Developing talents to bring income and hope

One of the most valuable strategies in fighting extreme poverty is teaching people skills so they
can learn to provide for themselves.

World Concern’s work in poor communities strives to influence long-term change. Teaching people marketable job skills helps lift them and their families out of poverty for good, changing the direction of generations to come.

Download a project profile about our vocational training programs.

How We Help

In all of our work, we target the poorest and most vulnerable people. We place a special emphasis on women in our vocational training programs, who are treated unequally and also are expected to support their families. We also help children in areas where trafficking is a danger. However, men and women of all ages have the opportunity to learn a skill through our programs.

Our vocational training programs are carefully matched with the needs of the community where we work to ensure students and participants are able to use their skills and get a job after completion. In South Sudan, for example, people rely on motorbikes for transportation, but many of them sit broken and abandoned. World Concern opened a vocational training center to teach young men mechanical skills so they can repair motorcycles for income, and at the same time, meet a vital
need in the community.

In the same community, people were not able to afford new clothes because they were all imported. The vocational school offers classes in sewing and tailoring so women can make clothing, earning an income and providing affordable clothing to the people who live there.

Read more about our successful vocational training center in Lietnhom, South Sudan.

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Without skills, the cycle of poverty continues

• Per capita income in Kenya is $360 (US dollars)
• 22% of Kenyans live on less than $1 per day
• Nearly 90% of people in Chad are illiterate
• 75% of the population of South Sudan is illiterate
• Only 1.9% of the population of South Sudan has completed primary school
• In Haiti, only 52% of those over the age of 15 can read and write
• Fish farmers in Bangladesh may have ponds, but only a few raise fish profitably due to the lack of technical expertise
• Only 68% of the population in Laos can read and write

Lifting up people to meet their potential

• We show illiterate entrepreneurs how to keep business ledgers by using drawings and other creative record-keeping symbols
• Thousands of rural poor in Haiti receive affordable loans to begin businesses or farms through World Concern
• We teach skills to small businesses in Sri Lanka, including animal husbandry, farming and aquaculture
• Young people with disabilities in Vietnam are considered outcasts from society, but World Concern offers them education, vocational training and employment services