Futuro Black: a journalist from Pernambuco brings together black professionals on a platform
Working as a news producer for 7 years, Thiago Augustto created Futuro Black in search of a solution to the lack of diversity.
Credit: Disclosure
By: Eduarda Nunes / Favela em Pauta – Lupa do Bem
Working for seven years as a report producer, Thiago Augustto created a contact sheet with black professionals, to solve his own concern about the lack of diversity among the journalistic sources he dealt with daily.
In 2021, he went further and, with a team formed by pedagogue Dayse Rodrigues and designer, Iron Santos, created the Futuro Black platform: a bank of sources and black talents so that no one else can say that, in the market, there are no black people trained to work or give an interview.
A little over a month ago, Futuro Black has already received more than 300 registrations, promoted a training course, supported another and was sought after by media outlets and companies in other areas as well.
The idea is to connect people to opportunities and achieve national coverage for the platform. The team is confident: in addition to Pernambuco, people from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia already make up the banks.
Unemployment and informality rates
In Brazil, with 14 million unemployed and 35 million workers without professional links or in the informal market, factors such as gender and race interfere a lot. According to the IBGE, the country ended 2020 with women (52.9%) and black people (72.9%) leading the ranking of unemployed, for example.
Initiatives such as Futuro Black try to contemplate black people who already have some space in the market and also those who want to debut or replace themselves.
“We know that young black people, many of them are not in the job market. So, we thought of also offering training courses for these people. Courses, for example, on one’s own identity and formation of the person’s self, in addition to technical courses”, says Thiago.
The first training offered was precisely on racial re-education, with Dayse, co-founder of the platform.
Futuro Black: inclusion for work and new perspectives
Partnerships with other initiatives that promote training and inclusion of black people in the job market, as well as the construction of new perspectives on the world, are part of Futuro Black’s script.
On the project’s Instagram page, you can follow the offer of these free training courses. On the platform, it is possible to both register and finds professionals according to job demand.
Another concern that motivated the creation of this project was the discomfort with the treatment given to black people in the sense of summarizing their contributions in the discussions only to their experiences related to racism.
The choice to create a bank of sources and talents is to show the formation of black people without contribution to the world in different ways.
According to Thiago, “it is problematic when we are a source of information only based on our skin color, based on our race. We are not necessarily talking about our work, our will.”
The team is excited and believes that with the greatest interaction with Brazil and regions through the internet, it is possible to contact people who are all over the country and highlight the relevance of the platform.
