23 million young Latin
Americans are neither studying nor working and another 9.4 million are
unemployed in Latin America and the Caribbean. Of those who do manage to be in
the labor market, more than 30 million only find informal employment. These are
data from the International Labor Organization's Global Youth Employment Report
2020.
For the new generations to take advantage of the opportunities of well-paid employment, the young Argentine Francisco Domínguez has launched VinciU, the first online academy of digital careers for teenagers. Dominguez seeks to train talent at an early age so that when they finish school they can work in the technology industry, even without going through a university; an option that is not accessible to many young people. For this democratization of education and technological employment, Domíguez has been selected by MIT Technology Review in Spanish as one of the 35 winners of Innovators under 35 Latin America 2022.
One of those careers offered by VinciU is 3D modeling, where Dominguez found the inspiration for the project. Launching a 3D printer factory, the young man realized it was a great tool to educate and decided to give children and teenagers access to these tools. Early exposure to technologies helps to discover and guide vocations among the youngest.
Through pre-recorded tutorials, online reinforcement classes and a gamified structure, the creator of VinciU seeks to provide access to the best paying jobs in the digital world for the less favored classes before they reach higher technical education. Dominguez explains: "We want them to have access to the opportunities of the digital labor market from the grassroots. The initial precarious jobs condition them for life and have repercussions on the development of the entire region."
Although its focus is on adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17, the VinciU platform also teaches children soft skills such as teamwork and communication. Its pedagogy focuses on self-learning and peer-to-peer teaching with group dynamics. For Domínguez, VinciU is "another educational complement that opens the door to children, like private language classes.
Youth is not the only target of this venture. Dominguez is the oldest of all the workers in a start-up that already educates more than 400 children. He also works with schools and governments. His goal is to internationalize throughout the region and that in less than 10 years 10 million children and adolescents learn about technology and formalize a profitable profession.
