KOTO, Know One Teach One

After more than 20 years, KOTO has proven to create long-term impact on thousands of marginalized people through its transformative vocational training program for disadvantaged youth. As a social enterprise that provides hospitality training and operates a restaurant, we were however hit hard by COVID-19, which at some point threatened our very existence. 

We are currently at a tipping point where we need to retain our most critical operations while setting the stage for future growth. The Elevate Prize will provide the critical financial assistance for us to build our own training center. Various training centers we have rented have witnessed the transformation of over 1000 disadvantaged youth, but this new school will ensure a sustainable future for the program and help us to advocate for quality vocational education among youth, parents and the government. 

The connection, mentorship and marketing support that the Elevate Prize brings will help spread the word about a proven successful model for potential replication, and help us take the first critical steps towards our 5-year vision of building an ecosystem including (1)scaling up the free training program, (2)building a fee-paying program, (3)developing the KOTO Alumni Community, and (4)kickstarting a food rescue program.

I was born into a Korean-Vietnamese family during the Vietnam war and was part of the “boat people” finally seeking refuge in Australia at eight. Despite all the hardships of being a refugee, I felt tremendously lucky for having enough food, a shelter, and an education. It struck me especially hard when I returned to Vietnam in 1996 witnessing the plight of street kids and their deepest wish of having a stable job. 

I founded KOTO as a sandwich shop that provides training to nine street youth in 1996. With KOTO, I hope to give disadvantaged youth employable skills - the fishing rod that they can use to have a secure life, a family and a community where they belong and grow. KOTO aims to profoundly transform individuals to create ripple effects on society. Until today, we have transformed the lives of over 1000 underprivileged youth, their families and communities.

Seeing how many street kids flourished after KOTO and were able to help others made every hardship worth it. My goals are to create an ecosystem of KOTO training programs reaching more youth, and the KOTO alumni community are empowered to become industry leaders and in turn help others.  

While accounting for 25% of a 96-million population, Vietnamese youth 15-24 constitute almost half the unemployed population. Statistics show that a higher education level raises the chances of being unemployed after graduation by over three times, highlighting a pronounced skills mismatch issue. Also, 85% of the young workforce work in the informal sector with no specific qualification. Prevailing reasons are a lack of quality, relevance and presence of vocational education and training (VET) programs, the failure of VET programs in including the disadvantaged and rural youth (which constitutes the majority of Vietnamese youth), and a widespread bias of VET as the second option after formal education to start a professional career. Without decent education and training opportunities, youth are driven to leave school early, engage in precarious jobs or live on the streets where they are vulnerable to trafficking, violence and abuse.

Through a social enterprise model, KOTO addresses the above issues by offering disadvantaged youth a 24-month internationally-accredited, practical, and free hospitality training program, employment support, a safe and supportive environment, and postgraduate professional development opportunities. KOTO aims to enable these youth to lead happy and dignified lives, maintain stable employment and career growth, and contribute to their community.  

KOTO’s innovation stems from the focus on empowerment and building a community that extends its impact to thousands of other people. We do this through an intensive internationally-accredited training program and continuous postgraduate professional development and networking. KOTO is not a charity: it aims to give young people the skills they need to be independent and break the cycle of poverty for themselves and their families. KOTO does not only build a training program, but a community that continues to give back. 83% of graduates give back to their community years after graduation, including providing training to, sponsoring or hiring KOTO trainees in the 40+ businesses they have established. Through the long-term success of KOTO graduates and their impact on families and communities, KOTO has disrupted the idea that vulnerable people need ongoing support.

KOTO teaches soft skills as much as it teaches hospitality skills. My belief is before the kids become successful professionals, they need to be active citizens. Twenty-four months, though long compared to other vocational programs, are meant to profoundly transform an individual and create lasting impact. While the technical skills can get graduates employment, the soft skills and attitude are what set them for long-term success. 

We achieve our expected impact by providing an internationally-accredited hospitality training program, employment and opportunities for underserved youth, who would otherwise be unable to access such opportunities. This will enable them to create a better life for themselves, their families and communities.

A job with a stable source of income is the foundation for this improvement in quality of life, and KOTO provides the hospitality training, English training, and work experience needed to enable KOTO trainees to succeed in the hospitality sector. Yet, vocational training alone is not sufficient to improve their quality of life. A loving, supportive, and safe environment that emphasizes resiliency and builds life skills allows trainees to grow and heal from trauma, gain self-confidence, set ambitious goals for the future, and live independently. By being taught ethics and community service, KOTO graduates will continue to give back to society and contribute more broadly to the social development of Vietnam. 

