Google Korea shared that it had teamed up with Root Impact to launch Impact Campus, a vocational digital competency enhancement program for youths. Established in 2012, Root Impact is a non-profit organization that provides learning, training, and career growth support to social ventures. Since 2014, Root Impact has been partnering with numerous groups such as job seekers, investors, pro-bono service providers, and entrepreneurs. Root Impact established various social solutions through these partnerships, including educational projects, recruitment programs, and other career development strategies.
Cultivating Digital Job Skills
Impact Campus is a support project that aims to help South Korean youths shape and achieve their digital-focused career paths. According to Google, the new vocational program’s primary goal is to help people who are struggling to begin their careers. In particular, Google Korea and Root Impact would provide digital career reeducation, job openings, entrepreneurship, job change opportunities, and more.
Notably, Google designed Impact Campus to cultivate digital job skills, providing a $1 million backing for the participants’ training expenses. Over the coming months, Google Korea would provide digital-focused educational support to around 800 participants and give them employment connections. As Google Korea stated, about 50% of the participants are low-income people, and more than 70% are women. Impact Campus would also deliver coaching and digital practical training in collaboration with specialized agencies to incumbent Google employees.
In addition to these career-building assistances, Impact Campus would offer field experiences, career guidance and roadmaps, and financial education support. The career development program also aims to enhance education immersion and continuity, making it easier for learners to retain information. Additionally, the Google and Root Impact-backed project would drastically reduce quality education costs to support youths’ digital competency improvement. Root Impact stated that it would be launching Impact Campus’s official homepage sometime this month.
“There is an urgent need to strengthen digital business capabilities so that young people, the biggest victims of the employment cliff caused by COVID-19, can design sustainable careers,” said Kim Gyeong-Hoon, President of Google Korea. Besides helping the youth enhance their digital competency, Google Korea also helped local developers by lowering its in-app commission rate. Previously, Google Korea announced that it planned to lower its in-app commission rate after receiving criticisms from local developers.
