These five innovative nonprofits are all developing responses to the faster-changing world of work outlined in "Generation Flux" and "The Four-Year Career."
Looking for a second career? Civic Ventures offers Encore Fellowships in seven states. These fellowships, which carry a small stipend, give retirees the chance to use their skills during a full-time or part-time commitment at a nonprofit, and perhaps segue into an "encore career" with meaning.
The aptly named Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding opportunities for low-income youth through education, has a new initiative called Credentials that Work. They’re using artificial intelligence to crawl websites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder, and LinkedIn and push aggregated, real-time labor market information to community colleges, who can share it in turn with job seekers and use it to create credentials and programs that prepare students for the swiftly-changing opportunities out there. "There’s no question that any training institution is up against a more dynamic, fast-moving economy,"says program director John Dorrer. "In the past, the data was aged and we were looking the rear-view mirror. That doesn’t work for the active job seeker today."
The Institute for the Future, as part of its decade-long Future of Work project, has identified 10 skills needed for the jobs of the future: Sensemaking, Novel and Adaptive Thinking, Transdisciplinarity, Social Intelligence, Computational Thinking, New Media Literacy, Design Mindset, Cross Cultural Competency, Cognitive Load Management, and Virtual Collaboration. They are currently researching where and how people can learn these skills.
DreamNow, a nonprofit started by 27-year-old Dev Aujla, is currently creating a job training program based on Aujla’s upcoming book with Billy Parish, Making Good: Finding Meaning, Money and Community In a Changing World. The plan is to train 10,000 youth for careers that are flexible, portable, and sustainable.
The Freelancers’ Union offers a group-rate health insurance plan and other benefits to 165,000 members in all 50 states, and advocates politically for more portable, flexible health and retirement benefits to fit a world where the long job is no more.
Related: The Career Of The Future Doesn't Include A 20-Year Plan. It's More Like Four.
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