Generating evidence about NPower Canada’s programs to support scaling
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
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
The Responsive Career Pathways Research Brief consolidates key findings from our past 9 research papers in partnership with the Future Skills Centre. In this brief, we outline key innovation challenges and opportunities for career guidance services in Canada, and highlight common barriers to accessing these services.
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Career guidance systems could be designed with a whole-of-person lens. This paper considers promising practices in breaking down barriers to career guidance for Canadians.
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Adult learners have to navigate an increasingly diverse, fragmented and complex education and training marketplace. This paper assesses options helping Canadian learners navigate their education and learning choices.
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The path to accessing career guidance is challenging for racialized people, women and newcomers to Canada. This paper offers opportunities to strengthen our publicly-funded employment systems to effectively address labour market inequity.
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Employers are critical in establishing more responsive career pathways for Canadians. This paper outlines some of the challenges and opportunities employers are facing related to the future of work and skills.
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Career development practitioners have a critical role to play in helping Canadians prepare for the future of work. This paper tackles questions about the role of career development practitioners and the evolution of their practice.
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Offering forward-looking, customized, high-quality and accessible career guidance to a wide range of Canadians is possible. This paper identifies behavioural and motivational barriers to accessing career guidance and offers a promising path ahead.
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The role and use of technologies that help individuals and career practitioners navigate career pathways are rapidly evolving. This paper outlines potential ways responsive career pathways can be enabled by technology.
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This document provides consistent definitions for the terms that are applied across all of the research papers for the Responsive Career Pathways initiative.
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This paper offers considerations for strengthening and aligning our careers and employment systems to better serve Canadians across their career trajectory.
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Finding ways to make labour market information accessible and useful for service providers and individuals is key for creating more responsive career pathways.
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