From basic food basket to engineering at Oracle: how low-income young people got their 1st job

“Here we don’t give the fish, we teach them how to fish”. The proverb, so popular in Brazil, was unknown to young Arlete de Lira Sousa, 21, until last year. She heard it for the first time when she joined Instituto Proa, an Oscip (Civil Society Organization of Public Interest) in São Paulo that seeks to train low-income young people for the job market.

“I found it so profound, that I have been writing it down to this day,” says Arlete. “I really wanted to fish”, says the young woman, who twice had to drop out of school and, until the beginning of last year, before joining Proa, she saw no prospects for a professional future.

There is a group in Brazil that cannot celebrate the drop in the unemployment rate in the last year – which dropped four percentage points between the third quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2022, to 8.7%. It is that of young people between 18 and 24, whose unemployment rate remains in double digits, in the range of 19%, according to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).

This is one of the age groups with the highest turnover in companies: as they have no experience and earn little, young people are easily changed. The poorest are especially disadvantaged in this scenario: without going to college, a condition that would put them more easily in internship or trainee programs, they are left with vacancies that require lower qualifications, which are easier to discard.

Thanks to initiatives by Oscips such as Instituto Aliança, in Salvador, and Instituto Proa, programs are offered that go beyond professional training in areas such as technology or administration.

Division of the unemployed population in the country, by age group (in %)

Source: IBGE; June 2022 (latest data available broken down by age group)

Student thought the test to enter a multinational was ‘hazing’

The eldest daughter of a couple from Piauí who migrated to São Paulo, Arlete grew up in Capão Redondo, a suburb in the south of São Paulo. Her father was a bricklayer’s helper and her mother a day laborer.

Arlete had to leave school for the first time at the age of 13, to take care of her younger sisters while her parents worked. The second time was at age 15, when she faced an abusive relationship with a young man. Her parents had returned to Piauí.

“Two years later, my family returned to São Paulo and I went back to live with them. I was finally able to go back to school, even more eager to learn than before.”

After completing high school, he found out about the Proa programming course and decided to enroll. She loved technology.

Three months after starting the course, he received a call from the multinational technology company Oracle, a partner of Proa. The person suggested an online interview with an executive. Arlete could hardly believe it when, in the virtual conversation, the executive said that he had appreciated her curriculum (already increased with the help of Proa) and that he would like the young woman to indicate, by email, which higher level courses in technology she would like to attend.

Going to college was an unthinkable reality for someone who lived on a monthly allowance of R$80 from the city hall and received a basic food basket from religious institutions. By then, she was already married, but her husband, an audiovisual technician, was unemployed.

“I spent two days wondering if that was true, if it wasn’t a prank call. Why would he like my resume? And why would he want me to recommend colleges?”

When in doubt, Arlete bet: he did not limit himself to indicating the name of the courses. If Oracle’s specialty was databases, it would assemble a database on the country’s main courses in the technology area and the best educational institutions in the sector.

Gathered information on IT Management, Computer Engineering, Systems Analysis and Development and Data Science. He analyzed the curriculum of each one, researched the grades at the MEC (Ministry of Education), indicated the best institutions. Prepared an Excel document, prepared a report, placed the Oracle logo and sent it.

Three days later, the answer: “I liked what I saw”, said the executive. Then, an email asked her to send a copy of her documents. And the proposal to hire her as a sales engineer, with a salary of R$ 5,000, came next. Arlete had learned to fish.

Today she studies Computer Engineering at São Judas Tadeu University.

‘Young people with parents in the informal market do not think about college’

“Our first task is to empower these young people, who often reach adulthood without anyone ever having believed in them, they don’t think they are capable,” says Alini Dal Magro, executive director of Instituto Proa. “Then we deal with the life project. For the middle class, it is natural to leave high school and choose a profession. But for many of them, whose parents work informally, the corporate environment is a novelty.”

Proa was founded 15 years ago by members of the financial market, such as Susanna Lemann (wife of businessman Jorge Paulo Lemann, the richest man in the country), Marcelo Barbará (from Lanx Capital) and Florian Bartunek (from Constellation Asset). It serves 15,000 young people a year in 692 cities in five states (São Paulo, Rio, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and Pernambuco). As of 2023, it will serve 25,000 young people a year, including Paraná and Minas Gerais.

The goal is to employ at least 85% of young people within six months of completing the courses in programming and management. To enter, young people need to be between 17 and 22 years old, have studied in a public school and have up to a minimum wage of family income (R$ 1,212). The institute offers transportation, food, internet assistance and uniforms. Tablets or notebooks are loaned.

Founded 20 years ago, Instituto Aliança has already assisted around 800,000 young people and children in health and education programs, as well as families in the areas of human rights and income generation, in 13 Brazilian states and Peru. In the last two years, it has trained 2,000 young people in employability programs, of which 1,600 were hired through partnerships with companies such as Carrefour, Mercado Livre and Zurich Santander.

“It is not enough to give technical training to these young people, it is necessary to teach them soft skills”, says psychologist Maria Adenil Vieira, founder of Instituto Aliança, referring to behavioral and subjective skills. “Many arrive shy, without communicating properly. It is necessary to restore their self-confidence, help them overcome their fears and outline a project for the future.”

In the employability programs, young people aged between 18 and 24 are served, with complete secondary education and a family income of up to three minimum wages (R$ 3,636). Transport, food and tablet are offered. A programming training project has just been launched in partnership with Lenovo.

“The technology market is very lacking in good professionals, there is a lack of qualified labor. We want to transform the lives of these young people, through a key area for the country’s development”, says Alice Damasceno, Lenovo’s director of philanthropy for America Latin.

‘Quiet quitting’ questions ‘adult-centric’ way of working, says researcher

A partner of Aliança, the Carrefour group is the largest private employer in Brazil, with 150,000 employees. “Today we have 4,000 young apprentices and 41,500 employees between the ages of 18 and 25”, says Marinildes Queiroz, Carrefour’s culture and organizational development manager. “They are the ones who contribute to keeping our work environment increasingly diverse and inclusive.”

With 14 thousand employees in the country, Mercado Livre has 26% of the team between 18 and 25 years old. Last year, Redes para o Futuro, a program in partnership with Aliança, trained 460 young people in the states where the company’s main distribution centers are located.

“The retention level is 88%”, says Laura Motta, sustainability manager at Mercado Livre in Brazil. “The course accelerates hiring processes and brings more diversity, something essential for a technology company guided by innovation and inclusion.”

In the opinion of researcher Miriam Abramovay, coordinator of the Youth and Public Policy Area at Flacso (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences), companies need to pay attention to what young people want after the pandemic.

“The Quiet Quitting Movement [demissão silenciosa]in which young people contest productivity at any cost, is present in all social classes”, says she, sociologist and master in education.

“They want to enjoy work, not live to work, which challenges our adult-centric society, in which young people are uncomfortable because of the way they look, dress or talk,” he says. “But the day the youth is no longer contesting, I don’t know what will become of the world.”