“As farmer and rural producer, I have always lent support to my children in their choices and wished them success. When the opportunity emerged for teenagers to be apprentices at the Growing-Up Right Institute, we encouraged the youngest of my three children to enroll in the course and he ended up lucky enough to attend the course for two years[…]”
“For some years we lived in Agudo and Rio Grande do Sul is in my heart, because it was the place where I stopped being a kid and matured. After the death of my stepfather and after concluding the Entrepreneurship and Rural Management course, my mother and I moved back to Florianópolis, where our family members live.[…]”
“My experience at the Growing Up Right Institute is innovative, keeping away from what used to my professional job as a Social Assistant. Spending time with the apprentices and the identification of their realities have been inspiring. […]”
“Although living in the interior of São Lourenço do Sul, I work as an IT support technician for a multinational company and every day I serve customers from Germany. My trajectory towards my professional international services is based on the formal study at school and university, and by holding in high esteem our countryside culture, especially the languages our ancestors spoke: Pomeranian and German. […]”
Fábio de Bastos Bastos @fabio_bastos9 Agro is everything “With the certainty that it is possible to prosper in agro, I am planning to build my life based on rural activities. I believe that the rural sector will continue to be […]
Educadora Vanessa Beise @vanessabeisee “To me, to be an educator at the Growing Up Right Institute is a dream come true. I am very proud of my trajectory in the Institute, because I was a rural apprentice in 2016 […]
“I have many reasons for being proud of my daughters: they are marvelous, polite, charismatic, devoted and focused on their studies. They are also responsible and have reached maturity, because they know what they want and where to go. For […]
“I am very proud of my daughter, because she is a very polite girl, focused on what she wants, mature, strong and with entrepreneurial spirit. To all this, the Growing Up Right Institute contributed a lot, making it possible for […]
“My husband and I had a dream of adopting a child, and we listened to hour heart and chose Renan. He is a charming boy, endowed with skills, and demonstrates to have a very kind heart. Waking up every morning […]
“The electric energy used on my farm is now generated by the solar panel system. The idea to implement the solar panel system came from the high costs of electrical energy. Therefore, in my project stemming from the Entrepreneurship and […]
“On the eve of my graduation day, after the completion of the course on Entrepreneurship and Rural Management, my parents and I received the visit of the colleagues in my group. It was an exciting day, it marked a milestone for our family.[…]”
Josemir Gabriel Pink Blank
@josemir___oficial
“On the eve of my graduation day, after the completion of the course on Entrepreneurship and Rural Management, my parents and I received the visit of the colleagues in my group. It was an exciting day, it marked a milestone for our family. Before the arrival of the group, I was rather nervous and thought deeply about what could happen, what would every apprentice have on their mind. My parents were on my side all the time, supporting and encouraging me. Then, when my colleagues arrived, we welcomed all of them in the best manner possible. While entertainment was going on, it came to my mind that it was really the last day, I looked at everybody and it was like a film in my mind recalling the best moments. We did some entertaining and merrymaking activities until the end of the visit. It was a day of smiles, I saw everybody happy because we had completed one more life cycle. It was really an exciting experience to have the opportunity to offer our farm, along with my family, for the occasion they had to know my reality!
Our farm is diversified, where tobacco is the main crop. My final project of the entrepreneurship course was about the creation of an orchid greenhouse, which will make our place even more attractive. I and my mother, who loves orchids, and has much experience in plants, are planning to grow a great quantity of orchid species and start multiplying seedlings, which will initially be used to make the place more beautiful, with chances to start selling them later. We are cherishing ideas such as further diversifying the farm, which could become a recreation area. It would be very gratifying if our orchid plan happened to become effective, as something as simple as this could turn into an extra source of income.
The idea of the orchid came to my mind when I was an apprentice at the Growing-Up, a course that made me see that rural areas offer countless opportunities and one of the most complex possibility is to offer young people incredible lifestyles. In the countryside, there are several accesses to information and there are chances for taking advantage of several studies, courses, intellectual improvement. Everything comes down to a question of focus and determination and chances appear when someone seeks what they enjoy doing. Recently, several institutions have been keeping a close watch on the countryside, with the aim to transform the future of the young in the rural area. The Growing-Up Right Institute is an excellent example and, without overlooking the credit to president Iro Schünke, ‘Yes, we can!’.
In my case, the course enriched my knowledge, I used to be rather shy and very anxious, but the good welcome of the educator and the friendships with my colleagues pushed me forward. Every day I used to feel better in the company of all members of the group and educators in the educational tasks and activities. I am grateful to the Institute for holding in high esteem the rural area, family farming and everything that has connections with education in the rural setting. We had pedagogical visits and we were visited by several authorities. In short, it was an incredible experience. Everybody has the potential to improve in themselves, it is only necessary to take advantage of what we have on hand and value our assets. It was a cycle in my life, a walk of intensive learning and life experiences. Joining the course was indeed a good decision. At the end we realize that living in the company of other youth has a positive influence on several aspects”.
Josemir Gabriel Pink Blank, 15 was a young apprentice in 2023 at the Rural Professional Learning Program given by the Growing-Up Right Institute, in São Lourenço do Sul (RS).