Our stakeholders speak out – Local Communities
Stakeholders speak
Local communities
Solvay employees pass on a lot of knowledge to us, helping us deepen the knowledge we pass on to students.
Helena Onaga
Helena Onaga
- Coodinator of the Chemical Course, ETEP Technical Public School, Paulinia, Brazil
EducAção is a training program for chemistry teachers run by volunteers at the Solvay Paulínia unit in Brazil. It transforms Solvay’s plants and laboratories into classrooms, and has reached out to more than 2,000 students.
Helena Onaga
I teach chemistry in a public school in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Because most teachers spend all their time in the classroom, they have little contact with recent advances. I had the idea of workshops for teachers in a chemical company. I suggested this to the community relations coordinator of a Solvay plant in my city, Paulínia, two years ago. He agreed and assembled a team of volunteer trainers at the unit. Now around twenty chemistry teachers from two technical schools attend monthly training sessions in the Solvay laboratories and production areas. We address topics related to the new techniques used in production, analysis and environmental control such as effluent treatment and waste disposal. We had high expectations, and the EducAção program has enabled us to keep up-to-date on advances in chemistry and improve our classes.
Quite a lot of Solvay’s trainees in chemistry come from the schools taking part in the program, meaning it’s valuable for both the young people and Solvay.
Alongside this, Solvay organizes annual visits to the plant for our students, and the guides are usually alumni of our schools. This is a very positive experience for the young people, who can dream: “One day I could work at Solvay, too”.
19
teachers from two schools trained in 2017
25
site employees involved
14
training modules
2,000 +
students impacted
Wanderson Lelis
- R&I Manager, Coatis GBU, Paulínia, Brazil
Wanderson Lelis
Participating in the program and sharing a little knowledge was extremely gratifying. Through practical examples from the industry, teachers could see correlations between the courses they teach and applications in high-performance industries, such as automotive and aerospace. This helps them make their courses more concrete for the students, raising their interest and discouraging them from dropping out of school.
I am proud to work in a company that helps young people understand how studying at school can help them get on in life.