Youth Fund

FundJuven aims to combat child labor and school evasion, by providing training and aid grants during basic education years.

FundJuven focuses on combating school dropout caused by child labor at a national and state level. A report from 06/12/2022 by the Brazilian newspaper Poder360 shows that at least 1.3 million adolescents aged 12 to 17 are in child labor, according to data from the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). School dropouts increased by 39.1% among Brazilian students aged between 14 and 29 during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the need to support their families, as shown by data from the platform Youth, Education and Work (Juventude, Educação e Trabalho). In addition to often contributing to a lifelong cycle of family poverty, child labor has other harmful effects that generate various aspects of vulnerability, including damage to health, exposure to violence, sexual harassment, intense physical exertion, accidents with machines and animals in the workplace, among others.

A web platform will be developed (MVP-Minimum Viable Product) where the teenager will be able to register using a mobile as well as a desktop. At the time of registration, the teenager will be asked for personal information and a brief description of the school situation and work status. It will also rely on the use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) to map areas with a higher concentration of child labor.

Public databases of the Federal Government will be used, such as the Transparancy Portal (Portal Transparência) to capture data for studies and a greater approach to the target public, and through these data to have a better effectiveness in combating the poles with the highest concentration of child labor.

In order for young people to participate in the program, they must be enrolled in regular education (elementary and high school) throughout the duration of the project. After being approved, the teenager will be offered training together with the receipt of a permanence scholarship throughout the process, and at the end of the program the teenager will be inserted into the formal job market.

The target audience is low-income teenagers aged 14 to 18 years old, public school students or those with a full scholarship at private institutions, coming from a peripheral, rural or marginalized context, where they have a high vulnerability status. For the black population, which is the majority in Brazil, child labor data show that black children represent 62.7% of the early labor force in the country. When it comes to child domestic work, this rate increases to 73.5%, with more than 94% being girls. When it comes to the LGBTQIAP+ community, data from the National Association of Gender Queer and Transsexuals (Antra) also show that, on average, people in this group are kicked out of their homes by their parents at age 13. Information from the Beyond the Rainbow/AfroReggae Project points out that only 0.02% are in university, 72% do not have a high school diploma and 56% have only elementary school education. We can also notice a high rate of child labor in underrepresented groups such as indigenous peoples and people with disabilities. The FundJuven project will work to combat outbreaks of child labor throughout Brazil, according to 2019 data from the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), the total population in a situation of child labor by region in Brazil are: North region 235,716 (thousand), Northeast Region 558,151 (thousand), South Region 246,034 (thousand), Midwest Region with 149,152 (thousand) and Southeast Region 579,420 (thousand) being the region with the greatest focus of child labor and where FundJuven will carry out most of its activities. FundJuven will map the regions with the greatest focus of child labor and will monitor and develop young people, reinserting them into the school environment, carrying out psychological and basic health monitoring, developing their creative side with recreational and cultural activities, training them through courses and mentorships, and inserting them into the job market with partner companies of the project.

I live in an occupation in Carapicuíba, I come from a peripheral and very violent context. I worked since I was very young to help support the house, I sold sweets at the fairs on Sundays where there was always great police repression, on Saturdays I sold sweets at the church door, during the week I studied in the morning and picked up cans in the afternoon at the mall near the school. When I was 12 years old, I was already working in civil construction and it was on a "normal" day on the job that I had a spinal injury that I carry with me until today, and even then I didn't have the time or support to treat myself. When I was 14, I used to get cardboard from my father and brother on weekdays, as soon as I got home from school. So with so many events in my life, I experienced firsthand what child labor is and its fatal causes in childhood and in the development of a child. I worked for a long time at the church near my house on a voluntary basis, collecting donations for vulnerable children, and I was able to accumulate experience and witness the change in the lives of those children and that motivated me. I am currently president of the student body at my university and I am a teacher in a popular course for low-income youth and I have been accumulating experience and making positive impacts on the life of my community.

A national survey was carried out using public databases — from the federal government such as the Transparency Portal (Portal Transparência) and surveys by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), reports from local communication networks and data from institutes that face the problem — in order to better understand the problem to be tackled. In order to minimize the effects of child labor on the lives of many children, I volunteered at the church near my house, which aimed to fight hunger, school dropout, and child labor in the Santa Úrsula village in the interior of Bahia. The entire scope and databases of the project were developed and designed using the target audience as a basis, adolescents aged 14 to 18 years. A survey was carried out with the aim of discovering centers of child labor in Brazil to better combat this illegal practice, and gather data on what age there is a higher rate of school dropout due to child labor and its harmful effects on the healthy development of adolescents.

The solution is the first of its kind in Brazil, which combines practicality with efficiency. Working so that violence against minority groups decreases significantly and the economy grows based on education. It is expected that the solution is easy to use, and can be used by the teenager themselves to register using a simple cell phone or a desktop computer. The implementation of the solution will help reduce violence and school dropout rates in the country, thus breaking the life cycle of poverty for thousands of families, having a positive social impact at the national level.

My initial goal is to impact the lives of 5,000 teenagers after launching the solution within a period of 1 year, using partnerships with government organizations and private sector investors. With the mapping of the problem spots, it will be possible to draw up an action plan, with awareness campaigns and help stations across the country. The platform to be created will be the bridge between vulnerable adolescents, schools, public agencies and private sector companies, thus having a better efficiency in combating the problem.

My project will use a web platform for registration, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology integrated into the platform, to map areas with a focus on child labor in order to study and cross-reference data for a better approach to the problem.

Currently my project is still under development, with an estimate to serve around 5,000 people from the launch next year.

• Investment: One of the challenges for the project to start is the lack of funds for implementing the necessary technology, hiring specialized labor and paying grants.

• Geographic barriers: In order to reach the target audience, we went through geographical difficulties due to the size of Brazil and the peripheral housing of the students.

The organization Força Meninas (Go Girls), in addition to investing in the project, accelerates its development through Mentorship of the Change the World as a Girl Award.

The target audience will be adolescents between 14 and 18 years of age, the services to be offered are: technical training, mentoring trail, psychological follow-up and insertion in regular education. The services offered to these teenagers helped them not to be victims of child labor, avoid illiteracy, sexual exploitation, damage to physical/psychological health and the perpetuation of the cycle of poverty.

Partnerships will be made with the public/private sectors and campaigns to collect funds and donations with the civil community, to raise funds, with the objective of developing and maintaining the project. For purposes of payment of the grants, maintenance of the platform and payment of employees.