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Executive Summary
This executive summary provides a comprehensive understanding of our consulting project with the
Young Apprentice Program (YAP) at Viva Rio. It discusses the following: the vision of YAP,the main
issue that we are focusing on, as well as our final recommendation and the thought process behind its
development, its benefits, and how its implementation will affect YAP’s stakeholders.
Vision of the Young Apprentice Program
Apprenticeship Law 10.097 mandates that 5-15% of every corporation’s workforce be comprised of
apprentices. As a provider of these apprentices, Viva Rio hopes to effectively bridge the gap between
citizens of the favelas and the country’s most successfulcorporations. Currently, the act of hiring
apprentices is viewed as a necessary legal obligation, but Viva Rio instead believes that participants of
YAP should be seen as corporate assets,both during their apprenticeship and throughout their future
participation within the job market.
Viva Rio’s ultimate vision for the YAP is to provide participants with an unparalleled education in both
personal and professional sectors of life. This unparalleled education will set a new standard for
apprentice programs around the country and prove to companies that with proper education, apprentices
can become future assets and not just a means of achieving legal compliance. To achieve this goal, the
YAP’s curriculum must be overhauled and updated.
Analysis of Current Program
The current program aims to help students develop professional skills and understand their duties as
Brazilian citizens. This will prepare the apprentices for the workplace as well as keep them from resorting
to violence. In return, the program fulfills legal requirements for its corporate stakeholders. The program
has two tracks—an 11-month program and an extended 17-month program. Both programs are divided
into 3 distinct phases:
Phase 1
The current curriculum for Phase 1 is heavily focused on ethics, morals, and citizenship. It helps develop
the apprentice as a member of a civil society and puts the apprentices on a path towards a new way of life,
but contains very little information regarding life in business world. Viva Rio is an NGO focused on
social change—the organization itself was established to foster a culture of peace and social inclusion.
However,we feel that YAP currently places too much emphasis on this aspect of education, hindering the
professional development of the student. In Phase 1, students spend a total of 80 hours at Viva Rio over
20 work day. However,this phase only encompasses 21 different topics and themes in these 80 hours,
meaning there is a great deal of underutilized time. Because no time is spent at the student’s respective
company, the student is not currently gaining sufficient professional knowledge.
While the citizenship classes are important, being able to instruct the apprentices on the basics of business
before they enter their apprenticeship will establish a better foundation for success.
Phase 2
Throughout Phase 2, students spend the majority of their time at the company as an entry level worker.
The apprentice learns hard business skills as well as what it means to be an administrative assistant. In
this phase, the theoretical classroom learning is combined with the practical experience.
This phase lasts anywhere from 10 to 16 months depending on the student’s scheduled program length.
Students spend 5 days a month at Viva Rio and 15 days a month at their job. While this phase’s joint
emphasis on citizenship education and professional experience work together to cover a great deal of
content, we feelthat the current curriculum is not optimally designed to maximize student success as

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apprentices. If certain professional aspects of Phase 2 were transferred into Phase 1, the students would be
able to begin their professional education even before entering the workplace. This will better prepare the
students for success at their job as well as instill them with a higher level of confidence. Additionally,
they will be better equipped to deal with any unforeseen difficulties that arise during their time at work.
Phase 3
The third and final phase of the young apprentice program is comprised of multiple project based learning
sessions. Participants work on projects and create lectures on select content from either the curriculum or
relevant areas of business. Throughout this phase,they will discover their best attributes and areas of
improvement. Phase 3 has a similar time structure as Phase 2 (5 days at VR and 15 days at work);
however, instead of focusing primarily on professional education when at Viva Rio, students spend their
time working on projects. The projects required in Phase 3 are important, but we believe that they may be
more conducive to learning if implemented in other phases of the program. While we certainly believe
that a follow-up phase is important, the third phase should focus more heavily on self-marketing and
networking skills to achieve the program’s goal of making students desirable in the job market.
