Most young entrepreneurs do not receive support from the government

“Although there is a broad call to encourage and stimulate entrepreneurship, this support has not reached young people, they do not have lines of credit to undertake. There should be support agencies for young people, especially in the peripheries. In São Paulo, there is still the Program for the Valorization of Cultural Initiatives (VAI), which is very accessible by young people, but it is a promotion law, but specific to culture”, said researcher Maria Carla Corrochano, author of the article with the researchers Luís Paulo Bresciani and Maria Eduarda Raymundo Nogueira.

The group received support from the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) through the study Coletiva Jovem: a research and action project to support youth production collectives in the outskirts of São Paulo and Buenos Aires, led by Carla Corrochano at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), Sorocaba campus.

The young population of the city of São Paulo was estimated at 2.1 million people, aged between 15 and 29 years. This number, which corresponds to 21% of the total population, was raised by the Seade Foundation in 2022. The age group continues to be the hardest hit by unemployment and underemployment. In 2021, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) recorded an unemployment rate of 31% in the 18-24 age group.

Credit

The researchers consider that encouraging entrepreneurship can be an important way out to generate work and income for young people aged 18 to 29, “provided that it is accompanied by concrete measures to create lines of credit and support for the formalization of enterprises, combined with the improvement in the quality of work. It is also fundamental that proposals are encouraged not only for individual undertakings, but also for collective ones, with a view to promoting the popular and solidary economy”, says the article.

The programs are basically training, said the researcher. “There are programs to train people to be entrepreneurs. But to be an entrepreneur you need credit, specific work spaces. The survey showed that most young people work at home or at a friend’s house. They don’t have a specific space for work and they don’t have equipment available”.

The research, supported by FAPESP in partnership with Canada’s International Development Research Centre, carried out a qualitative investigation with 208 residents of the southern and eastern outskirts of the city of São Paulo who participated in collective or individual micro-enterprises, or combined one activity with another. Conducted from 2020 to 2021, during the covid-19 pandemic, the interviews were conducted online by ten researchers, also young, aged between 17 and 29 years old.

The survey identified that 62.5% of the collectives and enterprises had a Member’s home as their workplace. Asked about the disadvantages of being a part of it, entrepreneurs answered that they did not have rights associated with work, such as health insurance, meal vouchers or transportation vouchers (70.8%); not being able to rest on weekends or take vacations (65.3%); suffer some type of discrimination for being young (48.6%).

The members of the collectives reported not having monthly income security (70.8%); not having enough resources for individual or family needs (58.30%) and not having a formal contract (50%).

Research shows that young people adhere to entrepreneurship conscious of adverse conditions. “He is well aware of the precariousness of this condition, which is often assumed because there is no alternative or to build alternatives in the face of the low quality of the jobs he can access. He claims rights associated with formal work, he knows that credit is fundamental and, above all, he wants a job with meaning, ”said the researcher.

According to researcher Carla Carrochano, the search for meaning at work, that is, to aim for a job that is an individual aspiration and that is connected in some dimension with activism, was often cited by young people in the survey. “There are young people who, for example, open a thrift store because they are activists of conscious consumption, others who work with actions aimed at environmental sustainability, with the sale of menstrual cups, and also those who produce T-shirts that value the neighborhood itself, with prints for young people in the community in which they are inserted. That is, a practice that is very evident, but they are clear that it is not easy”.

Several initiatives with this focus were integrated into the Centro Coletiva Jovem, a pilot experience born out of the research and carried out in partnership with Ação Educativa and other civil society organizations. The initiatives are described in the Young Collective Catalogue.

The article investigated public policies for generating work and income for youth, describing and analyzing the most relevant changes that have occurred in the city of São Paulo since 2013, the year marked by street demonstrations in the largest city in the country that impacted the country.

Information about the Youth Collective Center is available at center website.