Free to participants, start to finish

How CCA works

What happens from the day someone is sponsored through their search for a technical job, and what donors pay for along the way.

The short version

A participant at CCA gets what a new hire in a well-run IT department gets: the equipment to do the job, an account with access that fits their role, and people to go to with questions. The difference is that nobody has hired them yet, and donors cover the cost.

1. Someone vouches for you

   A current participant sponsors you, or our board approves you directly.

2. You enroll

   An online form, then an onboarding checklist that gets your account ready.

3. Your equipment arrives

   We ship what you need with tracking, and send a prepaid label when it is time to return it.

4. You get access

   Accounts on systems CCA runs every day, limited to what your role needs, with activity logged.

5. You learn and practice

   Online courses for the concepts, real systems to apply them on, and CCA staff to help when you are stuck.

6. You work toward certification

   When you are ready to sit an exam, CCA can pay the fee.

7. You look for work

   Staff help with resumes, applications, interviews and job offers.

8. We record what changed

   Certifications, new jobs, promotions, pay and degrees, so we can report what changed for participants.

Sponsorship and enrollment

Nobody gets access to CCA systems without someone vouching for them.

A current participant can sponsor you, which tells us they expect you to treat shared infrastructure with care. If you do not know anyone at CCA, you can ask our board to approve you instead.

We ask for this because the systems are real. A mistake on a firewall here can take a working service offline, and the personal data on our systems belongs to real people. Sponsorship means someone who knows you has vouched for you before you get that kind of access.

You apply online, which takes about 10 minutes, and a person at CCA reads every application, usually within 3 business days. Along with your name and contact details, CCA asks a few optional questions, such as your highest level of education, whether you were the first in your family to go to college, and how many technical certifications you already hold. You can skip any of them. Read how to apply.

After you enroll, an onboarding checklist takes you through the rest:

• finishing your profile and confirming your contact details
• receiving your first access roles
• signing the documents every participant signs, including our acceptable use and security policies
• enrolling in your first course

Equipment, shipped both ways

If you do not have a suitable computer, or your track calls for hardware you do not own, you request it from the equipment catalog in the participant portal. Some items have a limit per person. CCA staff fill the request and ship it with tracking, and you get an email with the tracking link.

When you no longer need something, we send you a prepaid label for the return and track the package until it reaches us. While a device is with you, our records show it by serial number, along with who has it and where it is.

Read how the equipment lending library works

Access to real systems

Participants work on systems CCA runs every day, not on copies built for practice.

Access is handled the way a careful company handles it. Each service has roles, each role carries specific permissions, and you are given the roles your work requires.

Activity on our platform is logged. That includes every sign-in, failed sign-ins too, along with permission checks, views of personal information, data exports and every change, which is recorded with its values before and after. When something breaks, we can see what happened and who did it. Working that way from the first day is part of the training.

Depending on the track, the systems participants work on include:

• the routers, switches and firewalls in our own datacenter
• network equipment at participants’ own locations, joined to the rest of CCA by encrypted site-to-site links
• the hypervisors that run CCA’s servers, and the virtual machines and workspaces assigned to participants
• the identity platform that lets people sign in to CCA services with one account
• the security monitoring platform that gathers logs and alerts from across the organization

See what each track covers

Courses, practice and people to ask

Coursework runs on CCA’s own learning platform. Each course is made up of video and written lessons, grouped into modules, and your progress is saved as you go. Some courses set a due date.

The courses explain the concepts. The systems are where you use them, on work that has to be done properly because other people depend on it.

A participant can be assigned a field director: a member of CCA staff who is their main point of contact. Requests from a participant with a field director go straight to that person, and the rest go to a shared queue that staff work through. Participants can book time with staff by video or phone, whether for a check-in, help getting set up, a career conversation or a problem they are stuck on.

Staff also help with what gets in the way of training. That can mean working out what a participant needs, or pointing them to resources and benefits they may qualify for.

Certification

A certification is how an employer checks that someone knows what they say they know, so each track works toward recognized industry certifications. When a participant is ready to sit an exam, CCA can pay the fee. A gift of $500 pays for one attempt.

We record every certification a participant earns: who issued it, when it was earned, when it expires, whether CCA paid for the exam, and a link to verify it wherever the issuer offers one. That record lets us report on certifications without estimating.

Help finding work

Training pays off when it leads to a job, so CCA staff help with the parts of a job search that tend to stop people:

• drafting a resume, or rewriting one that is not getting replies
• tailoring a cover letter to a particular job
• reviewing professional profiles and applications before they go out
• preparing for interviews
• planning a career path, and working out how to approach people already in the field
• reviewing a job offer, including the pay
• coaching once you have started, so the new job lasts

Participants who want to go back to school can get help choosing a program and with scholarship and school applications.

What we record, and why

We record the outcomes that show whether someone’s situation has changed: certifications earned, new jobs and promotions, changes in pay, and degrees completed. We also record the help each participant received, from interview coaching to equipment, so our reports show the support alongside the results.

Donors reasonably want to know what their money is doing. These records are how we answer.

See our impact

When a participant leaves

When someone stops taking part, their access is removed and we send a prepaid label for any borrowed equipment. Their records stay, so the certifications, jobs and history they built at CCA are not lost.

Common questions

Does any of this cost participants anything?

No. CCA does not charge participants for any of its services. Donors pay for the equipment, the shipping, the systems, the courses and the career support, and CCA can cover certification exam fees as well. The exceptions are narrow: for example, a participant can be asked to pay the cost of replacing borrowed equipment they lost or damaged through carelessness.

Do I need technical experience to enroll?

No. You need a sponsor or board approval, a computer and a reliable internet connection, and a commitment to using shared systems responsibly. If you do not have a suitable computer, we can lend you one.

Can I take part from home?

Yes. Courses are online, equipment is shipped to you, and you can talk to staff by video or phone. Participants are working on CCA systems from more than 10 countries.

Who can see my personal information?

Access to personal information is limited by role. Every time someone views it on our platform, the view is logged with who looked and when.

Pay for the next participant’s year

$5,000 covers one participant for a full year. Smaller gifts pay for a piece of it: $25 provides cloud access, and $500 pays for an exam attempt.