- The platform will lead a selection for training initiatives for the tech sector, focusing on Brazilians from low-income communities;
- The training courses are expected to impact five million people – including iFood’s couriers, professionals, partner restaurants, and their family members ;
- But the leading delivery app in Brazil will not do it alone. It will partner with several organizations to offer tech resources to public schools – including new ways to improve remote education and teacher training to impact another five million people.
iFood, one of the main food delivery platforms in Latin America, announced on Friday a new commitment to impact more than 10 million people by 2025 through educational initiatives. Furthermore, the firm will offer mentoring opportunities in technology to boost employability for more than 25,000 people from low-income communities in Brazil.
According to Gustavo Vitti, Chief of People and Sustainability Officer at iFood, the firm’s broad education commitment is to train Brazilians for new jobs in the fast-emerging digital economy, especially where skills such as AI, data science, and coding are increasingly in demand.
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“With our new education and training initiatives, we also want to impact 10 million people, including five million students and teachers from the public school system and another five million who will have the opportunity to train for the job market, including deliverers and people who work for restaurants,” he told LABS, adding that “iFood is a possible and natural employer for these [25,000] newly trained people.”
Is iFood hiring? Vitti explains that the number of vacancies available at iFood depends on the company’s needs. “Because we believe in the strength of these people and in the quality of what will be taught, the more we can absorb into iFood, the better, but of course, due to the high demand of tech professionals, they will be able to have job opportunities in other tech companies.”
iFood’s goal is to insert thousands of people into the job market driven by a new digital economy and contribute with fresh talent to help fill an expected deficit of nearly 300,000 professionals needed in the expanding tech sector in Brazil. A research study by Brasscom in 2020 that forecasts Brazil will have the largest skills gap in Latin America by 2024.
What does it take to be mentored by iFood?
iFood says it will prioritize partners in its ecosystem, such as couriers and their families, besides people who work at the more than 200,000 restaurants registered on iFood’s platform.
As Vitti explained, iFood has been developing 10 pilot programs during the last six months. So far, it has invested more than BRL 2 million. “Our goal is to have more impact, and we are all committed to invest whatever is necessary to achieve these goals,” he added. iFood is also donating staff time to create, coordinate and find the best technology education and training programs to accelerate them with a special focus on including Brazil’s most vulnerable communities into the country-wide education initiative during the next five years.
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To do that, iFood has been in contact with more than 20 companies and institutions to define the new education initiatives slated to occur this year. “The criteria being used for the selection of pilots are based on what we believe will be key to the success for this initiative: proximity and knowledge of the target audience, national presence, creating new partnerships and teaching models that enable a diverse group of students to succeed, and developing a hybrid education framework that offers both pre-recorded and live classes to help ensure student engagement.”
To date, the iFood program has a partnership with six organizations and education companies that will support the development of highly demanded skills for the current job market being driven by a new digital economy, such as artificial intelligence and programming in Python, Java, JS, React, Kotlin, Android and iOS.
iFood’s partners in the project include Resilia, a program that aims to offer low-income people the opportunity to train in the field of data science and technology with the possibility of being hired by iFood in the future.
There’s also a new education partner initiative underway with Reprogram that offers programming courses for cis and trans women to train 400 professionals over two years.
Another undergoing partnership is the one with PROA Institute, which seeks to offer 17-22 years old young students from public high schools access to their first job opportunities.
In 2021 as a whole, through all these initiatives, iFood’s goal is to train 7,000 young people and, by 2023, to reach the mark of 400,000 young people trained.
Other projects that will encourage entrepreneurship in the field of food and learning opportunities for couriers registered on the iFood platform are under development.
iFood also intends to raise the quality of education in public schools through Movile Group’s Fundação 1 Bi, which developed a free learning tool via WhatsApp called Aprendizap.
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According to iFood, students and teachers will have access to content developed by specialists. With the partnership, the idea is to expand Aprendizap’s reach and develop new content for both students and teachers.
Backed by Movile and Just Eat, Brazil-based iFood registers an average of 48 million monthly orders in Brazil and Colombia.
