JAMBA - Career for All

JAMBA is an online platform which educates people with disabilities, gives them key competences and skills and after that connects them with their future employers. JAMBA's goal is to provide accessible opportunities for everyone.

One billion people, or 15% of the world's population, experience some form of disability. In Bulgaria people with disabilities are about 800 000 people. Of these, around 80% are in working age, but only 12% are actually working. All of these people have tremendous potential. They can be programmers, web designers, accountants, stock traders, and more. What they need is qualifications and knowledge, equal access to work development and accessible work environment. At the moment, all this can be solved thanks to technology that provides accessible learning for young people with disabilities and their subsequent engagement with employers.

As a volunteer in one NGO, I had the opportunity to get to know the hearing, visual and physical impaired people in Bulgaria and to see that their access to quality education and professional realization is their biggest challenge. This led me to JAMBA. Since October 2016 we created a beta version of the online platform, attract more than 300 candidates, realized trainings for more than 100 of the candidates and helped 60 of them to start their career. All these things serve as evidence to us that this cause has great sense and we have to continue developing it.

The main stakeholders in JAMBA are two - all people with disabilities of working age and the corporate sector. The impact of our idea is to increase the level of education and the professional realization for our candidates and to provide qualified and motivated employees to the business. The process is done by registering people with disabilities into the platform, passing them through an online or offline training courses, and then starting a career by linking them with employers. For the companies, the process takes place by plugging them into the platform and connecting them with our candidates accordingly.

Track registrations in our platform - 100,000 people with disabilities in Bulgaria register in our platform

Track the successfully completed trainings by our candidates - 90,000 people to undergo trainings in different professional areas

Track the success rate with our clients - the companies. - 80,000 people to successfully be hired from companies

JAMBA differs from all similar products and services on the market as it targets not only the relationship between companies and job applicants but combines this activity with the other main goal - trainings and development of key competencies and skills with the help of accessible online and offline training. The unique about the platform is the automatic mathematical algorithm that will connects candidates for the shortest time with the right training, as well as candidates with the most accurate job positions, in terms of their skills and qualities.

When working with people with disabilities, it is extremely important for us to take into account their different needs and accordingly to ensure equal access to technology so that they can use them fully and qualitatively. Accordingly, JAMBA's idea is to take into account the different training and qualification levels of each candidate, build on its skills towards his current level and give him a chance to develop. The entire machining algorithm should be consistent with the qualities and skills of our candidates and help them stand out in the most efficient way to the needs of the business.

JAMBA is a very affordable, intuitive and easy-to-use platform. Our two main target groups /people with disabilities and the companies/ can use it without a problem after registration. In terms of accessibility for people with disabilities, we are currently working on integrating speech-to-speech software and text into speech to enable our visually impaired or hearing impaired candidates to have free access to all JAMBA services.

JAMBA has different approach to its main stakeholders. Firstly, all services are completely free for our candidates. JAMBA also provides further inclusive work environment and assistance during the job interviews.

Towards to the business - companies using the platform services pay a fee for our consulting/HR services. Another opportunity that JAMBA offers to the business is renting out employees. Last but not least - when we accumulate a large number of users, we can be financially sustainable thanks to marketing campaigns.

We also applied for many grants, public, private, national and international funds and now we are expecting results starting from September 2017. We got accepted for the Youth Leadership Summit of the Asia-Europe Foundation this year in September in South Korea. Also we got accepted at the Clinton Global Initiative of the Clinton Foundation and we will take part in a competition for 750 000 $ in October 2017 in Boston.

Challenge is the society’s attitude towards people with disabilities that they are different and cannot do anything. We overcome this by showing the successful examples. On the other hand, we show the business that JAMBA candidates have great potential and can do their work great as the only thing they need is an accessible work environment. It is hard for our candidates to believe that there is a different way for them and in some cases their integration is more difficult. We also have financial challenges, but we struggle with them and rely on our business model to achieve sustainability.

https://www.facebook.com/jambabg/?fref=ts

http://forbesbulgaria.bg/2017/05/31/%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5-%D1%83%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%B0/

http://uspelite.bg/JAMBA-vie-ste-nachaloto-na-promyanata-zashtoto-podkrepata-e-parvata-stapka-kam-novoto-utre-1

The Solve support will help us to develop JAMBA on higher level thanks to expert mentorship and feedback towards the platform. Knowledge and good international practices will give us ideas for improving JAMBA's capabilities. Globally, there are more than 1 billion people with disabilities and 80% of them are of working age. They have enormous potential and development capacity and by scaling the platform on an international level we will give a large percentage of them the skills and qualifications they need and then start their professional path and we will change their lives in a positive way.

We are working with 15 companies. Our partners from NGO sector (more than 25 NGOs) help us to reach more people. We plan to work on institutional level, as that way we will engage all stakeholders - business, institutions and NGOs - so that we can achieve sustainable results.

https://www.magnet.today - Canadian platform focused on the link between employers and employees.