Social Impact Apprenticeships

--- tags: apprenticeships --- # Social Impact Apprenticeships Here are some things I need to make clearer: * An intro to us: Our business model, how we fund ourselves, why we are different, what we offer * Apprenticeships, how they work, why they are a good thing, * Less focus on the apprentice journey, more on the organisational support they provide * Separate out the unifying aspects of all four approaches Over the last 6 years, Founders and Coders has developed a training programme in software development that is uniquely focused on both inclusivity and social impact. It is also, unlike any other similar programme, free to our students, unfunded and largely self-supporting. We have proved the efficacy of our model by graduating over 300 developers in London and setting up three programmes in the Middle East. In a major step towards securing our own future and increasing our reach, we are now in the process of joining the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers and are embarking on a social impact apprenticeship programme. What this means is that we are planning to train people up and then put them to work on charity and social enterprise projects. We will be rolling up all our learnings from our collaborations with organisations like The Anna Freud Centre, Power to Change, Year Here, Bethnal Green Ventures, Zinc, NPC and Comic Relief, from the programmes we have developed together with CAST, from the digital agencies we have nurtured, and the many charities, social enterprises and start-ups that we have supported since 2014. Our apprenticeship programme will be a source of enthusiastic, diverse, inexpensive and high quality product teams that can be incorporated into any programme to support the development of digital services and digital competence in the charity or social enterprise sectors. ## Structure of the apprenticeship The idea behind the apprenticeship is to produce qualified and highly competent software developers with a sensibility for the needs of civil society organisations. The apprenticeships are likely to be 12 months long and will be roughly split into 3 blocks. 1. **Months 1-3** Classroom-based with a focus on acquiring skills 2. **Months 4-6** Engagement with organisations, primarily on discovery, definition, prototyping and testing, while continuing to develop technical skills 3. **Months 7-12** Primarily engaged in developing digital services for charities and social enterprises Our apprentices will be supported by our own experienced team of software developers and trainers. We are looking for ways to create partnerships that will allow us to fund our apprenticeship programme through a variety of engagement models. ## Potential models of engagement 1. ***"Tech for Good+"* model** Provide charities with support and a product team (probably shared between 2 or 3 charities) to work on a problem identified by each charity separately in advance, and then guide them through a process of discovery, definition, design and development. 2. ***"My Best Life"* model** Bring small groups of charities together with a product team to explore a problem as a group and then to decide collectively which service to develop, use and support. 3. ***"Product Manager training"* model** Identify a group of would-be product managers within the charity sector, train them up together as a cohort and then provide them with product teams, with each product manager working on a separate problem that they decide on during the training process. 4. ***"Year Here+"* model** Identify a group of would-be social entrepreneurs, who work with charities through a process of placement and consultancy, then supply them with product teams to help them develop digital services based on their learnings.