São Paulo – Brazil’s National Service for Industrial Training (SENAI) is drawing up a plan to share its expertise in e-learning courses of Mechanical Engineering and Digital Education with Morocco’s Office of Vocational Training and Employment Promotion (OFPPT). The initiative is part of a cooperation being negotiated between Brazil and Morocco. Pictured, online commencement of SESI/SENAI students.
This rapprochement between the governments of the countries, which the interchange between SENAI and OFPPT is part of, is carried out by the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), an institution affiliated to the Ministry of External Relations responsible for coordinating all international technical cooperation involving Brazil, and the embassy of Morocco in Brasília. “The mentioned project is under negotiation between the Brazilian and Moroccan government,” ABC told ANBA.
SENAI offers vocational training across 28 industry sectors in Brazil both in technology courses and undergraduate and graduate levels and usually meets international training demands for local students and shares its experience with agencies and institutes across the world. OFPPT also operates by training the productive sector manpower in Morocco.
SENAI Vocational and Technologic Training executive manager Felipe Morgado told ANBA that the two fields that could be the object of cooperation with Morocco were listed as interesting by the Moroccans. SENAI will offer them the development of a Mechanical Engineering course and a graduate course for training professors that will hold classes online. “Focused on the digital transformation of the education institutions,” Morgado explains.
In the cooperation with Morocco, SENAI goes in as a partner of the Brazilian government and will transfer knowledge for the OFPPT to offer its ow courses, providing for the development of content and training the professors that will give them. “We operate with capacity building. We aren’t just giving the course, but developing the skills on our partner,” SENAI International Relations expert Tatiana Farah Mello explains.
These fields are connected to the industry 4.0, to the development of new technologies,” Morgado says about the fields that could fit in the cooperation with Morocco. He says that SENAI stands out in the WorldSkills – a world championship of vocational skills – in Mechanical Engineering and that teacher training is a need in most countries. “All governments are interested in retraining professors for them to be able to put new technologies in their daily life,” he says.
Experience and reputation
Mello says that SENAI has operated with international training for 30 years and has worked with all continents. “We began with Portuguese-speaking countries from Africa to East Timor, then we expanded. We’ve gotten over the language barrier and the cultural differences since,” the expert says, adding that the training is usually given in the target country’s language. The cooperation now takes place with major global companies that seeks SENAI’s expertise in vocational training.
As a renowned in-person training institution, in 2012 SENAI went on to offer distance learning with blended courses and a heavy use of technology. In fact, when the COVID-19 pandemic came in early 2020, the institution was fully prepared to carry on with its work in the new situation of digital learning. “We now have over 120,000 hours of courses online, making up more than 620 vocational courses developed with the intensive use of simulators, 3D, augmented reality,” Morgado says.
The countries were already familiar with the work of SENAI, particularly through the international reputation acquired at the WorldSkills and other global agencies, and now they are also aware of the capacity for developing online training. “The pandemic made countries that are smaller in size to see the need of obtaining these technologies and participate in this process,” Morgado says.
Brazilian Cooperation Agency
In the interchange with Morocco, SENAI will be the technical responsible for meeting a government demand for training. According to information ABC sent to ANBA, the cooperation between SENAI and OFPPT is under negotiation “with the purpose of drawing up a formal project that will be implemented through the signing of the Complementary Adjustment to the Scientific, Technical and Technological Cooperation Agreement penned by the two countries back in 1984 that establishes a legal framework for the bilateral cooperation.”
ABC says that the partnerships the agency establishes are based, among other criteria, on meeting the official demand of the country interested in the cooperation. According to ABC, Brazilian technical cooperation provides technical, technological, industry and service skills to contribute for the development of partner countries and is carried out by using the knowledge, practices, experiences and technologies available in high-standard national institutions, whether they are state-owned or private such as SENAI.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
