Collaborating with Blueprint to offer vulnerable populations effective training, enabling them to secure meaningful and lasting job opportunities.

Blueprint and FOS affiliate Kory Kroft are part of a private-public research collaboration that is changing how skills development, workforce readiness, and youth achievement in Canada are perceived. Their evidence is informing decisions about how and where job training programs are available to vulnerable people nationwide.

At-risk individuals must overcome poverty, systemic barriers, and lower educational attainment to obtain work. Blueprint is involved with two programs that address this complex situation.

First, NPower Canada strives to provide at-risk people experiencing unemployment or under-employment with the skills they need for current and future work through training for in-demand positions in the technology industry.

Second, In Motion & Momentum+ is a Canadian Careers Development Foundation (CCDF) program. It combines personal and career development to provide vulnerable populations the skills they need to obtain employment and end their use of social assistance programs.

In 2021, Kroft and Blueprint started large-scale research projects to see exactly how and if these two programs serve participants and meet their goals. Results from these research projects will provide decision-makers, funders, and policymakers with a fully-comprehensive body of program-specific evidence to inform decisions about how these two programs are delivered, scaled up, replicated, and expanded across Canada.

“The most important thing about the academic team is their objectivity. Kory is an involved partner. He attends meetings and asks questions about the process and the progress. He also offers real-time feedback and expertise.”

– Sandra Nkusi, Manager of Evidence Generation at Blueprint.