Stella's Child FirstEmploy Services & Lifeworthy Learning

Providing a nurturing space that allows underserved youth the freedom to develop self-confidence, creativity, and entrepreneurial business skills.  

Our solution increases equitable access to quality learning opportunities for underserved learners, improves literacy and social emotional learning to effectively build work readiness and to open doors to opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable. 

Stella’s Child provides a nurturing space that allows young people the freedom to develop self-confidence, creativity, and leadership skills under the guidance of mentors.  Through a combination of experiences, these talented and motivated youth are enabled to grow their core competencies, find their passion and to follow their own unique journey to self-defined success. 

We are centered on the core values of leadership, inspiration, and positive change and leverage individual creativity to inspire others to foster positive social change.  The FirstEmploy program provides significant benefits to underserved youth through its training and education programs.  These programs build the self-confidence and self-esteem that these children need to become successful, contributing members of our society.  Furthermore, FirstEmploy offers socially responsible businesses with access to a talent pool of well qualified youth breaking into the workforce on a quest to end their cycle of poverty by:

• providing businesses with streamlined access to young adults that have received extensive training in business, communication skills, English language skills, computer training, and customer service.
• providing consortium members with state-of-the-art web-based tools to facilitate the recruitment, interviewing and hiring processes.
• Providing youth with the opportunity to refine their skills and grow their resume for future job prospects.

In today’s competitive job market, the youth that we serve are further placed at a disadvantage in the hiring process as their vocational training programs do not prepare them for entry into the workforce.  This problem begins from early public education where sufficient knowledge on soft skills and interest-based career training is not provided. Indonesia Development Forum (2019) stated that despite relatively stable economic growth in recent years, the benefits have not been enjoyed by all Indonesians. There are significant gaps in access to quality public services, including health, education, basic infrastructure, clean water and sanitation, particularly outside Java. Poor health and low-quality education directly impact the quality and productivity of Indonesia’s workforce.  Improving the quality of human capital is a key focus of the current Indonesian government’s Nawa Cita (Nine Goals). Programs such as Indonesia Pintar (Smart Indonesia) and other forms of social assistance aim to improve Indonesians’ education and welfare throughout their lives. Increasing productivity and competitiveness is also an important focus; however, disparities in education, health and welfare remain persistent. While Java has seen great innovation and success, it only accounts for 50% of the Indonesian population. The gaps that this country has identified can be bridged by supporting grassroot movements, which help increase equitable access to quality learning opportunities through open sourced, offline, and virtual models, especially for underserved learners in low connectivity environments

The children that we work with come from extremely impoverished families or are victims of violence or exploitation. Some have only one parent who, in desperation, sends their young child into the labour force to help put food on the table. Some have no family at all and find themselves abandoned, alone in the world, at the mercy of strangers. These are intelligent, talented, and capable children who, by mere circumstance of birth, lack life's most fundamental opportunities. Many of them gave up school at an early age or went to underserved public schools that did not provide them with the resources needed to explore their skills and interests or think about a career path. Some of them were sent to the orphanage or children’s home, where life is an organized pattern which makes it harder for them to navigate when they are out. By providing equitable access to quality learning opportunities through our 5 primary programs we offer hard and soft skills learning, work experience, access to mentorship, etc. especially for these underserved learners in low connectivity environments. We empower Bali's otherwise overlooked children, giving them a chance at the kind of life that most people around the world take for granted.

The problem which our program addresses is the inadequate access to quality learning opportunities, which is only exacerbated for the youth we served.  Coming from the poorest and most rural areas, they lack the network required to navigate the career spectrum available in Bali, Indonesia.  By age 16, all youth attending vocational schools are forced to decide their career choice (housekeeping, food & beverage industry, or hospitality).  There is no explanation to the youth that this is their starting point, not their destination.  By leveraging volunteer resources from the business community, foreign and domestic, we are able to create a mind-shift where learners can more adequately understand the bevy of career options that exist, and begin to build the skills to enter into their desired industries.  Our programs and mentorship provide youth with basic business acumen and life skills, as well as help them improve their English skills, which further improves their access to opportunities.  We leverage technology to further up-skill the youth, who due to their means, often do not have access to the internet, computers, handphones, and other tools.  By the completion of our program, we feel that our graduates are equipped with the skills and confidence needed to make career decisions that are best for them and, meet the demands of competitive industries.      