The 2021 KOTO Social Impact report suggests: 83% of graduates are employed and consistently earn above the national average wages in the hospitality industry. 30% assume managerial positions, 7% own registered businesses. 78% provide regular financial support to their families and 83% gives back to their community.

Typically before the COVID-19 pandemic, we would serve around 200 youth in one year. In 2020, we supported and empowered 210 disadvantaged youths in total. 

However due to COVID-19, we had to reduce the number of youth supported. Currently we have 108 youth under our care, after a cohort of 32 trainees just completed their 24-month training in May 2021. And if things go according to plan, we will recruit another 30 trainees in 2021, making the number of youth supported in 2021 around 170. 

To this should be added around 50 KOTO graduates who receive post-graduate professional and career development opportunities in one year, making the total number of direct beneficiaries we anticipate to serve in one year to be 220. 

Upon graduation, graduates are placed into employment which helps them to support their family. Each graduate will at least support two family members, making the number of indirect beneficiaries to be 340 after 24 months of the program. And this number will increase over time since evidence has shown that KOTO graduates not only support their family but also contribute to their community through charitable donations, sharing experiences and expertise, or sponsoring other disadvantaged youth. 

Our ultimate goal is to empower disadvantaged youth to live a happy and productive life that allows them to give back. For this, we work towards three initial and three long-term outcomes. 

The initial outcomes achieved within 2 years include: disadvantaged youth have increased (1) employability by acquiring marketable skills, (2) increased self-confidence and autonomy, and (3) 100% of KOTO graduates get employment upon graduation. We achieve this by recruiting about 60 - 80 disadvantaged youth per year, providing them our 24-month internationally-accredited hospitality training program, with English, computer literacy, and life skills. We make sure trainees have vocational and soft skills that increase their employability. We provide a family environment that is safe and supportive, allowing disadvantaged youth to heal from trauma and gain self-confidence. We keep strengthening our hospitality network to give our trainees the best internship experience and ensure our graduates get decent employment. 

Once graduated, KOTO graduates join the KOTO Alumni Community where we continue to engage and empower them through scholarships, overseas jobs, networking and training opportunities. This is to achieve three long-term outcomes: KOTO graduates experience (1) stable employment, (2) career growth, and (3) they contribute to and support their family and community.

As a social enterprise providing hospitality training and operating a restaurant, our biggest challenge in the coming year is dealing with the consequences of COVID-19. Relying on foreign tourists pre-pandemic, we have relocated our restaurant and changed to target local customers, however this is not easy when the whole industry is still facing precariousness. The sharp downturn in income has forced us to reduce staff and the number of youth intake. We also had to relocate our training center to save rental costs, causing some disruption in our trainees’ training and living. COVID-19 at some point threatened our very existence. 

To overcome these barriers, we have been stepping up our fundraising efforts through campaigns/events, strengthening current partnerships and building new ones. We diversified revenue streams by promoting catering services, cooking classes and building joint ventures. Winning the Elevate Prize would allow us to sustain our program during an unprecedented time while setting the stage for post-pandemic recovery and growth. It would also bring business guidance from experts to help us build creative and sustainable business models. It is critical now more than ever to provide quality training to disadvantaged youth as they are most affected by unemployment during COVID-19.

First of all, we could leverage the brand recognition of the Prize to expand our hospitality partner network, creating more meaningful career and development opportunities locally and overseas for KOTO graduates.

As a Prize winner, we would also attract more partnerships and investment required to build a sustainable business model that has the potential to become a vocational training model in Vietnam and the region. We would leverage this platform to share the model and proven impact of KOTO to advocate for quality vocational training for the disadvantaged, influencing government policies, and to inspire potential replication globally. 

Looking further, we have a 5-year vision of building an ecosystem including (1) scaling up the current free training program for disadvantaged youth, (2) building a fee-paying program, (3) building the next generations of hospitality leaders through the KOTO Alumni Community, who can inspire and help others, and (4) kickstarting a food rescue program. These components will feed each other’s success, creating impact on social, environmental and industry level. This is an ambitious vision which requires careful planning and cross-sector collaboration. I believe the Prize’s platform would help us attract the right experts and partners for strategizing, planning and building this ecosystem.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are principles that we pride ourselves on at every level and the leadership team plays an important role to ensure we achieve the goals. We u each cohort of trainees we recruit has diverse genders (male, female, LGBT), geographical locations, ethnicities and education backgrounds. We treat every candidate equally from the recruitment process throughout the training program. This is well communicated and executed by all staff and we promote these principles externally as well. 

Women empowerment is very important to us. In 2018, we implemented the HER TURN: Women Economic Empowerment program that increases access to the KOTO training program for ethnic minority girls, single mothers and other vulnerable women groups. We encourage women in leadership at our organization and currently most of our Heads of Departments and managerial roles are women. In 2020-2021, we implemented a capacity building for our leadership team to help empower 5 directors via training, mentoring and coaching activities. 

