often face a particularly difficult struggle in finding a meaningful career, lacking the means and expertise to navigate the job market. Our research shows that by age 16, the youth have given up on their dreams and settled for what society has told them they can be; wait staff, housekeepers, cooks. We have already begun to break this pattern and our participants now have big dreams for their futures and have rejected the societal norms that have previously been forced on them. We connect forward-thinking enterprises with access to the deep talent pool of its graduates, matching the young people’s newly developed skills with the needs of these businesses. So far, 100% of our graduates have found jobs, with salaries up to 10 times higher than the minimum wage.
Tim Cameron, founder and executive director of Stella’s Child, said “The education sector needs to be better at teaching Indonesian children the creative and entrepreneurial skills they need to succeed in the working world, but businesses also need to be more open to recognizing, recruiting and nurturing local talent. Many Balinese businesses we work with are rising to that challenge, and see it as a way of reducing dependence on staff from overseas. It’s an exciting moment, for Bali’s young people and its future economy.”
Success of the program is largely attributed to a team of volunteers locally and around the globe. But the fact is we need steady funding to continue to offer high quality, innovative and targeted programming that will continue to create new opportunities for these young people. Your donations will go a long way in ensuring disadvantaged youth are able to unlock their full potential.
The total cost for the 12-month program is USD $16,845 and we are trying to raise USD $12,686 through this campaign with the remaining funding coming from local channels in Bali. Your contributions will make a big difference in the lives of some of Bali’s poorest families.
Please donate as much as you can and join us in this initiative. Help lock in this program to ensure deserving youth can unlock their full potential.
In the event that this campaign exceeds the stated goal, Stella’s Child will utilize the funding to support its other youth development programs:
Life Skills Academy
Because there are issues that many teens face without a real plan of how to deal with them, the Life Skills Academy was designed to help them prepare for the transition into a successful adulthood. The programs help increase motivation, confidence, and to enable the achievement of a higher level of potential. By improving assertiveness, goal setting skills, the use of initiative, and confident communication skills, youth discover how working toward goals will help them create a brighter future, develop an effective life map for personal success, and to facilitate positive life changes.
Entrepreneurship
Stella’s Child flagship Entrepreneurship Program is designed to provide fundamental knowledge, skills and tools to underprivileged youth so they can build and sustain a small business, leveraging both the local and global economies. By employing various learning modalities, such as creative learning techniques, instructor-led, online and e-learning, the program connects entrepreneurs, creative visionaries, peers, mentors and potential investors that are otherwise difficult to access in environments where this program is deployed.
Our program helps participants learn about business by doing business. The children themselves created a successful beachwear brand called Love Our Earth in 2015 and the brand continues to develop and thrive. For the 2018 program year, we anticipate adding in eCommerce training and strategic planning components in addition to the existing product design, marketing, sales, and administration components. They are supported by a network of volunteer entrepreneurs, visionaries and experts, who help them gain the fundamental knowledge, skills and tools to build and sustain a small business.