GetSetUp Announces the Winners of the 55+ Accelerator Program and a Comprehensive Job Assistance Program for Governments

GetSetUp has a history of creating economic opportunities for older adults - from training older workers on job skills to hiring these workers. Now with the success of our Startup Accelerator program for people 55+, ongoing partnerships with Senior Community Service Employment Programs (SCSEP), and more, GetSetUp is preparing for a potential upcoming recession with a comprehensive job assistance program for governments and partners to help offer economic opportunities to their older adults.?

Funding Through the GetSetUp Startup Accelerator?

Last week 18 participants from the GetSetUp Startup Accelerator pitched their business ideas after 12 weeks of dedicated business development classes in the hopes of winning up to $10,000 in funding to help their business grow.?

Five entrepreneurs who are driven, curious, and have a vision of what they want to do with their businesses were selected to receive $2,500 in funding to help support their businesses.

Bharathi Kumar (Bangalore, Karnataka) is the owner of Bharathi's Jhatpat Foods which creates ready-to-cook premixes. She will use funds to grow her market and hire employees to expand from 500 customers to 3,000+ and offer 10 products.

Neeta Goyal (Mumbai, Maharashtra), a porcelain painting artist, will use the funds to participate in art fairs, rent gallery spaces, and increase her art class sizes.

Linda Sivilich (Philadelphia area, Pennsylvania), owner of Classes Offered in Aston teaches sewing classes in her home. She’ll use the funding to upgrade her phone to help her market her business through paid advertising to increase her student enrollment.

Twyla Teitzel (Sacramento area, California), the owner of Plant Based Twy, is a whole food plant-based diet influencer. She’ll use the funding to update her website and start a podcast to help her increase her followers and garnish more sponsors.?

Leslie Lamb (Albuquerque, New Mexico), the owner of Grace Place Creative, is a graphic designer. She will use the funding to upgrade her computer so she can lead her first small business cohort through a six-week-long intensive course on how to develop their brand and marketing material.

The program helped a number of entrepreneurs get the support they needed to help grow their businesses,?

“GetSetUp has been totally life-changing and absolutely life-saving. I have learned so much like Mailchimp, Canvas, Google Slides, and more. These were all things that might as well have been a foreign language to me. Plus getting together with other people in the accelerator has been amazing as the group, Guide Kevin, and GetSetUp has been huge support. Just the idea of GetSetUp and the accelerator is debunking ageism and that’s my favorite part!” said Twyla Teitzel.?

All of our startup participants had excellent ideas that will continue to be supported through GetSetUp classes.?

New Job Services Through GetSetUp?

Now GetSetUp is taking its jobs program one step further by announcing its ability to work with both private and public partners to help bring economic opportunities to older adults.?

GetSetUp has a longstanding tradition of creating economic opportunities for older adults and helping other communities do the same. GetSetUp hires retired teachers and experts in their field to share their skills and knowledge virtually with their peers.?

When the global pandemic began, GetSetUp focused first on assuring teachers had the resources they needed to teach digitally from one day to the next. GetSetUp prepared a 3-day rapid response GetSetUp Academy to reskill its Guides to become experts in the tools essential for public school teachers who needed to teach remotely. Over the course of a week, GetSetUp provided over 300+ hours of live onboarding and training to educators so teachers felt self-sufficient and confident in the tools and technology they needed to start teaching students remotely.

Teachers weren’t the only people who needed reskilling and upskilling on remote tools. Therefore, GetSetUp expanded its job reskilling to include any older adult in need. Our job skills surveys have found that we have helped hundreds of workers gain the skills they needed to succeed. According to one survey 68% of GetSetUp learners learned a skill they could use for a job and 94% had access to learning opportunities they wouldn’t normally have access to. Technology and job skills training on our platform is helping older adults better understand the digital tools and resources available to help them reskill and upskill for current and upcoming jobs.?

Our surveys show 4 key areas of skills that learners have been able to obtain in classes:?

• Professional and Technical skills - This includes skills around email management, new software, computers/technology, and marketing skills to name a few.?
• Confidence Skills - This includes confidence in using today’s technology, public speaking, communicating effectively, using second or third languages and more.?
• Personal Development Skills - This includes skills related to improved memory, goal setting, time management, organizational skills, and virtual networking with a diverse community.?
• Health and Well-being Skills - This includes skills around stress management, mindfulness, eating healthy, and fitness so they can show up to their next position feeling well holistically.?

One such Learner, MaryBeth, a registered dietitian, gained confidence and felt supported by GetSetUp when her organization changed its email systems.

“I took a Gmail class as my company had just moved over to Gmail, and it armed me with the skills to utilize that system to its fullest potential. GetSetUp is an amazing resource, where you learn about all the capabilities to make a day job so much easier.? I also took the Google Docs class. I have a lot of document sharing in my role, and I was frustrated when others couldn’t open the documents I sent, but this class is incredibly accessible. Trying to learn on my own was hard, but now I feel totally proficient.”

We know that older adults want to do more than work at Walmart. Many of them are creating their own businesses to solve problems their demographic faces like those who participated in our first startup accelerator program.? Variations of the startup accelerator classes are available for budding entrepreneurs in our How to Start Your Business series and can help prepare interested participants for our next Startup Accelerator.??

Jobs Assistance Program for Governments??

Since we are all living longer, sometimes even decades longer than in the past, we also need to prepare for these extra years. That means factoring in inflation, health, and well-being through a sense of purpose, and economic opportunities well past retirement age.?

That’s why GetSetUp is stepping up to the plate to enhance our job assistance program. Leading this new endeavor will be the first employee of GetSetUp, Judy Stelling, who helped build GetSetUp’s Guide program. Since Jan of 2021 GetSetUp has invested $1.3 million in our platform creators who are all 50 plus and teaching their peers. Stelling, who herself is an older adult, led the Guide initiative and will now lead this new and important jobs assistance program.??

Stelling will be working directly with governments and private companies to help create more economic opportunities for older adults. This will include a variety of services with customizable service combinations so they are the perfect fit for each community such as:?

1. Grant alignment jobs skills training - These customized job skills training programs align to meet the needs of government funding resources for veteran services and SCSEP.?
2. Customized reskilling and upskilling programs - These classes can focus on the needs of a particular community or subset of the community to assure they have the skills they need to continue adding value in their current roles as well as jobs of the future.
3. Skillset coaching - These coaching sessions will offer more personalized programs aimed to help with a variety of skills around goal setting, effective communication, creative problem solving, entrepreneurship, and more.?
4. One-on-one career counseling services - These will help older adults connect the dots between their life and career experiences with today's job opportunities, showing them how their skills transfer into new market categories.
5. Train to hire services - GetSetUp will work directly with businesses and companies to create customized programs to supply these organizations with older adult employees who already have or have been trained to have the skills needed to succeed in the position.

Our SCSEP partnerships in conjunction with EasterSeals and the National Indian Council on Aging were the first of these endeavors to get underway about 3 months ago and are showing much promise as participants are utilizing skills learned through GetSetUp’s customized training.?

GetSetUp is committed to our mission to empower people who are 55 plus to learn new skills and pursue their passions in order to live healthier and happier lives - and now we are adding services so they have the resources they need to be more financially secure.?

If you would like to bring economic opportunities to older adults in your community, contact us at [email protected]