This aspect of The Promise Foundation's work is focused on work, occupation, and career development: themes that are fundamental to a wide range of human activities and relevant in some way across all cultures.  The manner in which career manifests itself is a complex phenomenon, influenced by a wide variety of factors.  All through its evolution large-scale factors, operating at the macro level—such as industrialization, modernization, colonization, Westernization and, today, globalization—have shaped and formed human orientations to work.  And today there are very few cultures and contexts (perhaps none) that have not been influenced by these forces in some way. 

Historically, in tandem with the Industrial Revolution, as new occupations emerged, the issue of matching people to jobs surfaced as a question that needed an urgent answer.  On the one hand, industry demanded workers with certain combinations of qualities, abilities and skills; on the other, the would-be worker needed guidance toward jobs for which he or she was most capable.  It was at this point in the evolution of work that career guidance emerged as a method to support the new industrial work order.  Accordingly, systems were developed whereby people could be matched for jobs on the basis of their traits, abilities, and talents.  

However, not all cultures and economies came directly under these influences.  In other societies, human engagement with work progressed as it had for centuries earlier.  Even today, all one has to do is to step a few miles outside the cities of economically developing countries to enter a world of work that is characterized by preindustrial features, where purpose of work is linked to securing basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter.  Career barely exists in these cultures and economies.  

It seems, therefore, that the manifestation of career can be seen in two broad contexts:  contexts to which career is indigenous and contexts where it is, in many respects, culturally alien.  In the former, the manifestation of career would be spontaneous and culturally congruent; in the latter, its manifestation could be the result of exigency induced by global transformations. Click here for a more detailed overview of the "manifestation of career".

Our work in the area of career guidance has been led by the fact that the notion of career is becoming more and more universal, as is the necessity of having to develop systems that would optimize individuals’ engagement with career development.  However, what it means, how it is manifested, and how the individual engages with career, can vary from one context to another.  In one setting, the focus of career guidance may be to help an individual discover whether he/she should take up law, business studies, or product design.  In another, it may be to help an individual gain contemporary skills to manage his/her traditional, rural occupation more efficiently.  

Given the reality that career now exists outside the contexts in which it was born, the challenge is to break new ground for cultures and economies to which career has not been indigenous.   This section describes The Promise Foundation’s efforts to develop methods to help the individual engage fruitfully with the world of work.