The Ceibal Plan launched this Friday 22 the 2019 generation of courses for young people to program. The event was attended by the President of Ceibal, Miguel Brechner; the Minister of Labor, Ernesto Murro; the Undersecretary of Education, Edith Moraes, and the director of the National Institute of Employment and Vocational Training (Inefop), Eduardo Pereyra. The program aims at training and job placement of young people in the area of information technologies, with programming and testing courses with the support of the Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technologies (CUTI), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB-LAB), Inefop and the main companies in the sector.
In this edition, to encourage the inclusion of women in a market with very little female presence, Jóvenes a Programar invited women to participate; in total, more than 5,000 women signed up, of which 700 between 18 and 30 years old will participate. In less than a year, students learn one of the most demanded programming languages in the industry and get the first tools to work in the technology sector.
"It's fascinating to see the venue full of women, people lining up to get in. This is the third year we are doing Youth to Program and in 2019 we decided to make it women only. The result shows that there are a lot of girls very interested in this course and getting into the world of technology. For us there was a must. Somehow, we don't know why, in previous generations we started with a reasonable gender parity and then it was distorted, that's why this decision," said Miguel Brechner.
The head of Ceibal believes it is essential that women are integrated into the world of technology, as well as science. "We will have to experiment to achieve it," he said. In addition to the technical aspect, which includes everything related to programming, English teaching and what is known as 'soft skills', which involves the relationship between people in the workplace, are added. "It's a hybrid of those three things. When they finish, they are programmers and can work in the industry, which has been absorbing many people from these cohorts," he said.
The courses are free of charge and do not require previous knowledge. The classes are taught by representatives of the most important technology companies in Uruguay and study materials are provided, including a computer, which is loaned to those who need it. In the first two editions of the program (2017 and 2018), 1,500 students graduated.
Minister Murro expressed his satisfaction that hundreds of young women from different parts of the country are joining this proposal. "Those of us who are old, seeing this room full, get excited again and reaffirm our love for young people who want to do things in Uruguay," he said. The hierarch praised the functioning of the program and celebrated the focus on women. He understands that all this is part of the "new Inefop", an institute that in four years multiplied by six the trainings and reached 130,000 in 2018.
"It is also part of what is being done in the schools with English, the growth of the Technological University (UTEC) in the interior of the country and the doubling of UTU's enrollment. We are all preparing ourselves for the work of now and the future. It is also part of the new Youth Employment Law in force, to which many companies are adhering," added the minister.
Source: Montevideo Portal
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