At a Glance
Location: Kraków, Poland
Impact Areas: Training and Placement
People Supported:
Youth
Joined NESsT Portfolio:
2021
Overview
The Hearty Foundation trains youth in foster care to develop their technical and soft-skills with the goal of securing quality employment opportunities.
In 2019, more than 70,000 children were in the foster care system in Poland. Despite the importance of foster families in providing a nurturing home environment for children, caregivers are often overburdened and do not receive adequate remuneration or professional guidance, lacking support from psychologists and other specialists for children with different needs. As a result, many children in the foster care system change homes multiple times while growing up, limiting their access to consistent educational resources. This instability can lead to behavioral problems interfering with their engagement in school, and eventually their ability to access and maintain rewarding professional careers in the future.
To empower children and youth in foster care with establishing fulfilling careers, the Hearty Foundation offers occupational training to young people from more than 26 foster care facilities. The social enterprise supports children as young as eight years old, teaching them life skills with a curriculum that adapts to their needs as they grow.
For secondary-age students and young adults, Hearty Foundation matches them with mentors who offer this group internship or employment opportunities that are salaried, with benefits, and career mobility opportunities. The social enterprise ensures that mentors are trained on topics such as empathetic communication, helping them to guide youth in vulnerable environments to design and achieve their career goals.
The enterprise also offers corporations the opportunity to hire the youth, and in doing so, helps these partners to acquire skilled talent while improving their workplace diversity, leading to more innovation and employee engagement.
Results & Impact
328
trained youth from the foster care system
81
partner foster care facilities
1,120
mentees supported
“I joined the Hearty Foundation because I strongly believe that children and youth deserve equal opportunities and equal access to education, regardless of their place of birth, family and material situation and the socio-cultural system that they are in.”
NESsT Investment
In early 2021, the Hearty Foundation launched a web-based technical skills training and mentorship program, Hearty Academy, to support future young professionals with accessing jobs in the digital sector. Career advisors from Hearty work with specialists from partner foster care facilities to determine the best learning project for each young person. Adolescents aged 14 and older participate in a project-based learning curriculum that covers topics such as project management, robotics, and programming. In addition, some program graduates are recruited by the Hearty Foundation as paid interns, receiving work experience that can help them to better navigate the labor market.
With NESsT’s investment, the social enterprise is able to enhance its training capacity and expand its corporate partnership network, providing more internship or job placement opportunities for program graduates.
The Hearty Academy is on track to provide tech training to more than 80 young people in its first year of operations. All participants receive access to psychological care and work with a career development advisor to improve their self-esteem alongside their technical training. As part of the NESsT Portfolio, the Hearty Foundation will gain access to advisory services focused on financial management, growth, and social impact measurement to ensure it can reach as many youth in at-risk situations as possible.