OSE Apprenticeship Recruiting Strategy

We are designing a method for recruiting 24 candidates to the OSE Apprenticeship over a short period of 3 months. Normally, recruiting for a significant program may take much longer, so to recruit successfully on a much shorter scale, we are taking the following steps to widen reach. This has costs of approximately $250k involved with this program, but can be crowdfunded in many ways as the list implie:

Tuition Funding

1. Scholarships - Offering full scholarships to exceptional candidates. Each year's tuition costs approximately $15k, so this can take significant funding. If the organizer is interested in an aggressive campaign, this can cost $60k per student. Perhaps a reasonable option is providing full tuition for 4 exceptional candidates.
2. Promote Sponsorships for Tuition - There are numerous entrepreneurs that would love to fund a young person to transform their community or local area.
3. Microloans - Promoting 0% Kiva Microloans to entrepreneurs, up to $15k and 3 year term - meaning apprenticeship participants can pay as they go. This is just another way for students to pay their way.
4. Scholarship Fund - OSE sets up a crowdsourced tuition fund - chip in to support 50% tuition for one (or more) candidates

Promotion

1. College Fairs - get feedback from students - what do they like? Is the response positive, or is the college-track audience a dud?
2. Home Schoolers, LaunchPad
3. Virtual college fairs - National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) is hosting a Virtual College Fair on Sunday, April 27, 2025, from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM (ET). Signup [1]

Broadening Audience

1. Start locally. Promote to the local high school and area. Start making noise in local tech school fairs.
2. Tech School Track. Diversify to include a 'Tech School' option as opposed to 'save the world option' - but without eliminating the lifelong learning aspect. Include a 'Tech School Track'
3. Veterans Track. Develop programs for veterans. OSE is already partly connected, and this is a great opportunity for additional funding - such as GI Bill for OJT (on-job training), VRRAP, VR&E, Non-paid Work Experience Training, etc..
4. Promote an international audience. While the program can accept candidates globally. F1 visas allow 20 hours of work-study, which fits our program well. While challenging to obtain, this is an option. Canada and Bermuda are exempt [2]. T