Additionally, Phase 3 should be an inspirational book end to Viva Rio. The students should leave the
program feeling more professional and hopeful for their future. They should love the program and feel
deeply connected to its mission and the culture. This good-will relationship around the program will
increase participation rates in the post program surveys as well as increase likelihood of students
returning as alumni panelists for current apprentices.
Key Issues
The main issue of the Young Apprentice Program lies in its curriculum. Currently, the curriculum is
designed to cater to the needs of the company. Companies will request the students, and the students will
subsequently enroll in YAP. This results in four main issues:
1. Discrepancy between students’ prior business knowledge and Viva Rio’s expectations
Through conversations with our contacts at Viva Rio—both administers and apprentices—it is apparent
that Brazilians from the favelas do not lack a business understanding, but instead lack a formalized
business education. For example, while there are many entrepreneurs and business owners within the
favelas, they often lack understanding of formal business practices. Thus, at Viva Rio, it is not necessary
to teach the rudimentary understanding of business, but rather formalize the pre-existing business
knowledge that the apprentices already have.
2. Inability for the curriculum to build upon itself due to the ‘trickle in’ tendencies of enrollment
Viva Rio’s experience journey is as follows:
1. Companies contact Viva Rio looking to hire apprentices.
2. Viva Rio conducts interviews with potential apprentices.
3. Viva Rio selects apprentices and their education begins.
This process would be effective if the program placed students in cohorts and began at scheduled
intervals; however, it happens constantly throughout the year, resulting in a random influx of apprentices.
Because the classes continue to be follow the predetermined schedule despite the constant flow of
students into and out of classes, each day’s class must be self-contained to be properly understood. While
this is an effective method for ensuring that the key lessons of each day’s class can be absorbed, the lack
of curriculum continuity makes it difficult for students to grow their knowledge of the topic beyond a
rudimentary understanding of many aspects of professional life.

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Additionally, the lack of continuity hinders student interest and potential. In our communication with
Viva Rio students, an apprentice stated that they desired to learn more about their specific sector of
business, but the lessons only cover business material in broad generalizations. This stems back to first
key issue - that Viva Rio lacks an understanding that a lot of the apprentices already have some level of
business knowledge prior to entering the program.
3. Companies often only keep apprentices for the legally required period of apprenticeship
The government regulation is that 5-15% of a company must be made up of apprentices. However, once a
student’s apprenticeship has expired, the only way the company can continue to work with them is if the
student is hired as a full time employee, which requires the company to pay the student accordingly, and
increases the company’s apprentice requirement by increasing the company’s total number of employees.
Thus, companies have little benefit in keeping the apprentices and instead fire them after the final cut-off
date (90 days after the end program date). Viva Rio hopes to solve this problem by shifting the
companies’ perception of apprentices from a corporate burden to a corporate asset.
4. Students are not provided with enough professional skills to successfully transition to Phase 2
Phase 1 of the program is focused almost exclusively on the creation and development of citizenship
skills, meaning that when students transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2,they go from nearly no professional
training to spending 15 days a month at the company. This may lead to certain problems that apprentices
face at work that could have been prevented with prior business education. Indeed, our calls with Viva
Rio students indicated that not all apprentices feel adequately prepared for this transition. Additionally, if
the students are familiarized with business and life in the workplace before they actually begin the job
portion of their apprenticeship, they will be able to transition better to their new environment, thus
increasing their success rate.
Research
Initially, we researched many youth development programs across the world to determine what makes
apprenticeship programs successful. After analyzing a variety of programs and accumulating a strong
understanding of what makes apprenticeships successful, we began to investigate the goals of Viva Rio’s
Young Apprentice Program. Upon recognizing Viva Rio’s vision, we compiled a variety of key themes
and topics that the program would need to include in order to make their vision a reality. After analyzing
these topics, we collaborated with Efrain Diaz, an expert in education and curriculum, to create a
curriculum capable of combining these necessary skills with preexisting elements, producing a valuable
and unique experience that will properly prepare apprentices for the workforce
After creating the curriculum, we searched for ways to increase Viva Rio’s efficiency in matching
apprentices with apprenticeship offers. While there are a variety of diagnostic tests that Viva Rio may
find useful for categorizing future apprentices, the most notable include the Strong Interest Indicator
(Strong) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). While both the Strong and MBTI both have
students answer a variety of questions, the Strong returns the taker’s relative strength in each of six
general activity types, and provides specific job recommendations within each activity type. In contrast,
MBTI returns the taker’s personality type, which can be externally cross referenced with job work styles
to help find potential areas of interest.
