education creates new paths for young people

When she finished high school, in 2018, Maria Eduarda Xavier Silva was full of doubts about what to do from then on in terms of work and career. Today, at the age of 21, she has her own business, is studying Publicity and Propaganda and doing an internship in the area. The watershed for her, who lives in Belo Horizonte, was the training course at the Sebrae Minas Youth Entrepreneurship Center (NEJ), a project aimed at public school students carried out in partnership with city halls and local managers.

Offered in 14 centers in Minas Gerais and one in the Federal District, NEJ is one of the initiatives present in municipalities that stood out in promoting entrepreneurship in the last decade.

A unique survey of People’s Gazette, based on the Annual Social Information Report (Rais), indicates where employment in small businesses grew the most between 2011 and 2021 in each of the five major regions of the country. The ranking considers formal jobs in microenterprises – establishments with up to nine employees, in the areas of commerce and services, or up to 19 employees, in the case of industry.

The good practices adopted by the municipalities that stood out in the generation of jobs will be counted as of today in the series “Where to undertake has time”.

At Southeast regionthe subject of this first report, the municipality that most increased employment was Nova Lima (MG), with 97,000 inhabitants, where the number of formal employees in microenterprises increased by 59%, from 4,822 in 2011 to 7,661 in 2021, according to Rais.

Next comes Lagoa Santa (MG), with 66,000 residents, where the total number of formally employed persons increased by 53%, from 2,295 to 3,503. The two ranking leaders are part of the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, about 60 kilometers apart, and benefit from the favorable environment for small companies in the region.

Where employment grew the most in microenterprises in the Southeast between 2011 and 2021 (source: Rais/MTE and IBGE):

Among the actions to promote entrepreneurship, the NEJ is a project that depends directly on the interest of city halls or local leaders. “The investment comes from the municipality or other entities that need to provide teachers, a place for the course. Sebrae Minas licenses the course, which is a social project aimed at public school students,” explains Karinne Mendes, director of the Management School at Sebrae Minas. In Nova Lima, for example, the city hall, Senai and the Industry Federation of Minas Gerais (Fiemg) came together to launch the NEJ in 2019.

Karinne points out that NEJ is not just a course to start a business. “It is something much broader, which will help young people to undertake in all areas of their lives. The idea is to train an enterprising citizen who transforms himself, who is prepared for the challenges of the job market,” she says.

This is a free technical course in Business Administration with an emphasis on Business Management, lasting 800 hours over the course of one year. To join, you must be between 16 and 24 years old, be studying or have completed the third year in the public network and go through a selection process. Through the project methodology, the selected young people put the whole theory into practice: they know and follow the routine of companies and entrepreneurs, simulate the operation of an establishment with stock and cash flow and set up a business model.

This type of training is uncommon in the country. From a list of 54 countries, Brazil is only 50th in terms of the presence of entrepreneurship teaching in schools, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). This is because the first contact with entrepreneurship occurs mainly in private schools, where only 15% of Brazilian children and young people attend. The challenge is to take it to the remaining 85%, which are on the public network.

“With administration and entrepreneurship we can create and reinvent”, says student and entrepreneur

For student and entrepreneur Maria Eduarda, the technical course at NEJ allowed a planned transition to college. “In my third year of high school, I didn’t know what career to pursue, I couldn’t identify with anything in the curriculum. The NEJ was a watershed. I took subjects like Law and Marketing and today I’m studying Advertising. A lot of those choices were because of NEJ. We learn that with administration and entrepreneurship we can create and reinvent a lot of things”, she says.

The young woman enrolled in the course at the encouragement of her mother and an uncle, who taught at the center and praised the methodology. As soon as she graduated, in 2020, she had to face professional challenges: during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, opportunities to get her first job were rare. Maria Eduarda then dedicated herself to putting what she had learned into practice and launched her own brand: É de Preto.

“It’s also a social movement in which we work with clothes and accessories to boost the income of young people in Belo Horizonte. We make blouses, ecobags, mugs, with the aim of rescuing black fashion and culture,” she says.

The director of Escola do Sebrae says that entrepreneurial training generates many stories of personal development. “What we see is that these NEJ students, who previously did not see the possibility of going to higher education, changed their mindset [mentalidade] and started to plan it”, says Karinne.

“Within a municipality, this paradigm shift has a very important impact, as there will be professionals who are better prepared for the job market, who get more robust vacancies”, he says.

According to her, the original concept of the school, idealized by Stefan Salej, was to train “apprehenders”, with their minds open to the world. “This raises the young person’s self-esteem, who often comes from a more complicated situation and realizes that he can grow, that he can change the reality of his family”, she observes.

Even young people who do not have an entrepreneurial profile find opportunities to prosper in micro-enterprises. According to a technical report released by Sebrae in April 2023, micro and small companies (MSEs) absorb more labor for up to 24 years. In the Southeast, for example, young people in this age group account for 17.9% of those employed in MSEs. Among medium and large companies (MGEs), the proportion drops to 15.7%.

Profile of the mayor affects the economic growth of a municipality

“When the mayor already has an entrepreneurial bias, it is easier to fight unemployment within the municipality. He has a vision of income generation and how the economy can turn around”, observes business consultant Neto de Paula, who acts as a mentor at Inovativa, an acceleration, connection and training hub for Brazilian startups, among other actions focused on entrepreneurship.

According to him, when the mayor has this profile, he ends up nominating entrepreneurial people for key positions in the municipal administration, which generates a virtuous circle of partnerships and initiatives that favor economic growth, even in small towns.

“In municipalities where there is mobilization by the Employment and Income departments, for example, along with social assistance, employability is higher”, says De Paula, who has 20 years of experience in consulting municipalities.

He recognizes that in many cases the city hall does not have the structure to carry out the projects, but he recalls that it is possible to join with Sebrae, with Sesi or other entities of the S System to manage to promote successful companies.

In larger municipalities, the possibility of granting tax exemptions, the location and the provision of adequate infrastructure are assets to increase the number of vacancies. Among the most populous cities in the Southeast, Itaquaquecetuba (SP), with 379,000 inhabitants, stood out in the generation of jobs in microenterprises, with a 31% growth in the number of formal jobs, from 6,390 to 8,372. Contiguous to the city of São Paulo, the municipality has organic growth generated by the conurbation of the metropolis.

This is the first report in the series. Where to undertakewhich shows good practices in municipalities where employment in microenterprises has grown the most in the last decade.