Timothy Cameron, Founder and Executive Director, is our Team Lead under this grant.

Stella's Child enlists human-centered solutions to all of our programs. We offer support through continuous collaboration with our volunteers to keep them informed about the changing needs of the communities we support, and most importantly, understanding the changing needs of the youth we serve. In doing so, we don't take a one-size-fits-all approach.  We understand that the needs of our youth vary from person to person, and adapt to best fit their needs. It is not only our belief that a lifelong learning curriculum is needed for our youth, but we must also be able to connect with them on an individual level to best support their needs. Whether it be in their learning habits, their career aspirations, or their personal situations, we pride ourselves in our ability to provide customized programs to meet their unique needs. During our first five operational years, we developed a portfolio of programs that has created a formula for success, and our youth outcomes are proof that the formula works! 

Our solution will leverage technology to take our job placement programs to the next level. We will be able to reach more businesses, grow the youth's skills, and eventually create a lucrative work model for youth to get paid through internships.   The software application will also be a tool for the youth to remain connected with Stella’s Child throughout their career, marketable to businesses to engage as sponsors which leads to a sustainable revenue stream, and is scalable to provide an additional fee-for-service module.  

Since 2014, when our programs began, we have introduced youth to various careers within and outside of their vocation.  We strive to make them aware of all the opportunities that exist around them and that align with their personal skills and interests. When we connect them with a business, we prepare them for their interviews, provide guidance for negotiations and decision making yet explain to them that they are the ones that must 'close the deal'. Our youth rank well because of the skills they’ve developed in our programs stand out among the other applicants in the entry level market. The reviews we’ve received from the businesses who have hired them have been overwhelmingly positive. We have grown our youth participants every year:

• 2013: 27 Participants
• 2014: 33 Participants
• 2015: 59 Participants
• 2016: 61 Participants
• 2017: 74 Participants
• 2018: 87 Participants 
• 2019: 152 Participants
• 2020: 241 Participants
• 2021: 290 Participants 

It is our intention to utilize existing technologies in a way that will support connecting underserved youth to the best businesses in our market.  We have established relationships with leading businesses with whom it is difficult for high school graduates to get connected with.  Utilizing commercial off-the-shelf software and/or developing a custom hybrid solution, will enable us to streamline this process for both the youth we serve and the businesses that support us.  The system will streamline the hiring process for our business sponsors and for our youth graduates.

1. Testing & Assessment Tools.  The use of pre-hire tools to assess the knowledge, skills and abilities of applicants is trending in most mid-large size corporations.  Surveys show that 80% of Fortune 500 companies are utilizing these tools.  It is our intention to provide access to these tools for our youth to gain certificates in assessments. This will allow businesses to see the scores of our youth, their prospective applicants, and predict job behaviours such as teamwork, customer service, and problem-solving skills; these skills are core training areas for our youth participants within our programs.
2. Talent Intelligence Systems.  These tools allow businesses to make efficient, accurate, and fair talent decisions.  This is done through a use of tools that will screen resumes and to provide data-driven insights on diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Additionally, we will use this software to help your youth tailor their resumes to best fit the jobs they apply for, which will increase their chances at getting interview opportunities. 

The key program objective is to provide life skills necessary to break the cycle of poverty for the children engaged in the program. In order to adequately assess the social ROI of the program, we establish baseline capabilities at the onset of the programs and then measure the change at the time of program completion.  We review outputs such as confidence, knowledge, skills, and economic impact. Data collected includes the number of children enrolled in the program, the number of sponsors and partnerships formed, the degree of community outreach and involvement as well as the number of international students serving as mentors. These measures will also allow us to assess the community impact and extent to which we can build a new entrepreneurship ecosystem. We utilize an ACE model (Alignment, Capabilities and Engagement) to measure the success of the program.  Here we focus on developing the capabilities of the individual students in alignment with strategies, priorities and core values of the program.   We look at innovation, leadership, performance and capability of the participants by measuring their creative and critical thinking, communications skills, ethics, social responsibility and engagement.  