Recommendation
Content

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The first order of business is to create a new core content for Phase 1 using Phase 1’s current timeframe.
Phase 1 will remain a 4 week program; however, each week will have a main topic that is going to be
addressed. The main topics will be developed with the support of Viva Rio’s four main branches:
● Week A: Health (Thematic 1)
● Week B: Arts and Entertainment (Thematic 2)
● Week C: Sciences and Innovation (Thematic 3)
● Week D: Corporate Culture (Thematic 4)
Every week the program will focus on a different theme (Refer to Content by Phases) and combined with
corresponding thematics. The weekly themes highlighted above will be the core content of the week;
however, teachers and students will be allowed the flexibility to implement any lesson plans they desire
that fall within, or relate to, the main theme. The learning process will be an interdisciplinary two way
road. We suggest that you use certain thematics (See thematics document) to teach specific content in
order for students to learn essential project skills while learning the content. Teachers will take care of
specifying the key takeaways of the week every Monday and Friday, asking students to do practice
learning activities to show the new knowledge acquired.
Optimal Structure
Today Viva Rio receives a random in-flow of students. Every student is allowed to start the program
according to the day the company hires Viva Rio to prepare him/her. This structure does not allow
teachers to analyze themes in depth and to require students particular performance. To maximize the
efficiency of the new content we created,we suggest VR slightly adapts the current program structure.
In particular, we recommend that students matriculate into the program on the Monday following the
company’s request. VR can create little weekly cohorts, every cohort faces every topic together on a
weekly basis. In this way, students can work in groups, increase team building skills, develop a peer to
peer feedback process,attain a deeper understanding of topics, and grow together. This structure solution
also helps to create a sense of community, crucial to create an alumni network effectively. Furthermore,
teachers can build a cumulative learning path being sure that every student went over every single
precedent argument of the week’s topic.
Advantages
- Community building
- Team building
- Team working
- Peer to Peer feedback system
- Cumulative curriculum
- Incremental learning.
- Multiple days projects
Disadvantage
- Change reluctant teachers
- Maximum wait time of 6 days
- Communication with teams and companies.
- Create a calendar that can support different cohorts.
Alternative Structure
Advantages

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- If structure changing related costs are to elevated, VR can adopt the new content proposed to the
old program structure and let people come not constantly.
- Easier solution.
- Cheaper.
- Not hard time for companies and staff to appreciate and understand change.
Disadvantages
- Static curriculum
- Topics analyzed superficially.
- No group working.
- Difficult community building
Phase DesignReasoning
Phase 1: Preparation for Job
Phase one is initial time period in which apprentices can be transitioned from their previous education
prior to Viva Rio, into an educated apprentice ready to take on work: we suggest that the main goal of
phase 1 is to best prepare apprentices for their job.
In Phase 1,students will spend 80 hours at Viva Rio over 20 work days. The curriculum for Phase 1
encompasses only 21 different topics and themes, which leaves plenty of unallocated time. Because no
time is spent at the student’s respective company, the student isn’t gaining that much professional
knowledge in this phase.
It may be beneficial to move the most essential professional classes from Phase 2 into the final weeks of
Phase 1 in order to begin transitioning the apprentices from purely academic work towards a mixture of
academia and apprenticeship related content.
The restructured content, overall, will allow for a reformed Phase 1 that will increase the following three
aspects:desirability for the students--the students explained a desire to learn more about business before
actually going into their jobs; viability for the businesses--the students will now be better prepared to
enter into their apprenticeship and will be more viable assets for the companies to hire; feasibility for
Viva Rio--because there is no drastic content change nor shift in structure, the teachers and students will
be able to easily adapt to this new content/curriculum transformation.
