Can young people support businesses and communities to become better places? And how is it possible to make room for youth to become protagonists of this transformation? With these questions in mind, Norberto Odebrecht Foundation promoted last Friday (12), another edition of Impact Dialogues, a live broadcast program aimed at members of Novonor Group and people interested in issues that generate social impact. The event, which coincided with the global celebration of Youth Day, August 12th, debated the youth protagonism inside and outside companies with guests with years of personal and professional experience in the subject and more than 170 spectators.
With the slogan ‘Young protagonists, young entrepreneurs’, the edition brought together Bruna Fonseca Augusto, People Management manager at Ocyan; Adélcio Sousa, Partnership coordinator at the Norberto Odebrecht Foundation; and Luanda Santos, Risk and Insurance analyst at Horiens Risk Advisors, who also acted as mediator.
Watch the complete event (in Portuguese) by clicking here!
The first speaker to share her vision on the subject, Bruna Fonseca presented Ocyan’s projects to attract and engage young talent. “We have a trail of ‘youth programs,’ ranging from young apprentice and intern to practitioner and trainee. With them, this young man creates a career in which he can be a protagonist. And this is intrinsically aligned to our way of acting, to Our Culture, because we are inside a Group that values this youth”, she said.
To guarantee more equality and diversity in the selection of these talents, the company carried out a blind recruiting program: besides the non-use of cameras at the moment of the interview, the interviewers were trained to avoid personal questions that could give rise to unconscious biases. “We need to focus much more on competencies than on personal issues. This contributes to a mix of generations, which I would say is an asset for companies,” she opined.
Youth Empowerment
Adélcio Menezes, Partnership coordinator at the Norberto Odebrecht Foundation, also addressed the relevance of empowering the younger generation to relate to other generations. According to him, this is one of the goals of the Casas Familiares, rural schools that are partners of the Foundation’s Social Program. “We have families that have been farming for a long time, and suddenly 14- to 16-year-olds are bringing new techniques, more refined techniques, to their parents. It is a challenge. But the Casas work with a contextualized education, which brings the families into the educational process, and fosters this transfer of knowledge”, he explained.
And this empowerment is not restricted to the organization’s activities in the Southern Bahia Lowlands: in his speech, Adélcio also announced implementation of Na Onda do Bem, Ocyan’s volunteer program in partnership with the Foundation, which will connect the company’s talents with young people benefited by the Casas Familiares. “The initiative will feature mentors and mentees, who will be supported in their careers and life projects in about six meetings. Even because that’s what volunteering is, it’s donating time to make another grow”, he said.
Intersectionality
Considering the differences in context and opportunities of each young person is key to giving the ideal tools for youth protagonism. This is what Luanda Santos, Risk and Insurance analyst at Horiens, speaker and mediator of the third edition of the Impact Dialogues, argued. “In the company, we understood that we needed to take actions to give back to society and to put our values into practice. And I was able to lead Horiens’ first affirmative stadium program, created for black women, and I can say that these young women are already changing the company’s outlook, already opening our field of vision to other issues,” she commented.
As a black woman, Luanda also shared the importance of companies and organizations acting actively to combat inequalities by looking at youth. “Data from the World Economic Forum says that for parity to be achieved between people who identify with the female and male gender, in financial terms, it will be 267 years. It will take 120 years for blacks and whites in Brazil to have access to the same opportunities, according to the Guide for the Promotion of Racial Equality. We do not have this time. And neither will our children, the other generations,” he opined.