We measure our impact by using various methods of data collection to find out pre ad post class. We decide the methods of data collection based on the age group of the program, types of skills assessed, and outcomes of the program. The program itself, has its own indicator of success, which vary from time to time after the curriculum we build with the program mentors. The indicator itself was structured by using Bloom’s Taxonomy framework in categorizing educational goals in teaching-learning process, using action verbs that can be seen. For example, instead of stating indicator as “Youth will be able to understand…”, we used “Youth will be able to mention 5…”. The term “understand” is an abstract concept that could be interpreted into several things. Therefore, setting the goal into a more detailed indicators such as mentioning, applying, summarizing, applying, creating, etc, will result into a more specific outcomes that can be directed towards the impact. Therefore, methods of data collection will be easier to determined to report both in descriptive and statistics form. Observation, checklists, self-assessment, pre-test and post-test are sufficient to measure these detailed indicators. 

6 Months -  Program Operations to build the talent pool.  

• Entrepreneurship Program, we utilize various learning modalities, such as creative learning techniques, instructor-led, online and e-learning to teach key business concepts such as brand development, marketing, sales, and management 101 to underserved youth. The program also connects budding entrepreneurs with creative visionaries, peers, mentors and potential investors. 
• Senior Life Skills Programs focus on preparing kids for their futures through a variety of seminars helping them with their self-confidence, self-image, & the reality of what to be prepared for in the world outside of the orphanages that they have grown up in.  

  12-24 Months -  Re-start our Community Action Program which is designed to implement the skills developed through our Life Skills Academy, Entrepreneurship, and FirstEmploy programs.  The program allows the youth further opportunity to develop their leadership, project management, and global citizenship skills. Projects focus in one of the following subject areas:

• Environmental Protection
• Waste Management & Recycling
• Poverty & Hunger
• Education
• Social Justice 

Youth program participants will manage, lead, develop, implement, and evaluate, under the guidance of skilled mentors and staff, a community centric action program in a local Bali village.  

  3-5 Years -  Early ideas include: 1) Opening a second Community Centre in the most impoverished regency on the island to assist more youth in need of our programs. 2) Initiating a pilot program in a second country to test the cultural adaptability of our programs and services.

Primarily, the barrier that prevents us from reaching the solution is funding.  Funding will solve 2 problems, access to software and access to more help to work towards the goal.

• Financial: The cost for initial development and piloting of the software tools requires an investment that is quite substantial to our organization. 
• Human Capital:  While we do have the required talent on our team to manage this scale of a program development, funding is required to offset his workload to enable the organization to devote his time to this initiative as a project manager.

Receiving this grant will allow us to overcome both of these barriers.  It is our estimation that the system could be built, tested, and implemented in time for the April 2023 hiring season.  As part of the project development, we will also be devoting team resources to business outreach and engagement to begin the process of building future sponsorship relationships that will lead the organization to financial sustainability. 

Stella’s Child strives to be a ray of hope for the underserved youth of Bali.   We are well positioned to have great social impact to the impoverished children in Bali by providing them with a blend of programs that increase their self-esteem and confidence as well as their employability, it is our goal to equip these children with the tools they need to break their cycle of poverty so that their own children and families do not have to endure the hardships with which they have grown up.  

Stella’s Child was built from the ground up in 2013 by its Executive Director, Tim Cameron, who found himself at a professional crossroad in his own life in 2012.  Inspired by an entrepreneur he met in Singapore to “build something that you will enjoy doing long-term”, Tim took a risk by leaving a comfortable job in postsecondary education finance in the United States, selling everything he owned, and heading to Asia to find a way to bring the extensive knowledge and expertise of regional expats to provide education to children residing in orphanages.  Stella’s Child has experienced significant growth and has come a long way in creating awareness about the problem youth face in Indonesia with an education system that does not afford them equal access to opportunities that can be life changing.    

