Help vulnerable Argentine students finish college

Off to an Outstanding Start!

We kicked off the academic year with great enthusiasm, warmly welcoming 22 new scholarship holders to the 2023 Integrar Scholarship program. They were chosen from a competitive pool of 200 applicants, and let me tell you, these students are an extraordinary group!

During an engaging gathering marked by curiosity and excitement, the students got to meet and connect with each other, setting the foundation for a strong support network throughout their journey. We dived into the nitty-gritty of the scholarship program and the criteria for the annual renewal and introduced the academic tools and support they'll have at their fingertips throughout their journey. We even tackled the lingo of the university world and explained the different study modes and evaluation methods that are more common, so they're not caught off guard.

But we didn't stop there! We equipped them with a study and organization guide, packed with tips, practical advice, and a treasure trove of useful study apps. It was more than a meeting—it was a workshop! and the energy and enthusiasm in that room were palpable and contagious. 

The Impact of the Crisis: A Resounding Effect

Now, let's address the elephant in the room—the Argentinian crisis. We can't ignore it, as it's hitting hard, especially when it comes to the job market. Formal employment opportunities are shrinking, and rising inflation is a threat that looms over salaries. Unfortunately, those who bear the brunt of these challenges are often the most vulnerable, including many of our student’s parents working in the informal sector.

Despite these tough circumstances, we have some positive news to share. Currently, almost all our graduates have secured formal employment. However, more than half of them express a desire to change jobs because their salaries are low.  Additionally, graduates from the past three years are encountering greater difficulties in finding professional jobs related to their fields of study.

What Are We Doing About It? Taking Action!

We know that developing the complementary skills demanded by today's job market requires a comprehensive process and that it´s never too early to be strategic about one´s employability. 

That is the reason why we provide applicants with a comprehensive vocational guide packed with practical information, valuable resources, and thought-provoking activities. The importance of considering career prospects when choosing a field of study is strongly emphasized as it will have long-term implications on their professional and personal lives. And we also invite them to broaden their horizons to consider strategically important careers beyond the obvious options. 

As they progress in their studies, we offer the students a variety of workshops to empower them through information, guidance, and training. In June, we hosted a workshop on teamwork, an invaluable skill for university life and the professional world. Real-life examples, interactive activities, and simulations helped students identify their strengths and areas for improvement.

For the second half of the year, we have two additional workshops planned. One will delve into the art of assertive communication, while the other will concentrate on employability, specifically honing professional profiles.

Furthermore, we continuously strengthen and expand our network with HR consulting firms. We understand the importance of forming strong relationships with companies and professionals in the field to help us to anticipate the needs of an increasingly challenging job market and enhance the visibility of our graduates. We work closely with these firms to identify potential employment opportunities, ensuring our students are well-prepared to enter the job market with confidence.

The journey toward a successful professional career isn't a solo endeavor. We're here, standing by our recipients every step of the way. Together, we're unstoppable!

The traditional Annual Meeting of Integrar Graduates took place on December 15 and, this year, it was a very special event. We not only celebrated the achievements of our scholarship recipients but also the 15th anniversary of Fundación Integrar.  

During his remarks, the President of the Integrar’s Board of Directors recalled how it all started back in the early 2000s. At a soccer game, three friends who had just started the university met a young man who dreamed of going to college because he believed that getting an education would allow him to change his life for the better. The three friends realized that although the university is free in Argentina, the young man was so poor that he could not afford the transportation and study materials expenses. They decided to sponsor him and paid for his expenses; one of them assumed a mentoring role and all three got involved in keeping his motivation high despite the enormous difficulties he had to overcome. Over the years, they sponsored more and more young people and, in 2006, Fundación Integrar was born. We compiled the voices of our graduates in a video that can be accessed at https://youtu.be/rwJfy3WBInM  

Over time, the peer support became a methodological approach: the scholarship holders receive a stipend, academic advice during their career, emotional support from a mentor, and workshops and training activities to ensure their job readiness. 

Today, Fundación Integrar is proud to have 200 graduates and more than 150 students. Most importantly, in a country with the highest youth unemployment in the region, 90 percent of Integrar graduates have a formal job, the vast majority of which is related to their field of study and they report being satisfied or very satisfied with their lives.

Although we currently face a difficult economic situation and the annual inflation is expected to be over 100 percent, Fundacion Integrar was able to increase the number of vacancies available for the 2023 school year.  

There were 184 applicants to the 2023 Integrar’s traditional Scholarship program. Twenty-two were selected; 73 percent are women and 36 percent are university students whose education was threatened by economic difficulties. 14 percent chose to pursue a teaching degree, 27 percent a bachelor's degree, and 60 percent preferred a technical degree, a decision we strongly support as it allows them a fast transition to the professional labor market. The fields of health, economics, and business administration were favorites.

