Capacity for entrepreneurship: four years of positive results of the CAF program in Argentina

Argentina faces new challenges to increase its competitiveness and renew the way it is commercially related to regional and international levels. Generating a boost in productivity, which allows closing the development gaps, demands the strengthening of the link between education and work. However, 69% of Argentine high school students do not reach satisfactory levels in mathematics and about 40% do not reach them in science, according to the latest data available from the Census assessments Learn corresponding to 2017. These types of skills are those that they have a greater correlation with work results such as having better incomes or accessing formal employment. More generally,  the accumulation of skills affects the ability of countries to innovate and develop increasingly productive technologies. This requires rethinking how the formation of human capital takes place, as well as the environments in which they are carried out.

Technological advances and the production of constant knowledge challenge our skills and install the need to acquire new ones to find solutions to problems that are constantly changing. Logical thinking, the ability to break down a problem into subproblems, interdisciplinarity, assumed in environments with a technological base that favors its performance, are some of the aspects that contribute to generate an entrepreneurial ecosystem that empowers the growth of countries.

With this challenge in mind, CAF decided to face an ambitious plan in 2015 that consisted of assisting and supporting the National Government of the Argentine Republic in the development of the  Program to Strengthen Entrepreneurship  It remains in force until today. This represents a long-term public policy model and aims to promote entrepreneurship in high-tech areas. To do so, it combines virtuously the investment in infrastructure and human capital.

The infrastructure construction is aimed at promoting entrepreneurial capacity and the provision of high-tech services, while the formation of human capital is directed to those areas of strategic relevance that allow, among other things, favor the creation and consolidation of innovative and competitive ventures. Besides,  educational investment begins during basic education, that is, before tertiary education, but with a clear orientation to the formation of job skills and performance in contemporary society. 

“The Program was made with a vision of the future and has managed to transcend in the long term. It is a policy that has been taken by successive governments, among other things, because there is a certain consensus on its potential, ”said Cecilia Llambí, specialist of CAF in education. “The Program has the vision not only of betting on the formation of human capital at the tertiary level but also at the secondary level because there are certain skills that are desirable for children to acquire not at the age of higher education but long before. That's where the ProgramAr focuses on, which seeks to generate different skills besides programming ”

ProgramAr

ProgramAr is one of the four components of the Program to Strengthen Entrepreneurship alongside the infrastructure and equipment of the Zero + Infinity Building; the regional scientific mobility grants for the Latin American Center for Interdisciplinary Training (CELFI); and the generation of infrastructure, equipment and training of human resources of the Technological Pole of Translational Medicine of Bariloche.

The objective of ProgramAr is to generate conditions that allow significant learning of computer science in schools, and an increase in enrollment in careers related to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at the tertiary and university level.

To achieve these objectives, links have been drawn up with 31 public universities and teacher training institutes in 16 provinces to carry out teacher training programs through short and long-term courses, the development of didactic materials and platforms, the dictation of practical workshops in secondary schools, and the sensitization on what is and for what computational thinking is useful.

“To encourage the choice of computer careers, we visit high schools, during which, teams of university students dictate a programming workshop and then explain to teenagers what careers they address those contents and what are the possible job opportunities ”, says  Belén Bonello, coordinator of the ProgramAr initiative of the  Fundación Dr. Manuel Sadosky, private-public institution in charge of program execution. To date, 32,000 students were visited in 400 schools across the country.

“Another of the lines in which one works in a sustained way is the training of teachers who are already in the exercise of their profession. Two types of training are offered: introductory courses to the programming and its teaching, with a duration of 70 contact hours over 4 months, and specializations in teaching the computation experiences, with a modality of 400 hours. face them over 2 years, ”adds Bonello. Until the first half of 2019, 2,100 teachers have already been trained in 12 provinces. In addition to training in secondary schools and teachers "training for managers and supervisors of the education system was carried out."

As for the teaching material, he details that “a collection of 4  manuals on Computer Science for teachers was published. They are the first on these topics that are published in the country. In addition, they are published under Creative Commons Licenses, which allows their proposals to be modified by teachers. All the material is available for free. ” Since 2018, there are annual Meetings on Didactics of Programming. This year they were held at the National University of Córdoba, where more than 400 people from all over the country attended.

In 2015 the online implementation of the ProgramAr portal for the learning platform and virtual discussion forums was finalized. From that year until now - first half of 2019, the  results obtained  show that they materialized, among others:

• 282,423 participants of the learning platform
• 16,027 students trained in workshops held in secondary schools
• 1,500 participants in the implemented forums
• 1,264 workshops held in secondary schools, taught by university students
• 446 diffusion pieces produced
• 302 public high schools engaged
• 43 agreements signed with national universities for the dictation of the workshops
• Broadcast in 18 media per year
• 12 educational materials

For the next year, a 25% increase in the perception of the need to learn computer science and reinforce the generation of documents in the forums, holding participatory collaborative programming events - hackathon, add participants to the events held, generate new applications in them and get public or private entities to incorporate some of those applications.

CELFI Scholarships

The regional scientific mobility scholarships for the  Latin American Center for Interdisciplinary Training  (CELFI), which are aimed at researchers from Latin America to that participate in intensive postgraduate training activities organized in the CELFI Centers or can carry out longer research stay in collaboration with local scientists. These exchange spaces promote contact between professionals from different advanced disciplines and stimulate the formation of collaborative networks for the resolution of interdisciplinary problems that require interaction and dialogue between specialists from different fields of scientific knowledge.

