Builders + Backers Issues 21st Century Career Credentials to Newly Trained Entrepreneurs
Arlington, VA (PRWEB) July 18, 2023 -- Builders + Backers announced today that it has begun issuing 21st Century Career Credentials to graduates of its Idea Accelerator program. This proprietary program teaches participants a modern framework for building entrepreneurial ventures and provides funding to enable them to run real-world experiments. While the majority of graduates go on to launch new ventures, now with this credential all alumni will also be able to demonstrate their mastery of skills critical to the 21st century to potential employers.
Builders + Backers and Education Design Lab received a Catalyze Challenge grant in the Fall of 2022 to work together to map the Idea Accelerator curriculum where participants learn skills around problem-solving, ideating, and experimenting, and translate this curriculum and learnings into stackable credentials and micro-pathways. With this process complete, Builders + Backers can demonstrate that program graduates have demonstrated proficiency in entrepreneurship, innovation, critical thinking, experimentation, project management, resource planning, sales and marketing, and venture building. In addition, they have also mastered modern digital tools such as Canva and Miro.
Builders + Backers has begun issuing credentials to hundreds of Builders who have completed the Idea Accelerator program and has selected Accredible as the platform through which to issue them. The Accredible platform allows Alumni to share their secure credentials on their digital resumes, online portfolios, and social media pages, and potential employers can easily verify graduates’ credentials and skill mastery with one click.
Builders + Backers will now begin fulfilling the final phase of the Catalyze Challenge grant by rolling out the Idea Accelerator program, and the 21st Century Career credential, to high school and college students across the United States.
“Entrepreneurs often struggle to convey to employers the skills they have developed in launching and growing their new ventures, even though many of them are invaluable in today’s rapidly changing, digital workforce environment,” said Kathleen Hale, Partner at Builders + Backers. “Whether our graduates go on to build global scale businesses or take their new-found entrepreneurial capabilities to their next employer, we’re equipping each of them with critical career and life skills.”
“In today’s economy, durable, transferable skills like the ones Builders + Backers graduates are developing are the new currency. Employers need, but struggle to find, people who index high on these skills,” said Don Fraser, Chief Program Officer at Education Design Lab. “The exciting development is that employers are increasingly looking at and placing value on quality credentials and micro-credentials from non-traditional learning experiences like Builders + Backers.”
About Builders + Backers: Builders + Backers invests in exceptional entrepreneurs who are building global-scale ventures to power an entirely different future - one where technology creates value for many instead of capturing it for a few. Through proprietary programming, Builders + Backers also inspires and equips people to best seize the opportunities of our digital era - from experimentation and solving problems in their local communities to starting new ventures that could scale. By backing the most creative builders across the country, we can shape the digital future to be one in which more people participate and thrive. http://www.buildersandbackers.com
About Education Design Lab: The Education Design Lab (the Lab) is a national nonprofit that co-designs, prototypes, and tests education-to-workforce models through a human-centered design process focused on understanding learners' experiences, addressing equity gaps in higher education, and connecting learners to economic mobility. Learn more: http://www.eddesignlab.org.
About the Catalyze Challenge: The Catalyze Challenge is a joint venture among American Student Assistance® (ASA), Arnold Ventures, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, Charter School Growth Fund, the Joyce Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, to date totaling nearly $10 million in funding to 40 innovative solutions across 24 states. The Challenge aims to fund, learn from, and share bold ideas that rethink the connections among K-12, post-secondary education, and career for students in grades 6-14. Learn more: https://www.catalyzechallenge.org/.
About Accredible: Accredible is the industry-leading digital credentialing platform that securely issues, manages, tracks, and verifies over 70 million high-stakes credentials across the globe. Accredible integrates with learning software like Canvas, D2L Brightspace, and more. Over 2,000 leading universities, associations, and technology companies such as Google, Skillsoft, Slack, MIT, Rutgers, Cengage, and UC Berkeley rely on Accredible to create, deliver and manage verifiable digital certificates and badges. Learn more at accredible.com
Gisele Gerry, Builders + Backers, http://buildersandbackers.com, 1 6027904085, [email protected]
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