In addition, during the last quarter, 74 students renewed their scholarships, and 42 new students were admitted to IntegrarTEC, the special scholarship program for those who want to learn coding and programming.

Next quarter, we will start our annual information campaign to reach new scholarship candidates; we will continue our fundraising campaign, and we will conduct several training workshops focused on employability and life skills. 

Education changes your life is our motto, our mantra, but student graduation is not our only goal. We want our graduates to obtain a formal, well-paid job related to their career; that is the true measure of success when evaluating our program.

As of today, there are 142 Integrar graduates, and every year, we survey them to monitor their employment status and their personal situation.

Eighty percent of graduates are female. Although the average age of these women is 29 years, 60 percent do not have children. This is especially interesting when compared to data that indicates that almost 90 percent of poor women are mothers before the age of 25 (Observatorio de la Deuda Social, Universidad Católica Argentina): Eighty percent of the fathers and sixty percent of the mothers of our graduates did not finish high school, and only half of them have a sibling that goes to or plans to go college.

Argentina continues to lead the region with the highest rate of youth unemployment. The youth unemployment rate is three times that of the adult population, and 25 percent of young women and 15.4 percent of young men from the lowest quintile of wealth are unemployed. In contrast, 90 percent of Integrar graduates that live in the Buenos Aires area have a formal job related to their career, and 76 percent of them reported being satisfied or very satisfied with their current quality of life, especially when they compare themselves with other members of their families. These data are similar to previous years but, for the first time, more than half reported that they are actively looking to change jobs to improve their income. 

The situation of graduates from La Pampa province reflects the difficulties of labor insertion among a mostly rural population, in a province where professional opportunities are scarce. Fifty-six percent of the graduates migrated to a larger city to be able to work in some activity related to their career. Those who decided to stay in their place of origin are unemployed, have an informal job, and/or work in an area unrelated to their studies.

To understand the impact of our program, it seems relevant to compare the information above with data on poverty and unemployment published by the INDEC. 36.6 percent of the total population is now below the poverty line, almost half of them are between 15 and 29 years old, and 43 percent are between 30 and 64 years old.

Soft and complementary skills

Because we believe financial education is essential, we repeat every year the personal finance workshop intended for students in the first stage of their careers. It aims at sharing comprehensive information about the financial tools offered by the banking system and promoting responsible attitudes and reasonable criteria to manage their income and improve their saving capacity. This year it was dictated by a 2020 Business Administration graduate, born and raised in Villa 31 de Retiro, who in addition to his knowledge, contributed his personal experience.

Integrar also held two workshops on topics we had not previously addressed: professional communication and cybersecurity. The first was intended to highlight the importance of email as a primary communication tool in most workplaces and the characteristics of formal communication. In the second, cybersecurity myths and truths were analyzed, common computer crimes were listed, and a compendium of safe online security practices was drawn up.

Getting ready for 2023

To increase the diversity of neighborhoods from which our students come, we contacted schools located in popular neighborhoods in city of Buenos Aires and strengthen ties with NGOs that support secondary education for vulnerable adolescents. Call for applications for the 2023 scholarships was disseminated through our historical strategic allies, the schools and organizations that joined our network this year, and for the first time, our social networks. This had two benefits: we received applications from neighborhoods where we had no presence, and young people with new profiles and interests applied.Two in particular, caught our attention. First, a technical secondary school graduate who wants to study to become a Higher Technician in Automotive because her dream is to have an auto mechanical workshop. Second, a young man who aspires to pursue a career as a Naval Machinist, one of the most critically needed professions in the country and therefore one of the best-paid professions, with full employment prospects.

Given the harsh economic crisis that is increasingly affecting the formal and professional labor market, we recommend applicants who have successfully passed the selection process give preference to careers in strategic areas or those that, by offering an intermediate degree, allow them to find a job related to their area of study while they advance with their career. A third of future scholarship holders chose careers related to health (nursing was the preferred career, followed by radiology, dental assistant, surgical instrumentation, and nutrition). A little less than a third chose a career in the area of economics (bachelor's degrees in administration, international trade, economics, and public accounting), and the rest chose technical degrees in the area of technology, professorships, law, social work, and graphic design.

Fundraising and stability

As annual inflation is reaching 100 percent, budget management has become increasingly difficult. We are lucky to count on donors like yourself who donate in hard currency to help us honor our commitment to offering more scholarships every year. Your continuous support gives us a stable and predictable horizon to plan our operations and work with the future in mind and the student’s best interests at heart. 