“CELFI works to generate training activities for Latin American scientists on interdisciplinary issues. We have two lines of action: one of them is the organization of schools or training activities of short duration, of a week or two, and the other is the possibility of carrying out a prolonged stay to carry out research. We work closely with academic institutions in Argentina, where the CELFI Centers are installed. There are currently three: the CELFI Data in the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, the CELFI Sustainability and Development at the National University of Córdoba and the CELFI Translational Medical Physics at the Balseiro Institute in Bariloche. Through these centers we aim to generate collaboration networks among scientists in Latin America and stimulate their training to work collaboratively to solve complex problems relevant to the region that require an interdisciplinary approach, ”says  Vera Brudny, responsible for the CELFI Program, of the Government Secretariat for Science, Technology and Productive Innovation.

CELFI's activities are aimed at the generation of a common scientific and technologic agenda focused on an increasingly inclusive development model that addresses the problems of the region. So far a total of 1,778 students from 19 Latin American countries received the scholarship to attend the 71 activities organized by CELFI. In turn, 34 scholarships were granted for conducting research stays at the CELFI Centers. It is expected an increase in international collaboration for CELFI in 2020, as well as to become an established program of regional prestige.

Those who have taken advantage of the courses highlight the benefits of participating in CELFI activities. From Colombia,  Oswaldo Ochoa , from the School for Development and Sustainable Technologies in the area of ??polymeric materials, says: “The experience is very satisfactory and enriching. I learned a lot from the teachers and my classmates. Sharing a week with all of them and knowing their work was very helpful to address my thesis plan in many other ways. Thank you very much CELFI! ” From Venezuela,  Mireya Albesiano , of the Latin American School for Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice, highlights her experience as an “excellent initiative to support the exchange of knowledge and experiences in various areas in Latin America, in addition to common roots, also twinned by similar problems. Impeccable organization and logistics. Congratulations. Grateful for learning. ”

In the words of several scientists and scholars from across the region, the CELFI scholarships have given them a remarkable possibility. “What has impressed me most is the exchange, the debate between different professionals, scientists and students from all over Latin America and that we can see what the characteristics and perspectives each one has in their region. But what struck me the most is to see interdisciplinarity and how each idea is different and can contribute to the development of your country and you can also influence the development of others by creating a whole scientific community and a network that is what you are looking for. with these schools ”says  Adrián Alejandro Ges Naranjo, Cuba’s nuclear chemist at the Oncology Update School.

For her part, the Bachelor of Genetics  Pamela Kuhlman also highlights the richness of interdisciplinarity: “We are scientists and we always study a particular area, but the opportunity I had was to have other points of view on my study and also be able to observe from another point of view some aspects that I had not observed before, it seemed a very good idea, I took advantage of it a lot, I integrated a lot of knowledge that will help me to be able to continue with my project ”.

Llambí adds to synthesize that “these programs seek to promote the formation of skills and critical thinking so that students and teachers can find solutions and solve any problem creatively and intelligently, with a certain work methodology provided by training in programming - in the ProgramAr- or interdisciplinary work with leading researchers - as in the CELFI- scholarships. ”

Zero + Infinity

The Zero + Infinity building is the third component of the Strengthening Program. Its development came to solve a demand: the need to expand the spaces for teaching and research. However, it has largely exceeded that goal by becoming an architectural benchmark for the region in terms of infrastructure, design, sustainability, and equipment.

The name of the building responds to the shape of its two central courtyards, which from an area view resemble the number zero and the infinite symbol. Its sustainability is given by the novel incorporation of geothermal energy in the Latin American region, which is later complexed with green terraces - with water collection by eco-draining slabs. It also has energy efficiency - which allows a saving of 70% of energy consumption; and enclosure with a hermetic double glazing system - which facilitates the use of natural light. Architecture favors and guides interdisciplinary dialogue based on common spaces and recreational areas.

This structure will allow providing adequate facilities for research centers that develop topics of national, regional and vacancy strategic interest within the framework of a university environment that communicates with related disciplines. The Department of Computer Science, the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences, and the Institute of Calculation and Applied Mathematics will be located in this emblematic building.

Its construction is almost finished. Only a few endings and some of the equipment remain, to finally be opened in 2020. The ground floor will take place for ten computer rooms with capacity for 50 machines each, along with their servers and administration and printing services. There will also be 19 classrooms with capacity for 60 students and 5 seminar classrooms, as well as reading and meeting rooms.

Technological Pole of Medicine 

The project of the Technological Pole of Medicine, which involves the development of infrastructure, equipment, and training of human resources, is the fourth component of the Program. Originally, the Polo was scheduled to take place in La Matanza, but it was relocated in the city of Bariloche, Province of Río Negro, as an effort to encourage other points of the Argentine territory further away from the Federal Capital. Its objective is to establish an entrepreneurial environment and culture for the generation and establishment of companies, in order to specify the transfer of products and services to the health system and the national socio-productive system, as well as to establish an interdisciplinary field of research and training of human resources, through the strategic union of entities such as the University of Río Negro, the Balseiro Institute, the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), the National Atomic Energy Commission, INVAP, INTECNUS, and the Ministry of Health of Río Negro.

"This component seeks to integrate academic, health and private sectors to find solutions that respond to the challenges of modern medicine and improve the health of the population," says Llambí. 

The Pole will have laboratories in operation that will provide technical services and technology-based companies, where activities aimed at training, services and dissemination of the techniques of the area will be carried out.

On its fiftieth anniversary, CAF is proud to announce the results of the  Entrepreneurship Strengthening Program,  which represents a significant and quality contribution to the training of students, teachers and researchers in relevant areas of science and technology for the productive development of the countries of the region.