Testing the impact of IT training for youth
Digital skills are in high demand in today’s economy, yet many vulnerable young people remain shut out of careers in the burgeoning technology sector.
NPower Canada, a charitable organization that works with underserved young adults, is working to change that. The organization offers suite of programs designed to provide low-income youth with training in digital and professional skills for careers in IT and contribute to making the IT workforce more inclusive and diverse.
The Future Skills Centre (FSC) has invested $1.8 million in the scaling and rigorous evidence generation of NPower’s programs, which will provide participants with professional and technical skills training, job placement and retention support, and help with career advancement. The funding will allow NPower to expand the programs it offers at its existing sites in Ontario and Alberta, and launch two new sites in British Columbia and Nova Scotia. The project aims to enroll more than 3,000 young people between 18-29 years old from diverse backgrounds who are unemployed or underemployed.
Blueprint is working with NPower to develop tools and resources to support effective scaling, define program outcomes, streamline data collection across sites and develop a better understanding of participant experiences and outcomes. Our approach emphasizes ongoing evidence generation and learning to ensure program impacts can be sustained and improved over time.
We are also performing a rigorous impact evaluation that will assess the long-term effects of the programs on participants’ employment and earnings. The evidence and insights that Blueprint generates will support NPower as it continues to expand its programs across Canada.
More recently, Blueprint has undertaken a review and analysis of NPower Canada’s participant and program data captured since their launch in 2014. Our analysis focused on measuring the outcomes achieved by its workforce development program and its youth participants pre- and post-COVID-19 onset. We have prepared a report sharing the results that have been achieved here.
Read more our evidence generation approach for skills development projects funded by FSC here
Our team and partners live and work on the traditional territory of many Indigenous people across Turtle Island. Blueprint’s home office is situated in the area known as Tkaronto, an area that has been caretaken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Huron-Wendat for thousands of years. We strive to meaningfully incorporate principles of reconciliation with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in our day-to-day work, as is our collective responsibility as treaty people, which requires ongoing reflection and collective action.
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