São Paulo – A Walmart Brazil Institute project for professional retail training for low-income youths will serve as a template for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to carry out similar actions in the Latin America and Caribbean. In Brazil, the training is offered by Escola Social do Varejo (the Social Retail School), and in foreign countries it will be adopted under the New Employment Opportunities project, which targets young people.
The partnership was announced last week in Cartagena, Colombia, during the Summit of the Americas, by the IDB president, Luis Alberto Moreno, the Walmart global president, Mike Duke. Walmart will invest US$ 10 million in the project, which should cater to approximately 1 million youths.
“The Social Retail School is a transformative project because it offers quality professional training to youths in socially vulnerable situations and real job opportunities. It is very rewarding to be able to export this knowledge to other countries,” says Marcos Samaha, president of Walmart Brazil. In the country, almost 2,000 youths have attended Social Retail School courses, and 83% of them are employed in the formal labour market.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
