Business
The following text is a work in progress.
Many businesses have accepted, as an unavoidable fact that young employees coming out of school will get into their first job lacking fundamental skills and knowledge. On-the-job training is a typical solution; typically, large corporations develop and constantly update their full curricula, while smaller businesses outsource their internal education programs. V&L supports on-the-job training programs promoting courses and micro-certification programs in areas such as English as a Second Language, Financial Literacy, Computer Literacy, GED classes for high school drop-outs etc.
Not only can we help train teenagers and young adults so they are ready for the workforce, we can also make it easier for these students to create connections with their local businesses. Through volunteering campaigns, students get useful experience and businesses can receive positive branding, corporate stewardship. Volunteering campaigns refer to direct proposals by businesses of volunteering opportunities. A business may elect to support, for example, the maintenance and beautification of a certain highway stretch, or even have students work on projects within the office. This is a source for volunteering events like monthly cleaning of debris on the area, seasonal fertilization and re-planting, or even minor paperwork processing. Businesses are still providing funds, but they now get significant benefits on the organization of the events: V&L offers a standard platform for the implementation of the campaign; invites volunteers to join; recurrently provides seasoned leaders; promotes the campaign across all schools in the district and broadcasts the events to the community at large.
These events and opportunities can extend to new hires through job opportunities. Paid work by students during vacations and holidays are not volunteering, but the organization of job fairs, of training workshops, on-boarding programs and on-the-job training seminars may very well be. These job promoting and job enhancing events offer multiple services to the community including helping students pay their way towards college first and then, improving their understanding of on-the-job responsibility and performance.
In all these activities, we see at play the powerful synergy existing among business interest and V&L goals. Dashboard access by students and businesses is a permanent invitation to a productive dialog among job-generators and job-seekers. Even alumni, whose volunteering records are forever preserved, are welcomed participants to this conversation.
Through the sponsorship program, V&L offer service areas of local, national and global reach where businesses can participate with direct monetary support or as hosts of events and activities, like Charity Drives or Matching Donation campaigns. Businesses get advertisement exposure and joint engagement with students, high schools, parents, school district financial institutions and their communities. V&L offers multiple levels of sponsorship for businesses, letting them choose a local scope or expanding their reach to national or even global audiences depending on their needs and interests.
V&L offers a special partnership with manufacturers and distribution of artifacts typically used in charitable campaigns, like t-shirts, hats, promotional materials, kiosks, etc. These businesses can promote their products in the club and also participate as sponsors of events and activities.
HOW WE HELP STUDENTS
The system tracks students’ hours of service and helps them building customizable reports for each event with a detail of hours spent in preparation, management, summary and reflection; event reports may also include multimedia attachments, to let students describe their individual approach to volunteering. For event leaders, the platform offers checklists with step-by-step guidelines for the creation and coordination of service events; it also includes mailer templates that can be used to promote a service event or to invite others to join. V&L delivers work flow task lists for the organization of events, for serving in an activity, and for reaching to business leaders to seek for support. We focus on transient students to help them connect, acclimate, and quickly on-board with their new academia. We provide learning opportunities that include finance, e-commerce, web design, IT data conversion and programming, English as a second language, public speaking, independent study, private instruction, team sports, performing groups, internships, and work study to prepare the students for life skills not traditionally taught in the current school curriculum. Students carry their profile from one school to another and maintain connections with former classmates, business contacts, and teachers. This is a valuable feature at application time when it is necessary to obtain letters of recommendation! V&L delivers an effortless, intuitive platform to support all actors in volunteering events and fundraisers, promoting leadership and service, advancing skill sets, and making connections that build a resume for higher learning and job applications. We make the platform interesting and self-motivating by delivering not only credit hours of service to their schools, but also assigning system badges for Leaders, Service, Business, Extra-Curricular Education, or Not School Focused activities. These tasks may be either locally organized by students or may span across multiple systems and be globally available for club members.
WHY VOLUNTEER AND LEADERSHIP?
Local businesses look to schools to provide applicants for volunteering work and for part time employment with the expectation that, once students graduate, they would have a pool of potential hires. 31 million hires between the ages of 16-24 take place in the United States every year. Businesses run charity campaigns every year, too. The labor force participation rate (the proportion of the population that is employed or looking for work) for recent high school graduates enrolled in college was 39.8 percent. Recent high school graduates not enrolled in college in the fall of 2017 were much more likely than enrolled graduates to be in the labor force (67.4 percent, compared with 39.8 percent). The labor force participation rate of youth not enrolled in school was at 79.5 percent (October 2017). Business will pay for membership services and event postings to attract students to their businesses for part time hire and full time hire once they graduate.
Volunteer and Leadership provides a fast track to get in touch with these students and young adults!