Emanuele Noventa, 25 years, Venezia
Management Internship in Brazil, Sorocaba
April-October 2010

Responsibilities: creation of statistical metodology for Banco Pérola, and an Information Management system.

"Hi everybody, I’m Emanuele from Venice. I participated to Social Business Program Artemisia in Brazil, which aimed to develop social business start-ups. We were 13 in all Latin America.

My project was about a microcredit institution: Banco Pérola. I’m graduated in Statistics and I’m glad I could use my knowledge to help them develop their company. When I arrived they had 12 costumers, nowadays more than 30.

What impressed me the most it that the purpose of my work was completely different. I was coming from greedy Europe, where what every company does is just maximizing their incomes, and in that moment I was working in a bank which didn’t want to make money! Their main purpose was to help as much people as possible. And I assure that when you wake up in the morning, it makes a difference to work for such a goal.
In normal life, when you need a loan you dress up smart and go to a bank. In the microcredit world, the bank comes to your place, and you can share a cake while they try to solve your problems.

Life outside work hours was even better: Brazilian people are just awesome. Their main proverb is “a gente da um jeito”. Don’t worry, we’ll fix it. They never get angry, and if they do, after two hours everything is solved. They really know how to enjoy life, and one of my key learning points was that you don’t need money to do it. You just need some friends and, if available, music and cachaça.

After internship and during weekends, I took some time to travel. AIESEC network gave me a huge help, because in every city I could meet some people to host me of show me around. But in particular I’m thankful to AIESEC in Sorocaba, my host LC, because they dedicated me so much time and effort and, especially, they helped me not to feel alone even if I was 10,000 Kms far from home. With the other interns, we were like a family, doing everything together and supporting each other in times of homesickness. Now I’m still in contact with them, and I realized the world is much smaller than we think.

My discovery is that I learnt to always challenge myself. If there are two roads, take the less travelled one. There will be more difficulties but it will lead to a much more interesting path. I could have just started working in a whatever company in Italy, but I chose this other option instead, and I will remember this experience for all my life. "