Thiago Euzébio is one of the masters of Cruzeiro’s american football team, champion of Minas Gerais in 2022. The athlete’s routine includes heavy training, in addition to work and study. At the age of 20, Thiago teaches English classes to low-income people and graduated from the heavy machinery mechanics course at Senai. But it was not always so. Until 2019, he says he was arrested several times, as he practiced petty crimes and was involved in drug trafficking..

In 2020, his story was transformed through the Discover project (Minas Gerais Learning Incentive Program), when he fulfilled socio-educational measures and was referred to the Ramacrisna. In the organization, he studied photography, made friends, found acceptance and inspiration. “Opportunity knocked on my door and I grabbed it very hard. I was reborn, I learned things I will never forget. The Discover project and the Ramacrisna got me out of the wrong life and showed me that I could have a happy future,” he says.

Since 2020, the Discover project has been carried out at the Ramacrisna unit in Belo Horizonte. In all, the project has already benefited 55 young people. Now the Discover project lands in Betim and 30 other vulnerable teenagers will also have the opportunity for Thiago Euzébio to change the course of their lives. Assisted by the Betim City Hall, through the Social Assistance Secretariat (Semas), they will benefit from the Ramacrisna Digital Inclusion Bootcamp, which will be launched this Friday (11).

The Digital Inclusion Bootcamp, funded by the Public Ministry of Labor, is part of the Minas Gerais Learning Incentive Program, Discover.

Adolescents, aged between 14 and 21, will be trained through the development of a basic computer and programming course using the bootcamp methodology, which allows them to improve the skills and competences of the participants, allowing them to build and launch websites and applications at a professional level, in addition to providing technological inclusion and preparing them for the job market.

The vacancies were intended for students selected by the socio-educational measures service of Semas and also by the Protection and Specialized Assistance to Families and Individuals service (Paefi); the Specialized Reference Centers for Social Assistance (Creas); the Social Assistance Reference Centers (Cras) and shelter units. The young people will be accompanied throughout the course by technicians from Semas.

Discover Project

Launched in 2019, Discover is the result of an inter-institutional cooperation formed by 11 federal, state and municipal bodies and institutions. The action, instituted in 2019, is led by the Public Ministry of Labor and the Public Ministry of Minas Gerais. The program supports the offer of protected job vacancies to young people in situations of social vulnerability, especially those who are in socio-educational measures, who are in institutional shelter or who have been rescued from child labor.

About the Instituto Ramacrisna

The Institute was founded in 1959 by journalist Arlindo Corrêa da Silva, and has already impacted the lives of almost 2 million people in 13 cities in Greater BH in the last 63 years. Located in Betim/MG, Ramacrisna is considered a reference in self-sustainability projects. The Institute also has a partnership with Fundação Dom Cabral since 2008, with the aim of training managers and implementing management tools to improve internal processes.

This year, it won international recognition for the first time: Thedotgood (formerly NGO Advisor) was ranked 178th in the global ranking and 12th in the Brazilian ranking, in addition to the 2022 Brazil ODS Strategy Award, which recognizes and values ​​practices aligned with the SDGs, developed by organizations affiliated to the SDG Strategy Network. In the last six years, Ramacrisna was among the 100 best NGOs in Brazil, according to the Best NGOs Award. . In 2018 it was elected the best Social Assistance Organization in the country and in 2020 it received the Transparent NGO seal.