Each week will begin with a discussion on the weekly theme and will be bookended by a presentation on
any given theme/ content/ lesson throughout the week. The topics, projects, and lectures from Phase 3
will be incorporated into this phase in order to foster teamwork, presentation skills, and have an
interdisciplinary understanding of using technology, working with teams,and problem solving.
It is important to note that the weekly theme is simply to create a structure for the week. In Week A, for
example, by no means will there only be lessons on the environment. The weekly theme simply allows a
structure for the students to relate certain lessons to, a general theme on which students can select a
weekly project, and a means for which students can familiarize themselves with the main pillars of Viva
Rio.
Phase 2: Support during Job

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Phase 2 consists of 1 day a week at Viva Rio for anywhere from 10-16 months. Because a lot of the
business curriculum will be moved to Phase 1, we will suggest two strategies for adjusting Phase 2 to
support the apprentices throughout their time at work: implement a peer to peer feedback mechanism and
utilizing an alumni network.
Peer to Peer Reflection, Discussion, and Problem Solving:
The program currently uses a teacher-centric approach to learning, which works well for Phase 1.
However,due to the addition of the practical, hands-on experiences the students gain in Phase 2, it no
longer makes sense to continue with this approach. Focusing Phase 2 on peer to peer relations will not
only allow them to learn from each other, but it will also increase positive energy, discussion, and
cohesion, all of which are aspects of successfullearning. Phase 2 must include each student reflecting on
their experiences at his/her respective job, discussing with peers,and the attempting to think of ways to
make their individual experiences better by giving constructive criticism and suggestions. This student
reflection can benefit the program in these three main ways:
1. Increasing problem solving skills
By discussing problems faced on the job and at work, students will be able to work together to come up
with solutions. Because most students are working similar jobs, this problem solving method will benefit
apprentices in the future who may end up experiencing the same problem.
2. Share Sector Ideas
If students care about a certain sector in business, they will be more likely to succeed. Unfortunately,
there isn’t much time for students to experiment in different sectors; however, if peers share information
and experiences on their jobs, it allows the apprentices to learn more about different sectors which may
inspire them for future jobs.
3. Potential to adapt curriculum for the future
Teachers will be facilitating discussion of problems and helping students to develop solutions. Teachers
will begin to understand common problems in the workplace and can begin to adapt the curriculum in
Phase 1 to address these issues. Teachers can create case studies about certain problems that apprentices
have discussed in Phase 2 in order to better prepare future students in Phase 1.
In addition to the peer to peer feedback, Phase 2 may also benefit from an alumni network of guest
speakers. Although the participants in the young apprentice program tend to be very dedicated and
motivated, times of doubt are inevitable. Additionally, there is always time for inspiration. After asking
the students if they would find having guest speakers valuable, the results were overwhelmingly positive.
Alumni of the young apprentice program have first hand knowledge on how to succeed in an
apprenticeship. They are invaluable assets to answering questions that the current apprentices may have.
A guest speaker,a past participant who has had success in the program, will no doubt inspire the students
to continue working hard at their job. Additionally, like the peer to peer support, they will be able to help
the apprentices with any problems they are having on the job.
In order to establish this alumni network, there must be an established feedback mechanism which we
understand is in progress. Utilizing this email list, you can send out emails informing the alumni on free
times in which they can come in to speak with the current students.
Phase 3: Self-Marketing
The third phase of the program is the follow-up and conclusion of the program. Phase 3 has a similar time
structure as phase 2 (5 days at VR and 15 days at work); however,instead of focusing primarily on
professional education when at Viva Rio, students begin working on projects.

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While we certainly believe that a follow-up phase is important, the third phase should focus more heavily
on self-marketing and networking skills to achieve the aforementioned goal and vision of making students
desirable in the job market. Additionally, it should solidify the culture of Viva Rio within each of the
apprentices in order to have them feellike they always have a place to come back to.
