For seven years, and running fifteen editions, in Brazil, we have been evolving a not-for-profit immersive and educational program through a university-corporate partnership, that has achieved consistent impact on job opportunities for its candidates, promoting the development of 21st-century skills, gender equality, increasing social inclusion and contributing to the local community.
As for today, the program helps 24 students each semester. We receive more than 17 candidates per opening. Our recruiting process is capable of selecting teams where the number of women is greater than the number of men. We are also managing to identify and increase the number of openings reserved to young people coming from socially unfavorable contexts. Each semester, we receive around ten project proposals from real customers, most of them with a firm purpose behind. The program escapes from a lecture-based and prescriptive approach to learning. Through the development of a safe space for making mistakes, participants learn through practice, not only about agile methods, business analysis, lean startup, programming, and testing, to a level that they are ready to pursue professional opportunities in the market, but also about each other, their differences and the importance of respecting those differences.
Interactively, this talk will bring awareness about the obstacles minorities face in the technology sector, and explain the evolution, current stage, and outcomes of the Inclusive Agile Accelerator. In the end, we expect to provide some useful recommendations for aspiring educators and change agents looking for practical advice on how to grow more inclusive environments.
