Aspen is a place for leaders to lift their sights above the possessions which possess them. To confront their own nature as human beings, to regain control over their own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and hence more self-fulfilling.
Walter P. Paepcke, Aspen Institute Co-Founder
Aspen Institute
IDEAS Article, IDEAS: the Magazine of the Aspen Institute Winter 2019 / 20, and Longform
Ascend Fellows Help Refugees in Kenya
December 5, 2019
What are your career goals? It’s a routine question for an internship fair. But the answers the Institute’s Ascend fellows received—and the young people who provided them—were anything but typical. This internship fair was hosted in a community hall built on the dusty outskirts of the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. The students were refugees who had fled violence and unrest in South Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia. All are earning their degrees online from Southern New Hampshire University. Paul LeBlanc, the president of SNHU and an Ascend fellow, uses student coaching services to redefine affordable, high-quality education and meet the needs of each student, including those in camps thousands of miles from his school’s small New Hampshire campus. Opportunity can be in short supply for those fleeing, caught between their status as refugees and limited options for resettlement. LeBlanc’s class of Ascend fellows hopes to help him transform these refugees’ lives with innovative employment pathways.
Improving job quality doesn’t just benefit workers; it can also strengthen small businesses themselves and the broader communities they serve. Yet, many small business owners lack the resources and knowledge needed to improve the quality of their jobs.
UpSkill America’s new Upskilling Playbook is a strategic guide for organizations to build, scale, and integrate skills-based workforce development initiatives that drive business performance and career growth.
