Featured, Roddenberry Fellowship
Project Name: Mentorship and leadership skills for those with disabilities
Location: Vancouver, BC
PROBLEM:
1 in 5 people in the world live with a disability. At over a billion people worldwide, they constitute the world’s largest minority. Those living with disabilities are twice as likely to be unemployed, and it is often difficult for them to find the right mentor who can help them move forward and reach their potential in a career.
Solution: NextBillion is a platform for people with disabilities to expand their employment opportunities by connecting with industry leaders to foster their career growth. On the platform, mentors are paired with a mentee based on their field of expertise, relationship with a particular disability, personal experience, as well as the mentee’s story and professional goals.
What makes this approach different? NextBillion has been uniquely designed to pair mentors and mentees with disabilities with the sole purpose of increasing their potential to thrive in the workplace. The platform has the potential to scale across industries and provide large, simultaneous cohorts with guidance and resources to mitigate the “drop outs” a that are common stumbling block in these programs.
