REACH Marketable Skills Development

Transforming lives of underserved youth with a low-cost and scalable skills development program 

Unemployment because of disadvantage due to poverty, disability, discrimination or lack of opportunity is distressing for individuals, communities and society.

A report on ‘Labor market transitions of young women and men in Vietnam’ conducted by the International Labor Organization indicated some alarming findings that “Too many young people are not benefiting fully from the education system”, “Youth qualifications fail to match firms’ requirements” and "The vast majority of youth in Viet Nam are working, but the quality of employment is often low”. Poor education, low skill levels engendered by declining self-esteems and independence are depriving youth of employment and economic opportunities.

REACH’s philosophy is to tackle the whole problem with the whole solution: we skill people, build confidence and meet labor market needs.

Our youth skills development solution features a comprehensive multi-stage vocational training model. The initial stage engages with businesses and identifies specific skill needs. Equipped with this data REACH then develops training curriculum to meet these needs.

Disadvantaged youth representing people affected by poverty, ethnic minorities, disability, human trafficking and family disfunction are recruited into a wide range of training programs.Comprehensive skill training with soft skills training and work experience provides students with the skills required by employers.

Skills training is only part of the solution. Successful preparation for the workforce must also build confidence and self esteem. Intensive and engaging soft skills and life skills programs provide this solution.

Job placement though REACH’s large network of supportive businesses provides the initial employment opportunity for graduates of the program. Ongoing monitoring and mentoring of students when they are in the workforce ensures long-term sustainable employment.

REACH’s solution tackles youth unemployment and underemployment. By equipping marginalized youth with marketable vocational skills, placing them in employment and mentoring their progress, they will gain and sustain decent jobs, develop life-long careers and, ultimately enhance the role of youth in shaping the economy. 

What is most unique about the impact of REACH’s training programs is the startling transformation that students undergo in such a short period. This is especially the case for students who have had poor access to education or have been victims of trafficking or abuse. REACH employers frequently report that graduates possess relevant skills for entry-level employment but also – most importantly – have the characteristics and attitudes to succeed in their job.

The program also creates positive impacts on businesses. The comprehensive skill and life skills training efficiently reduces businesses staff training and recruitment costs.  We also encourage a philanthropic culture among businesses by involving them in supporting meaningful employment and training programs for disadvantaged youth.

The most innovative feature of REACH’s model is the creation of a rapidly-scaling network of over 1,000 businesses across Vietnam to play a direct role in the design, delivery and review of our training programs and provide job opportunities for our graduates. We work directly with the business sector to change the contours of markets to be able to include people who have been marginalized for lack of skills and their social position.

This interactive business engagement ensures the relevance of our training and allows us to promptly adapt to market changes.

Our program employs a web-based tracking and monitoring system to store trainee’s input information and record individual outcomes of employment and salaries. This monitoring system is central to our monitoring and evaluation framework.

Moreover, we are building a mobile app which will deliver personalized mentoring to students and act as a communication channel bridging REACH facilitators, trainees and alumni. We are ambitious to create a strong and supportive community to provide mentorship and introduce new opportunities to both current and ex trainees.

• Program scaling: establish a new training center in Ho Chi Minh City, reaching out to youth in southern Vietnam; develop new vocational courses to diversify learning options for the beneficiaries. 
• Invest in program quality improvement and fostering partnerships with international training institutions
• Enhance and improve the technology associated with our mentoring and evaluation systems
• Develop and operate training social enterprise models successfully. Through these models, youth obtain practical on-the-job training and revenues are generated to secure our organizational financial sustainability

Become the most innovative, sustainable and socially transformative organization in vocational training and employment sector in Vietnam that operates on a large scale to improve lives of the most vulnerable youth by: 

• Scaling our programs to other at-risk communities
• Investing in social enterprise developing and program quality improvement, including elevating the quality of existing program elements, establishing new training courses matching with labour market trends
• Sharing our approach with other domestic and international organizations who carry out similar efforts
• Facilitating systemic reform of the vocational training sector by
  helping other vocational training providers transition to a market-driven approach

We reach and mobilize the target youth beneficiaries by working with local non-profits and community-based organizations to disseminate course and program information to interested audiences. The most important mobilization channel is through referral from previous REACH students (the alumni network of over 16,000 people) who have benefited from the program.

Technological improvements and enhancements including the new application, social media channels and our website will also assist in the deployment of our solution and our community engagement.

Our training courses are designed to support disadvantaged youth from diverse backgrounds and with varying physical capacity. We cater to disadvantaged youth between the ages of 16-30, including (but not limited to) street and migrant youth, youth living with disability, school dropouts, disadvantaged youth from ethnic minorities and vulnerable groups such as trafficked women, victims of domestic violence, as well as those living with or affected by HIV.

Currently, more than 500 young trainees are attending REACH’s courses, making a total of 16,000 beneficiaries served by our program in the past 10 years.

Our vision and mission remain consistent for 12 months and 3 years ahead: outreaching to marginalised youth aged 16-30 and skill them up for an increasingly competitive labor market in Vietnam.

The number of disadvantaged youth who will benefited from our program in the next 12 months is targeted to reach 1200. Over three 3 year it is targeted to reach 3800 youth.

Our team consists of dynamic individuals with senior experience in development programs, skills training, project management, market research, business partnership development, strategic planning, social business operating, monitoring and evaluation as well as marketing and grant funding management.

Having implementing skills development program for 10 years with recognized accomplishments, our team and systems have proved to be effective. We have a dedicated, qualified and team, able to run the program successfully with the maximum impact.

We diversify our source of funding fro program costs by seeking grant funding from major donors, both international and domestic. These include corporations, businesses and philanthropic foundations (Epic Foundation, HSBC, JP Morgan, GSRD Foundation). Fundraising campaigns on online platforms such as Global Giving and Indiegogo also contribute.

Four new Social Enterprises established in 2016-218 will also contribute to our revenue model. These include Em Hairdressing salon, Koi Bento catering service, Revina (IT), and Tre Restaurant.

Recently we have been planning the cost-recovery scheme in which the students will be invited to commit to returning a proportion of their training costs to REACH as soon as they generate sufficient income from their employment.

It is our strategic planning to establish new high value IT-related courses as we see huge opportunities for youth to develop careers in the emerging technology industries in Vietnam. We are ambitiously seeking technical consultancy and mentorship from experts in this field.

We believe talents in the Solve community can greatly offer us with desired technical support and investment as well as organizational network growth.

There are two main barriers we encounter:

• Ongoing changes in the rapidly-growing labour market

• Online learning platform is not available, disabling us to reach out to 'remote beneficiaries' like people with disability

Solve can help us by:

• Providing expert mentorship in developing a curriculum rapid-adapting methologies

• Providing consultancy and technical support in developing an online learning platform so that our programs benefits more underserved youth such as visually impaired or wheelchair groups living in remote areas