The projects required in Phase 3 are important, but shifting them to Phase 1 opens up time to discuss
important issues such as networking and self marketing. By completing all the projects early on, Viva Rio
has time to follow up the program and explain the importance of self marketing. The ultimate goal is for
companies to view Viva Rio apprentices as assets. Teaching them self marketing skills will better allow
them to market themselves as assets and be viewed as assets by companies.
This part of the curriculum redesign allows the young apprentices to thrive in the future, not only just
after their internship.
At the conclusion of the program, Viva Rio needs to create some way to regulate the data of the students
leaving the program, to obtain feedback from both students and companies, and to establish an alumni
network that can be utilized in the future. We suggest that contact and career information be taken when
students leave and that regular means of communication (surveys for feedback) are established with
alumni of the program.
Additional Comments
1. Involving families and companies:
On the last day of Phase 1, Viva Rio can organize a commencement to give students a midterm certificate
and invite families to attend. This will be combined with students’ presentations that they have made
during the phase to show the families students’ progress. Such a commencement will not only involve
families to students’ learning process, but also increase students’ motivation.
During the last week of Phase 3 (One week before the program is going to be over), Viva Rio can
organize another commencement, similar to the one in the first phase that invites families to give students
certificates. This time, Viva Rio can invite the HRs of companies to be present and recruit. Students can
do presentations or some final projects to show the HRs their ability. Such a commencement will give
students a chance to network with the professionals and find future jobs.
2. Diagnosing apprentice strengths and potential interests:
During each student’s application to YAP,Viva Rio can assign additional supplemental surveys for the
student to complete. Surveys can be pulled from pre-existing personality diagnostic tests,such as the
Strong and MBTI (see Research) to categorize applicants waiting to join YAP based on their areas of
strength and their potential interests. When Viva Rio gets a request for new apprentices, they can cross
reference the type of corporation requesting the apprentice with their list of students who match with that
job type to effectively match applicants with apprenticeships.
Upon the completion of the program, Viva Rio can assign its students to take the indicator tests again, to
see if their newfound job experience has altered their recommended job listings. This information will
prove invaluable in aiding the student in pursuing future jobs.
Conclusion
Viva Rio has a vision to make the Young Apprentice Program fully effective in successfully connecting
students from the favelas with jobs, either in their assigned company or a different one. This vision

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becomes easier to achieve once the program is designed to achieve it. The students have recognized the
strengths and weaknesses of the program, and we have built upon their input to restructure the program,
redesign the content, and fully develop the phases. We believe that not only does our recommendation
fully align with these values, but also that implementing these changes is the most strategic way to
positively benefit all stakeholders.
The new program would be desirable for students because it effectively provides students with all of the
skills and knowledge to be valuable in long-term career fulfillment. Viva Rio will also find that this
recommendation is highly feasible because our research fully explored alternative programs, education
reform, and the constraints of Viva Rio. We have taken into account the timing, methodology, and
resources to ensure that our recommendation is implementable. In addition, we have included an
alternative structure that differs only slightly from Viva Rio’s current program.
The Young Apprentice Program absolutely needs to take into account the opinions and feedback from the
companies because without them, the program would cease to exist. Thus, we have designed the
recommendation to be viable for companies that work with the Young Apprentice Program. They need
employees that have the skills necessary to do productive work, and given that some of the students have
been offered jobs, we understand that they would love to take on employees that are true assets to the
company. The new design of content and structure fulfills their needs perfectly. Students will still be
learning key information (citizenship, health, etc.) but through effective projects that allow them to
develop deeper critical reasoning and hard skills. The students will be entering their jobs with a much
more engaged and prepared mindset, which is exactly what the companies need. In addition, the creation
of a regulated feedback mechanism from both students and companies allows Viva Rio to track valuable
information, providing the basis for future changes and marketing of the program. Viva Rio has a vision
for the Young Apprentice Program, but only by implementing such changes will Viva Rio be able to
achieve this vision.