Tim Cameron – Founder & Executive Director

Agra Utari Dewi – Deputy Director

I Komang Andreas – Assistant to the Director

Sarah Garcia – Program Volunteer

Tim Cameron has worked in the non-profit sector for over 30 years with a focus on access to postsecondary education and served as Chief of Staff in the United Stated Department of Education.  Prior to forming Stella’s Child, he worked on large scale electronic identity management systems for American universities.  He is a strategic, ambitious, results driven executive with core expertise in leadership, relationship building, and project management.  

Agra Utari holds a Master’s degree in English and has brought her passion for assisting others to Stella’s Child as its Deputy Director.  As a Balinese woman, she is very passionate about improving the life quality of the Balinese people by creating innovative and meaningful experiences for each youth who joins our programs.  With her knowledge and broad network of Indonesian artists, entrepreneurs, and subject matter experts, she plays a vital role in the empowerment of our youth and believes that quality education is essential for the future of Bali. 

I Komang Andreas hails from the Karangasem Regency of Bali and is a program graduate.  He currently serves as a youth mentor to share his talents in product design, leadership and communications.  He has expanded his skill sets to include accounting and administrative support, program operations, and mentor and youth engagement. He gets his drive from recognizing the fact that the tools provided by the Stella’s Child programs are important to positive youth development and to opening doors to new opportunities.  He is a shining example of the power of Stella’s Child.   

Tim came to Asia in 2013 and was inspired to leave corporate life behind and to start an NGO to bring educational opportunities to underprivileged children.  His first program was launched in December of 2013 in Bali Indonesia providing youth residing in an urban orphanage with a life skills program centered on financial literacy.  From there, he led the implementation of a hands-on afterschool entrepreneurship program and as local employers began to recognize the youth’s aptitude and motivation for learning and growth, he conceptualized a Job Training & Internship program that took a bite out of the exploitation of these youth in the workforce.  This program was formally piloted in 2017 and grew to a full-scale program in 2018.  As youth continued to rise to new levels, he went on to develop and implement Community Action Project program to encourage youth to utilize their skills and leadership abilities for the common good as well as the first stages of the FirstEmploy program which is now poised for further growth.   

We are currently working with several local NGO's who are the primary beneficiaries of our programs: Chloe Orphans, SOS Children’s Village, and local vocational high schools. These organizations were selected based on the age range of the youth they support, the interest in the types of programs we offer, and the needs of the organization itself. All of the organizations we work with are committed to youth development in the same way that we are. Curriculum is then tailored to the needs of the youth and their goals.  

We also partner with several local co-working hubs to identify the mentors for our programs.  Mentor expertise plays a big part in the development of our program line-up as it drives the program offerings to the youth we serve.  

Local businesses also serve as partners to Stella's Child in their role as sponsors and are instrumental parts of our Job Training & Internship Program as well as FirstEmploy.  

As we have stated in our proposal, helping underserved youth find gainful employment with reputable businesses is a key to breaking the cycle of poverty in Bali Indonesia.  These youth lack the connection to opportunity necessary to grow and thrive but do not lack the motivation and commitment to wanting more for their families and communities futures.  Our youth are fast becoming leaders and we have examples of graduates that are earning far above the minimum wage already.  This solution will enable us to attract more reputable businesses, at a fee that will support the youth development programs.  We envision building this as an open-source system and our team already has vast experience in this area and connections to USA universities and associations that could serve as resources for the development of this solution.  The potential for impact is high and can be replicated and expanded into other areas in Asia (we have had interest already for launching our programs in Nepal, Thailand and the Philippines).  The solution is feasible as there are currently tools available in this space that can be customized to our application.  In a sense, we would be reverse engineering HR recruitment practices specifically to meet the needs of businesses and youth. Additionally, the access to resource partners coupled with the learning and development modules would certainly bring about success for the solution and allow hundreds, if not thousands, of at risk youth access to the opportunities they deserve.

• Financial:  Pitching to investors and business sponsors
• Network Connections:  To assist in building awareness with the Indonesian government at the national and regency levels.
• Public Relations:  To grow our social media following and to build media relations.
• Technology:  To move program modules into an eLearning platform and to enable more online services.