Inside the Program: How the Five Tracks Work

The short answer: 16 to 24 weeks depending on the track, fully online, 15–20 hours a week, tuition-free, with volunteer educators and a one-to-one mentor. Participants are referred by partner agencies, one intake form covers all five tracks, and a staff member responds within two business days.

Who it is for

Young adults ages 16–25 who are aging out of foster care, exiting the juvenile justice system, or otherwise disconnected from school and work. You need internet access and a laptop. If you do not have the laptop, tell us, and we can help with equipment. If you are 16 or 17, we ask that a supportive adult knows you are applying, and we may need guardian or caseworker consent before enrollment, since some of our participants are legal minors.

There is no entrance exam and no prior experience requirement for any track. What we do ask is that the weekly time commitment is realistic. A participant working full time and caring for a child may still succeed, but we want to talk that through honestly at intake rather than have someone drop out in week six.

The five tracks

• Marketing Specialist, about 24 weeks. AI-assisted copywriting, social media management, paid ads in Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager, email marketing, Google Analytics reporting, and client management. Participants work with small-business clients during the program. Clients pay participants directly, and the Foundation takes no fee.
• Bookkeeping & Accounting Clerk, about 24 weeks. Recording transactions, invoicing, accounts receivable and payable, expense tracking, bank reconciliation, cash-flow management, and financial reporting in standard bookkeeping software, while keeping a working set of books.
• IT Help Desk (Computer User Support Specialist), about 20 weeks. Help-desk fundamentals, business software setup and support, account and access troubleshooting, common productivity apps, basic AI automation, and documentation in a ticketing system. Built around the knowledge areas of entry certifications such as CompTIA A+.
• Web Developer, about 24 weeks. Site planning and structure, AI-assisted web tools, mobile and performance optimization, on-page SEO, forms and business integrations, and site maintenance and handoff. Participants build and launch multiple live sites as portfolio pieces.
• Administrative Assistant, about 16 weeks. Business communication, scheduling and calendar management, document and records management, spreadsheets and office software, customer service, and back-office organization.

A participant does not need to choose a track before applying. The intake conversation is where we match interest, schedule, and aptitude to a track, and we will say so if we think a different track is a better fit than the one someone asked for.

The referral and intake process

Enrollment is by referral. Participants come to the Foundation through partner agencies, including case managers, PAL (Preparation for Adult Living) coordinators, CASA volunteers, transition specialists, and similar programs. One online intake and referral form covers all five tracks, so a young person does not need to know which one they want before intake begins. The form takes about ten minutes and asks for basic contact information, age, the referring agency or worker, a short statement of situation and goals, and which track or tracks interest them. A young adult who does not yet have a referring agency can still submit the form, and our team will help connect them with a partner organization. A staff member, not an automated system, reviews every submission and responds within two business days.

After the form, intake includes a short phone or video conversation to confirm eligibility, talk through the five tracks in more detail, and make sure the 16-to-24-week, 15–20-hour-a-week commitment is realistic given the young person's current work, housing, or caregiving situation. For 16- and 17-year-olds, this is also where we confirm a supportive adult knows about the enrollment and collect any needed guardian or caseworker consent before a start date is set. Caseworkers, CASA volunteers, and PAL coordinators use the same form to refer a young person. They select "I am referring someone" and provide the young person's name, age, and contact information so our team can follow up directly.

For referring workers, the most useful referral includes three things. The young person's own phone number or email, since we contact them directly. A note on schedule constraints, such as school hours or a work shift. And any housing or equipment barrier you already know about, so we can plan around it from the first call.

How the program is paced

Each track runs on a set weekly rhythm at roughly 15–20 hours a week, deliberately below full-time so participants can keep working a job, caring for family, or handling other obligations while they train. A typical week includes a live or recorded lesson from the track's educator, a hands-on assignment that builds on the previous week, a short one-to-one check-in with a mentor, and time to work on the running project that becomes the portfolio. Because the program is fully online, the specific hours in a week are flexible around each participant's schedule. The weekly cadence and checkpoints are not.

The pace is structured rather than self-paced end to end. Participants move through a sequence of skill-building lessons and projects, with checkpoints where an educator reviews the work produced so far before the next stage builds on it. This keeps the program from becoming either a rushed crash course or an open-ended one nobody finishes.

When a participant falls behind, the first step is a conversation, not a dismissal. The mentor asks what changed. If the answer is a housing crisis or a new work schedule, we adjust the plan, which may mean pausing and rejoining a later cohort. If the answer is that the track is not a fit, we talk about switching. Repeated no-shows without contact are the one pattern we cannot work around, because the cohort model depends on people being present for each other.

What "volunteer educators" means

Volunteer educators are people with professional experience in the subject area, such as a working developer, marketer, bookkeeper, IT support professional, or administrative operations lead, who donate their time to lead lessons, review participant work, and answer questions. They are not paid instructional staff. The person teaching the Web Developer track has built websites for a living. Volunteer educators deliver the structured lessons and give direct feedback on the projects that become each participant's portfolio. They are distinct from the one-to-one mentor described below, though in a small, early-stage organization some individuals may serve in both roles.

The mentorship model

Every participant is matched with an individual mentor in addition to the track's educators. The mentor's job is to be that participant's advocate and sounding board through the program and after it. In practice, mentorship means regular one-to-one check-ins separate from group lessons, review of portfolio work from a career-readiness angle rather than a strictly technical one, help preparing for and rehearsing job interviews, and support thinking through decisions like which job offer to take or how to price a first freelance project. Mentors stay reachable after a participant graduates. For young people who exited foster care or the justice system without a professional network or a family member to call for career advice, this relationship is meant to fill exactly that gap.

How progress is assessed

Progress is tracked primarily through the portfolio of work a participant produces. Depending on the track, that means deployed websites, managed ad campaigns and their reports, reconciled sets of books, resolved help-desk tickets, or completed administrative workflows, reviewed periodically by the track's educator against the skill areas the program is meant to build. This is closer to how a manager evaluates an employee's output than to a written exam. Readiness to move toward job placement is a judgment call made jointly by the educator and mentor, based on whether the participant's portfolio and interview readiness would hold up with an employer or client, not a fixed test score.

What happens after graduation

After completing a track, a graduate has two main paths and one optional one. The first is job placement support, in which staff and mentors help identify openings, prepare application materials, and make direct introductions to employers who are open to hiring an Azgari Foundation graduate. The second is continued freelance or client work with mentor support through the first clients, which is most common in the marketing and web tracks. The optional path, for a few graduates with a track record, is building an independent practice. That is a minor path, not the program's aim. Enrollment does not guarantee a job, a client, or any specific income. Individual results vary with effort, market conditions, and personal circumstances. What the Foundation commits to is the training itself, the mentor relationship, and direct introductions.

One caveat, given where we are. Azgari Foundation received its IRS determination as a 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 41-2896092) effective December 1, 2025, and our first cohort began training in 2026. The Foundation will publish program outcomes once a full cohort has graduated, and we will not invent numbers in the meantime. What is described above is the model we built and are running, not a track record we are claiming.

Refer or get connected

The intake and referral form takes about ten minutes. Caseworkers, CASA volunteers, and PAL coordinators select "I am referring someone" and include the young person's name, age, and contact info. Young adults without a referring agency can submit the same form, and our team will help connect them with a partner organization.