Accenture and Ashoka Launch New Initiative to Place 3,500 Skilled Workers in Jobs

It will be a better new year for 3,500 people looking for work in 2015 as Accenture and Ashoka launch the Talent Growth Initiative (TGI), which not only provides skills training to unemployed and underemployed individuals, it helps place them in jobs.
 
Funded, in part, by more than $4 million in grants and pro-bono support from Accenture and the Accenture Foundations, the initiative mobilizes partnerships with job training and placement organizations  – such as Upwardly Global, I-LEAD, Per Scholas, ScriptEd, The Scholarship Academy and LeadersUp – that focus on up-skilling individuals and placing them with employers who identify open positions that require specific skills. 
 
In fact, through the initiative’s training and placement partners, Accenture and Ashoka will equip approximately 5,800 individuals with professional and technical skills to get a job as well as provide them with leadership, teamwork and negotiation training. The effort is part of Accenture’s corporate citizenship initiative, Skills to Succeed, which is equipping more than 700,000 people around the world with the skills to get a job or build a business.
 
“With the Talent Growth Initiative, we’re helping to address the skills gap by convening innovative cross-sector partnerships,” said Larry Solomon, North America operating officer and corporate citizenship lead for Accenture. “This initiative provides a more sustainable career track for job seekers and creates a new pipeline of qualified and diverse talent for employers.”
 
Additionally, Accenture is providing pro-bono consulting services to the job-training organizations to strengthen career pathways for workers and ensure they complete their up-skilling/education and successfully transition into employment. Also, through Ashoka’s “changemaker” curriculum, the TGI is delivering the skills that are increasingly in demand for today’s career-track jobs – such as adaptability, resilience and entrepreneurship – to better prepare talent for the 21st century workforce.
 
“We are delighted to work with Accenture to help enable both employers and employees to adapt to a new talent paradigm that requires constant evolution and innovation,” said Bill Drayton, founder and CEO, Ashoka.  
 
About Accenture  
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 319,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. Through its Skills to Succeed corporate citizenship initiative, Accenture is equipping more than 700,000 people around the world with the skills to get a job or build a business. The company generated net revenues of US$30.0 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2014. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
 
About Ashoka
Ashoka is the first and largest global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, and the pioneer of the social finance and social entrepreneurship movement — investors and entrepreneurs with system-changing solutions that create lasting impact on the world. Ashoka’s greatest contribution to society is its effort to enable everyone to become a changemaker, the most critical ingredient for success in every human grouping, from a school to a company to an entire country. Ashoka operates in 70 countries and online at www.ashoka.org.
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