Blossom Academy
Organization Details
Across the African continent. there are millions of talented youth. However, many of them fail to harness opportunities to develop relevant skills for the rapidly evolving job market, particularly those from less affluent backgrounds. Indeed, according to a recent report from the IFC, nearly 20 percent of Ghanaian companies surveyed recruit only internationally for digital skills, primarily because they cannot find skilled local talents.
Blossom seeks to close this opportunity gap by equipping African youths from low-income backgrounds with the necessary skills and resources to become data and analytics professionals, and support them in increasing their incomes by pairing them with the most in-demand jobs on the continent- starting with the analytics industry.
Impact Story
To build the talent pool of world-class African data professionals, Blossom Academy provides a skills-based curriculum designed in collaboration with industry partners that is reflective of real-world experience. Throughout its 12-week no-cost Fellowship program, Fellows build analytics tools and solutions to address the challenges of organizations in their region, receive coaching in critical leadership skills, and one-on-one career mentorship from the academy’s alumni community. Following the training phase, 100% of successful graduates are connected to 24-week internships, and continue to receive guidance from the academy’s in-house data professionals. The majority of the 9-month Fellowship program is delivered virtually, which enables Blossom Academy to leverage technology for quick, accurate Fellow assessments.
To summarize our impact data, we have trained 215 aspiring data professionals, maintained a placement rate of over 90% (62% are matched by Blossom), and our graduates increase their salary by 3x (on average); relative to what similar professionals earn in their region. In order to keep strengthening our placement efforts, we have secured industry partnerships with 77 companies across Ghana and Nigeria and out of them, 42 have created new analytics departments to hire our graduates. Upon completion, we track the number of Fellows who completed their internship and got retained, the income transformation of our graduates year on year, and the number of Fellows who make better local use of public goods by leveraging data.
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