Lives on the line<\/b><\/p>\n
Abu comes from a low income family in a small town in Pakistan. His parents invested the last of their meager savings to put him through college at the local university, where he majored in computer science.<\/span><\/p>\n His family expected him to get a good-paying job right away, but as graduation day approached, Abu began to see how unrealistic that was. He already knew many classmates who had graduated in years prior who were still unemployed.<\/span><\/p>\n Once graduated, a very difficult period began for Abu. For years, the family had sacrificed, waiting for him to finish his studies and find work as a technology professional. Yet despite sending over a hundred CVs to various tech companies all over Pakistan, he received no word back from prospective employers.<\/span><\/p>\n If he failed to find a well-paying job, his parents would have nothing to invest in his younger brother\u2019s education and the reminders that he must find a job were constant. As the months wore on with no hope in sight, and economic pressures on the family continued to rise, he became extremely distressed.<\/span><\/p>\n But Abu isn\u2019t the kind who gives up easily. When he realized that the local university had left him ill-equipped for the modern world of tech, he began upskilling himself using free and low cost YouTube tutorials and online courses. After a 12-hour day in a low-paid teaching job, he spent nights researching web development, Android development, and ultimately gaming. It was gaming that caught his eye the most. And it was in the course of researching that industry that he came across Generation.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was a fresh university graduate, desperately searching for a job to support my family. I was basically at the lowest point in my life. This is when I saw an advertisement about Generation Pakistan\u2019s Game Developer program. And, since I was a passionate gamer ever since I can remember, I decided to give it a shot. Three months later, I was graduating with enough skills to land an interview, which I aced. My career in the gaming industry began thanks to Generation.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Rebuilding his idea of self<\/b><\/p>\n By the time he began the program, Abu was not only unemployed, but psychologically depleted. He felt that his family was counting on him and that he had let them down. He didn\u2019t see his talent or his hard work, but only that he hadn\u2019t found a job yet, and that his family was waiting. While his passion for gaming was strong, his faith in himself had weakened.<\/span><\/p>\n Because Generation\u2019s mission is to train and place candidates into careers that would otherwise be inaccessible, a core dimension of our approach is to address the structural barriers to employment. Helping people who have faced unfair barriers to employment overcome undeserved feelings of guilt and shame is part of that work. Our behavioral and mindset curriculum helped Abu reframe his difficulty in finding work as an external barrier rather than a personal failing, and encouraged him instead to focus on his innate strengths and capacity for growth.<\/span><\/p>\n