Google announces new engineering center, grants and partnerships with newspapers and NGOs in Brazil

Google will expand engineering operations in Brazil, offer 500,000 training grants and expand partnerships with NGOs and news outlets. These were the highlights of the Google for Brazil event, held this Tuesday (14th) in São Paulo.

The company announced a partnership with the IPT (Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas), located at Cidade Universitária da USP, in São Paulo, with the aim of expanding technical operations in Brazil.

The São Paulo engineering center will be installed at the IPT Open Experience, the institute’s innovation complex, and will house up to 400 professionals from different areas, with a focus on privacy and digital security. The opening is scheduled for 2024. The hiring started in January of this year.

Another initiative announced by big tech is the expansion of the Startups Lab to accelerate up to 16 journalistic companies with innovative business models. The Local Lab, in turn, will support up to one hundred small and medium-sized vehicles with training for technical, strategic and economic development.

Google also announced that Maps will point out food distribution spots and lonely kitchens. The feature is a partnership between the company and the NGO Ação da Cidadania and the Center of Excellence against Hunger of the UN World Food Program.

Starting this Tuesday (14), the app will have categories such as “solidarity kitchen” and “food bank” alongside “cafes”, “bars” and “restaurants”.

Google’s idea is to create a solidarity network to help people in situations of social vulnerability. The mapping of the kitchens will be carried out on an ongoing basis and aims to create the largest digital database of its kind in the country.

According to a study published last week by the Penssam Network (Brazilian Network for Research in Food and Nutrition Sovereignty and Security), 33.1 million people are hungry in Brazil. In addition, the survey showed that 6 out of 10 Brazilians live with some degree of food insecurity.

The philanthropic arm Google.org will donate R$ 10 million to the Instituto Rede Mulher Empreendedora. The objective is to train 200,000 women through the Ela Pode program. The company will also expand the partnership with Fundação Dorina Nowill, which promotes the social inclusion of people with visual impairments, to Goiânia, Piauí and Tocantins.

Of the 1 million Google Professional Certificates scholarships announced for Latin America last Thursday (9), half will be from Brazil. Starting this Tuesday, 30,000 scholarships will begin to be distributed to young people in the network of the Company-School Integration Center (Ciee). Priority will be given to people of color, LGBTQIA+, women and the low-income population.