The stock of Facebook, Inc (NASDAQ:FB) closed at $167.24 losing 0.55% in yesterday’s trading session. This social media provider launched its first training center in Latin America for coders and entrepreneurs on Monday. It was in a bid to encourage technology careers for young people in Brazil, a country that has been experiencing high levels of unemployment plunging it is a deep economic crisis.
Diego Dzodan, the company’s regional Vice President expressed optimism that Estação Hack would go a long way towards helping bridge the gap between an eager but untrained generation with time on their hands and a tech sector hungry for skilled talent.
In an interview at Facebook’s Latin America headquarters, Dzodan opined, “Imagine the opportunity. You’ve got people without a job, so they can’t afford training. And yet there’s so much demand for positions that the market can’t fill.”
At the start of the year, one in four Brazilians aged 18 to 24 had been struggling with unemployment for years. A large number of this group had attained higher levels of formal education as compared to their parents. However, the downtown, which is deemed the worst ever on record did not spare them. It ended up stunting the careers of a generation of young workers.
Facebook’s 1,000-square-meter space on the bustling Avenida Paulista will be providing entrepreneur training, career guidance, free coding courses and digital marketing workshops for 7,400 Brazilians in its first year.
Dzodan outlined that Estação Hack or “Hack Station” was set to learn quite much from the outreach projects like the Startup Garage in Paris that were launched by Facebook in January. He revealed that it was tailored in Brazil. For instance, the Sao Paulo space has been offering workstations and mentoring for the various entrepreneurs focused on projects with social impact.
Dzodan has been facing a lot of pressure from journalists to disclose how much the social media provider has been spending on its new space. He still refuses to bow down to their pressure. However, he made a comment outlining that the impact was supposed to be measured in participants rather than brick-and-mortar investments.