To exemplify these values, I am myself always open to listen to staff and trainees, champion fairness and never favor. I use metrics to evaluate the team’s performance and continuously work with my leadership team on their professional development. 

Growing up as a Vietnamese refugee finally settling in Australia at the age of 8, I have experienced hunger and homelessness very early in life. I then came to realize how lucky I was for finally having a shelter, enough food and an education. It struck me extremely hard when I met poor street kids in Vietnam in 1996 and understood how much an education could potentially change their lives. 

With a diploma in Tourism Management and work experiences in hospitality and tourism in different parts of the world, I quickly identified that Hospitality was the skill to teach to disadvantaged youth in Vietnam at the time. After 20 years of leading KOTO and other hospitality entities, and involving in the social enterprise movement in Vietnam, I believe I am in a position to scale the impact of KOTO in breaking the cycle of poverty. 

I am proud of my leadership team, many of whom are KOTO alumni themselves who understand the population we work with and know first-hand that giving opportunities to underprivileged youth could change lives. Many have stayed for over 10 years and are directly paying it forward by nurturing the next generations of disadvantaged youth everyday.

I founded KOTO in 1999 when social enterprise was unheard of and vocational education for the underprivileged was nonexistent in Vietnam. Since then, I have led KOTO through ups and downs without government support in funding, tax benefits or legal frameworks. The first Vietnamese law on social enterprise only became effective in 2015. Nonetheless, I was able to, just two years after establishment, secure a partnership that gives KOTO trainees international accreditation, while even today it is still an issue of state-run vocational programs. After 20 years, KOTO has thrived to become the first social enterprise and a leading hospitality training program in Vietnam that trains 200 youth per year. 

As COVID-19 hit our business badly, I decided to close down our 21-year-old restaurant, relocate and change strategies fairly quickly. I refused to give in and continuously fought to keep the KOTO program as disadvantaged youth are increasingly affected by unemployment. I mobilized support from my staff, friends and partners around the world, which has resulted in a smooth opening of the new restaurant in just 3 months. I am also pushing new ways of doing business and fundraising everyday to make sure we survive during an unprecedented time.

Television shows: 

• 2021 – NHK World – Have the courage to open up your future: Jimmy Pham/Founder of KOTO: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/2058732/

• 2015 – VTV Talk Vietnam: Jimmy Pham: https://youtu.be/Ttr-CEECT3g

Documentaries: 

• ABC Television – Jimmy’s Kitchen: https://youtu.be/zMr4nHDBc-s

Live speaking engagements: 

• TEDx 2017: Revolutionizing the fishing industry | Jimmy Pham:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jZSLq2_CAo

• TEDx 2012: The impact of social enterprise on the future of Vietnam:    

   

At the individual level, this funding would help me achieve my personal goals which in the long term will elevate the impacts of KOTO and contribute to the social enterprise movement in Vietnam. It would help me pursue a Phd research on social enterprise in Vietnam, benefiting the community of 19,000 social startups in Vietnam by providing insightful facts and findings about starting and running a social enterprise. I believe we are at the stage where the model of KOTO needs to be well analyzed, documented and disseminated for the broader audience. Additionally, I would also be able to access personal coaching and wellbeing services. 

For the organization, this funding would help on multiple levels. First, it would cover some of the most critical training operations, helping us maintain our program during an extremely difficult time. Second, it would help develop the KOTO alumni community, bringing it to the next level. By being able to maintain our current programs, we would be able to pool resources to start planning for the next growth phase, including planning for the building of our first own training center, developing a fee-paying program with Box Hill Institute, and operating a food rescue program. 

Partnership is paramount at KOTO. We work with a range of program partners and funding partners. 

We work with Box Hill Institute, Australia who accredit our curriculum, support with training materials, ensure our trainers’ quality and confer the internationally-recognized certificates to qualified trainees. We work with Apollo, a renown English training center, in developing the English training curriculum for our trainees. We maintain a network of 100+ hospitality partners to provide training to our trainees (by inviting culinary and mixology experts to come deliver special training), place trainees into internship placements within hospitality establishments and secure employment for them upon graduation. We work with these hospitality partners to together develop training programs/sessions, and to make sure internships take place smoothly and meet standards. We also work with local government agencies and organizations to reach out to potential candidates for recruitment into the program. 

Our funding partners contribute in kind or cash for our operations. Many provide expertise for our restaurant building, renovation and supplies. Some provide space for trainees’ cooking practice or assessment, others provide facilities for our trainees’ sports and music activities. Institutions who provide monetary support work with us to develop and ensure the program quality.