The NextGen project was created in order to impact the community of low income young people in Brazil who need soft and hard skills of project management and leadership but could not access this knowledge because training and courses tend to be expensive, mainly in the beginning of one’s personal career.

Target Group

Young low income Brazilian professionals who want to kickstart their careers in project management and leadership, but either lack resources to invest in learning and improving these skills or do not know how to start.

Proposed Solution:

An online journey of content, including training in project management and leadership available, articles, contact with professionals from the area and discussion panels on current issues. The Global Shapers Brasilia Hub worked with the entire development of the latter, providing conversation with local experts about social and community problems. The Brasilia Hub’s goal was to bring experts from different areas in order to complement each other and enrich the discussion as well as to welcome the participants to ask questions directly to them and to play a role in these discussions and to suggest the following topics. It happened in three different moments, the Brasilia Hub brought discussions on three topics:

• Marketing Digitalization Trends and New Professions, held online on July 8th, 2021.


• Romanticization of Overwork and the Precarization of Working Conditions, held online on September 2nd, 2021.


• Youth, Financial Education and Retirement, held online on November 11th, 2021.

These topics counted with 5 panelists selected by the Shapers, except by the latter that counted with 3.

Hub Activities

• Plan the topics to be discussed based on the topics suggested by the participants and the relevance of these topics to the work life of young professionals from Brazil and the suggestions of every participants.


• Promote the event on social media.


• Align the topics and invite experts from all over Brazil and ensure that they understand the discussions and that they can complement each other during the discussion.


• Mediate the discussions and contact the participants in order to prepare the following topics.


• 
  Alignment with the PMI chapters so that these discussions would fit the learning journey and complement the other training sessions. 
  

Goals and Results:

The NextGen project delivered 60 hours of content for 415 young professionals from all the Brazilian states, in partnership with PMI (Project Management Institute) Chapters. The goal was to provide training and networking with professional project managers to young professionals who do not know how to develop their skills and enter the job market. The Global Shapers Brasilia Hub promoted 6 hours of content to discuss three topics related to career development and the Future of Work, inviting experts from all over Brazil and from different areas to enrich the discussions and introduce trending topics to the participants.

Currently, we aim to promote it this year on site and with the support of other Brazilian hubs.

Available Metrics:

The NextGen project engaged 13 experts from different areas to discuss with the participants. 80% of the participants were extremely satisfied with the discussions brought by Global Shapers and the remaining 20% were satisfied with it. In the first discussion, there were 300 participants subscribed; 433 in the second one and 235 in the third, totalizing 968 subscriptions in the three discussion panels.

We also promoted gamified quizzes in order to test if the participants were actually learning the topics during this online journey and to deliver the certificate and average rate of correct answer was 70%. In total, 21 people completed the entire NextGen journey from April to December.

In total 986 people were reached by the content related to the NextGen project in PMI chapters and Global Shapers Brasilia online media.

Impact Areas:

It aimed to focus on three of the Sustainable Development Goals:

SDG 4 - Education: we want to focus on the educational aspect in order to promote the importance of hard and soft skills for young people from Brazil who do not have access to training either because they are expensive or they are not aware of the options available.

SDG 8 - Promote the employability of youth and discuss the Future of Work and the impact of these trends in Brazilian society and their own reality.

SDG 17 - Look for partnerships from different sectors engaged with the Brazilian job market in order to bring discussions and find solutions for current problems for the entrance of young low income professionals in the Brazilian job market.