A collaborative work model to continue growing

We have experienced a unique moment that will undoubtedly be one of the great milestones of the Forge Foundation. Together with Instituto Aliança do Brasil, two free job training programs were launched in Sao Paulo, Pernambuco and Salvador de Bahia for young people between the ages of 17 and 24 who are looking for their first job.

“The alliance between the Aliança Institute and the Forge Foundation has been essential for the development of the employability area of ​​our organization. Our thanks to the partners of the Forge Foundation. We look forward to new projects, through which we join efforts in favor of youth employability”, commented Maria Adenil Vieira, Director of the Aliança Institute.

Routes and Crossings is a program to develop socio-emotional and socio-labour skills, funded by the Z Zurich Foundation, and Tu Futuro AWS/reStart, a program to learn Cloud Computing, expanding our regional alliance with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

An interesting and rewarding experience because we were able to build mixed teams, implement a collaborative work dynamic, operate in a new language, and follow up with our multi-language management platform.

“A great joy to work together with common purposes, sharing the best of each organization at the service of young people in Brazil.”, expressed Rodrigo Kon Executive Director of the Forge Foundation.

We continue to break down barriers to reach more young people who need and want to work. We are less and less limited by where they live and less by what language they speak.

Quality information to better understand the problem of youth employment

The Forge Foundation launched the first Youth Employment Observatory with the aim of generating quality information with a regional scope that allows understanding the youth employment problem through different studies.

The first was developed in conjunction with ZIGLA, a consulting firm specializing in the generation of evidence for the solution of social problems in Latin America, and its objective was to monitor the labor demand for EntryLevel positions for young people. For this, the web scraping technique was used to analyze more than 88,000 searches on digital employment platforms in seven countries of the region. It was undoubtedly the first step in a very positive experience in the use of new technologies to understand and intervene in the issue of youth employment.

The second study was carried out in conjunction with the Espacio Público study center, and sought to give visibility to the perspectives and feelings of thousands of young people who are looking for their first formal job. The general objective of the study was to describe and understand their expectations regarding the labor market, considering their educational-labor trajectories and their future employability projections.

We believe that it is necessary to listen to their voices in order to generate proposals to support job placement that are effective, that respond to specific needs and that make it possible to transform the deep social inequalities that the region is experiencing.

“We are interested in learning more about the labor demand to generate more and better meetings between young people who want to join the labor market and companies that require talent. We want to contribute to improving recruitment policies for young people looking for their first jobs”, commented Rodrigo Kon, Regional Executive Director of the Forge Foundation.

Finland 2022 experience: recognize, value and reward teaching work

Day by day, we are in contact with thousands of teachers in the region and that is why we understand the deep challenges of working in increasingly complex contexts, the need to innovate in the use of new methodologies and implement innovative tools.

Based on this problem and with the purpose of scaling our reach with the youth of Latin America, we have developed various teacher training programs such as "Tu mirada Transforma" or "Tu pasión Inspira", which provide them with new tools and resources to impact their students and build a transformative classroom experience.

In 2022, we launched the Teachers that Transform Latin America Contest, to recognize teachers who have completed our programs and who have also implemented the best pedagogical initiatives with their students.

Five teachers from Chile, Peru, Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay were awarded and had the opportunity to travel to Helsinki, Finland, and see first-hand one of the educational systems referenced in the world of education, visiting educational establishments, talking with teachers and student organizations. Undoubtedly, they lived a unique and valuable experience that will allow them to innovate in education in each country.

“We approached many innovative ideas. I am very happy to know that when I return I can implement them in my classes for the good of my students”, commented Israel Guadarrama, the Mexican teacher who was part of the group that traveled to Finland.

Fostering cultural crossovers of knowledge and learning is essential to continue enriching the educational systems of the entire region.

We believe in teachers as agents of change, in the importance of their work and the key role so that every day more young people have a quality life and are protagonists in building a society more similar to the one we want.