Thank you very much for sharing our conviction that education is the tool that can effectively change the fate of a young and poor Argentinian.

For the first time in three years, we were able to bring in new scholarship holders. Sixty-five young people were admitted. Twenty-five wanted to pursue a traditional career and joined “Integrar Scholarship” while 40 chose “Fullstack Programming”, the first intensive training course of IntegrarTEC, our newly launched scholarship specifically focused on  IT. 

The academic year in the southern hemisphere runs from March to December. 

One hundred and forty scholarship holders started their academic year in March 2022. Three of them graduated before July and we expect ten more graduations before December.  

Fifteen mentors joined us to support the new scholarship holders and we are delighted that five of them are Integrar graduates: no one is better suited than them to share first-hand experience and a deep understanding of what it means to engage in such a challenging journey. In addition, five technology experts joined the IntegrarTEC support team. 

Employability
We believe that in a world where the labor market is changing fast, and sometimes unpredictably, the workers’ characteristics are key, especially for obtaining their first professional job. In addition to the network of contacts and alliances available to students and newly graduates, we also work to improve their job readiness through workshops and other activities. The goal is to strengthen their communication skills so that they can go through a job interview with solvency. 

We are very proud of three students who recently have found a job directly related to their field of study. Marisa is only one year away from graduating in Human Resources Management and is working in a school HR department. Last month, Matias, in the second year of Educational Sciences, started working at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) Secretary of Science and Technology. Valeria, who is pursuing a degree in International Cultural and Business Management has recently joined the administrative team of a big insurance broker. 

 
Context
Argentina is suffering a serious recession and the economy is tumbling. The support of donors like you, who donate in hard currency, is most important to us at this time. Annual inflation is reaching 100 percent and your support gives us the stability we desperately need to keep our program going and growing. 

Your support makes a difference.
It changes lives. 

Thank you. 

Erika (photo attached) is an Integrar graduate and the mentor of Ludmila.
“Studying meant everything to me. I am very proud of everything I have achieved. When I started studying, I also worked so I got up at 4 in the morning and came back at midnight. I cannot imagine life without having studied. I want to be a mentor because I like the idea of inspiring someone and I know that without Integrar I would not have been able to get to where I am now.”

After a two-year research into our internal data, we designed an admission system with multiple graduating predictors and used it as a pilot to sort all the applications received during October and November. As the academic year in the southern hemisphere starts in March, the 20 scholarship recipients for 2022 are commencing their studies as you read this report.

We designed and launched IntegrarTEC, an Information Technology (IT) scholarship program, very popular among applicants. We also piloted and revised a new approach to the mentor program; strengthen the studying support program by partnering with organizations that supplied motivated teachers, and started an employment office to help graduates find their first professional jobs.

Even though the university system was completely remote for two years, 24 students graduated last year. Considering how difficult life was in the shantytowns of Buenos Aires during the pandemic, we are proud of their efforts, resilience, and commitment to their education. Their median age is 24 years old and 20 of them are women. Half of them completed their studies in the time frame of the curricula. The other half struggled and had to invest one or two more years to be able to graduate.

Alan graduated as an agriculture engineer from Universidad de La Plata. He wrote to us: “This is a moment of great happiness because I fulfilled the objective that I set for myself when I finished high school. It wasn't an easy journey, but I had the constant support of my family, friends, and my mentor from Integrar. I am very grateful for the assistance I received during these years; it was key to help me reach the goal."

Despite a year that was unbearably difficult at the personal level, Florencia graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Business Management. To help provide for her family, she had to work full-time since day one “When I look back, I can't believe how many times I was ready to give up. Sometimes I was so exhausted I felt I was never going to make it, but with the help of my family, of Fundación Integrar, and especially of my mentor, I did it. You were the first to believe in me and my future, and for that, I will always be grateful.“ In 2022 she decided to go for the Administration degree and Integrar agreed to extend her scholarship.

Valeria grew up in Villa 31, one of the largest shantytowns of Buenos Aires, with her mother and grandmother. She always dreamed of being a doctor and was admitted into medical school. But her dream was almost shattered when she was in her second year. Her mother had a stroke that left her unable to work and the grandmother became her full-time caregiver. Valeria briefly paused her studies to find a job that would allow her to provide for her family. With the unwavering support of her mentor, she resumed her studies as soon as she could. Her tenacity and strong will were keys to her success.

December 22nd was a bright day for us, the final fireworks of an extraordinary year. We invited sponsors, friends, and Integrar Alumni to celebrate and welcome the 24 new graduates. It was the first institutional event after two years of strict social distancing, and emotions were sometimes overwhelming.