As Esas Sosyal, the social investment unit of Esas Holding, one of Turkey's leading investment companies founded in 2000 by the late Şevket Sabancı and his family, we have been creating sustainable and measurable impact in the field of youth and employment since 2015. Through the program which has received more than 25 thousand applications so far, we focus on empowering young people who need equal opportunities due to the lack of recognition of the universities they graduate from in the transition to employment and aim to enable them to step into professional life as well-equipped, confident and highly aware individuals.
In line with this goal, young people who have recently graduated from public universities, which are less preferred by employers, have the chance to be evaluated equally with their peers, while non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which are an important part of the ecosystem, obtain a qualified and educated young workforce through Şevket Sabancı First Chance Program. In this way, we introduce young people to the civil society sector and increase the human resources capacity of NGOs. The fact that the transition rate of the participants who successfully completed the program to employment within the first 6 months is 100% reveals what young people can achieve when given the opportunity. So far, 350 young people have gained their first work experience by working full-time in NGOs through Şevket Sabancı First Chance Program.
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Experiences from Şevket Sabancı First Chance Program and the views of corporate supporters have shown that in the job entry process, English language proficiency is one of the areas where young people face the most inequality in the job entry process. In 2020, GYİAD's "Youth Labor Market in Turkey and Outlook for the Future" research, sponsored by Esas Holding, found that approximately 1/3 of university graduates do not speak a foreign language or know very little, while 35% of the participants defined their language skills as "moderate".
We launched the “Hayırlı Sabancı English Chance Program” for university students in order to get to the root of this problem and offer a solution model to the inequality of opportunity experienced by young people. Within the scope of the program, which is implemented in cooperation the English education institution Berlitz and the youth network platform Microfon, participants receive 3 courses of English training in online live classes for 12 months and complete the program at least at the Intermediate level. In addition, with the support of Esas Holding, the program provides participants MS Office program training, English CV preparation, Career Management trainings and English interview coaching. So far, 1.100 young people have the chance to successfully transition to their careers by acquiring at least intermediate level English proficiency with Hayırlı Sabancı English Chance Program.
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