Attending a university and working with technology was not in the plans of Jefferson Lima, 38 years old. However, he ended up conquering all of this. Born and raised in the community of Cachoeira, in the north of São Paulo, Jefferson was the first in his family to be approved at university. “Education is the tool that allows me to look at a universe that is very different from the bare walls in the hood where I grew up”, he says.
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His reality was transformed through education. Currently, Jefferson's mission is to transform young people from the periphery, who have stories that are very similar to his. In 2018, he created Prototipando a Quebrada (PAQ), a technology education project for those young people who do not have financial conditions in Greater Florianópolis, where he currently lives.
The program has been in existence for three years. However, the relationship that was built between the educator and the world of technology began much earlier. Even before completing his graduation and master's degree in History, he felt the desire to delve deeper into this world and took a technical course in Informatics at the age of 15. After he finished his master's degree, he ended up teaching robotics at a school on the outskirts of Florianópolis. “The workshops delighted the students,” he recalled. And so, he ended up making the decision to share his knowledge.
He was presented with a robotics kit and had the idea of creating a technology workshop that teaches young people in Florianópolis communities, the PAQ. With the help of an old PC, he taught 40 students. “Although the experience was nice, I discovered that, in fact, the students were playing at learning. The 5-person kit was being shared with 40,” he said. Jefferson ended up taking a break from the workshops and completely restructured the program and, through public notices of technology companies and partnerships with institutions, his project ended up serving more than 150 students in 2021.
The project, which began with robotics classes, ended up turning into courses aimed at bringing peripheral youth closer to the technology market. “We realized that teenagers learned programming, but didn't go to work in the area”, laments Jefferson. “The job market absorbed the apprentice to work in a trade. The loser was the technology sector,'' she added.
There are no reasons why young people with qualifications cannot work in the sector, since in Florianópolis there are plenty of vacancies in the technology sector. The capital of Santa Catarina ended up becoming known in recent years as the “Brazilian Silicon Island”. According to data from the Santa Catarina Association of Technology (ACATE), the municipality brings together 4,000 technology companies that have annual revenues of R$ 10 billion.
And, through Prototyping the Quebrada, since last year, three young people from the project have already been hired with a formal contract. In addition, five more vacancies will be filled in a programming company.
Bruno Capistrano, 17, dreamed of getting a job at a startup. “I thought about working in a company where I could grow and learn quickly. But I never thought they would hire an apprentice,” he said.
A few months ago, he ended up fulfilling his dream and secured a formal job. Bruno is currently an administrative assistant at an artificial intelligence startup, and in his spare time he studies programming.
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