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By Lex Dennis, Director of Lifelong Learning | Drucker Institute
If a genie popped out of your inbox and promised to help you upgrade your business by handing you thousands of dollars of valuable resources, would you turn the genie away?
Well, think of me as the Bendable genie—only without the fez, baggy pants and gold shoes.
You may have heard about Bendable, the South Bend Region’s lifelong learning system. Created by the nonprofit Drucker Institute, its aim is to allow residents of all ages and backgrounds to easily acquire new knowledge and skills through online courses as well as in-person learning opportunities.
 Lex Dennis | Director of Lifelong Learning | Drucker Institute |
For local businesses, this presents a tremendous opportunity to upskill and reskill your employees.
Some are already taking advantage of Bendable. One of the community outreach teams at Beacon Health System, for example, is using Bendable to access a series of online courses on enhancing emotional intelligence, sharpening communications skills, improving strategic management practices and more.
Like everything on Bendable, all of this learning is provided by top-flight education and training institutions, such as edX and Study.com.
Normally, the courses that the Beacon team is using would cost more than $750 per employee. But because Bendable is delivered through the St. Joseph County Public Library, all of this content is free—no small thing during the pandemic, when the economy is struggling and things are tight.
In fact, Bendable has used philanthropic dollars to pre-purchase for the people of the South Bend Region a generous supply of courses from our content partners. And, we’re saving seats for your employees.
Content Partners
Cell-Ed helps adult learners gain literacy, language, life and work skills through a highly personalized and intuitive mobile platform. It can help to engage your entry-level, front-line workers and make them more productive.
Penn Foster offers accredited degree, diploma and certificate programs, and is especially strong in the skilled trades. If you run a manufacturing operation, Penn Foster courses can help your workers get ready for Industry 4.0.
Study.com’s vast catalog includes courses on customer service and business management, and many of these count toward college credit.
edX, a venture of Harvard and MIT, has higher-end certificate courses in healthcare, IT, data science, logistics and much more. For your professional staff, edX can be a natural extension of your L&D department.
In addition to these and other online learning providers, Bendable is also collaborating with 10 great local partners, including IU South Bend, South Bend Code School and Goodwill.
Beyond the learning itself, Bendable also provides Beacon and other employers with a host of services. We help supervisors map their employees’ learning needs, develop with them an appropriate training plan, and support the team in meeting its learning goals. All of this is also free.
As Kimberly Reaves, Beacon’s director of community impact has said, Bendable “really benefits us in terms of our specific needs.”
Of course, we know that the best businesspeople care about a lot more than just business. Many of you are mothers or fathers, aspiring artists, chefs or lovers of languages. Whether it’s learning to build your own PC, better handle your personal finances, stay fit, help your kid with algebra homework or trace your family’s genealogy, Bendable has something for everyone.
In the end—even more than trying to help those in the South Bend Region advance in their jobs and careers—this is really what Bendable is all about: cultivating in the community the habit of continuous learning.
Visit bendable.com to see what the community knows.
If you’re interested in learning more about Bendable, including how your company can take advantage of its free content and services, please contact Lex Dennis at [email protected].
