PROTAGONISTS
At the age of 16, Jéssica Voeltz is perfectly aware of what she wants: to stay in
the rural setting. The youngest girl of farmers Elisete Emmel and Leotério Voeltz,
she concluded the Multipurpose Agriculture Entrepreneurship – Rural Admin-
istration course in Vale do Sol. In her final work, put into practice on the farm,
in Alto Castelhano, she raises and sells fish jointly with her family. “We came to
know new management techniques and so we expanded our market. Now, we
want to build new ponds”, she says.
In the three existing reservoirs, they raise traira, tilapia, dorado, surubimand five
carp species. Besides their fish farming business, the family grow tobacco, flagship
of their 15 hectares, raise pigs and growcorn and other subsistence crops. A second-
year high school student at Guilherme Fischer School, Jéssica intends to go to col-
lege and enroll in the Pedagogy course, but she does not want to abandon her life in
the countryside. “I do not seemyself living away fromthe interior”, she says.
According to the official, a great innovationof
the initiative is that, instead of working for com-
panies, young people aged 14 to 18, who attend
the course ‘Entrepreneurship in Multipurpose
Agriculture – Rural Administration’ do their the-
oretical activities in facilities of partner schools,
and their practical activities areperformed in the
of the course and in the communities, always in
the shift opposite to their regular school hours.
During a period of around one year, the appren-
tices devote 920 hours to their training, which in-
clude interviews with people of the communi-
ty, asset surveys, market research, worksheets,
presentations in computer science laboratories,
technical visits and study-oriented travels.
“The pioneer program acts jointly with
the school, the family and the community,
holding in high esteem the protagonist spir-
it of the young and the importance of knowl-
edge for the future”, he ponders. By the end of
2017, the five groups will be certified, totaling
85 graduates in rural administration. Schün-
ke also emphasizes that, despite bureaucrat-
ic difficulties, related to the originality of the
initiative, the results of the work outstripped
the expectations and pave the way for other
initiatives. Now underway a new comunica-
tion project run by graduated girls and seven
new groups of the Learning Programm are to
be implemented in 2018.
Program acts
jointly with the
school, family
and community
Junio Nunes
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