Vinicius Junior launches education app to help poor students in Brazil

Vinicius Junior has started the season brilliantly, scoring five goals for Real Madrid to help them go top of La Liga. The 21-year-old has also been building a legacy for himself off the pitch. The Brazil forward has set up Instituto Vini Jr, an organisation that aims to use technology and sport to educate young Brazilians and, ultimately, make the country a more equal place.

The quality of public schools in Brazil leaves a lot to be desired. Rich families tend to send their children to expensive private schools, where they are given the best possible chance to reach the country’s federal universities, which are free for students who make the grade. The fact that university education is free in Brazil may suggest that social mobility is available to all but, by paying for their children to attend exclusive private schools, richer parents can effectively game the system.

Vinicius knows how tough it can be for poorer children so he is trying to do something to help students who cannot afford a private education. His institute has launched Base, an education app that uses football as a means of engaging children. The app has made its debut at his old school in Rio, with the plan to expand further next year.

“My first concern was to help these young kids to achieve more via education,” says Vinícius. “Football is a dream, but isn’t it wonderful if we can help kids to get out of poverty by studying? My goal is to make it happen in the medium and long term. We need to have more doctors, lawyers, engineers coming out of the favelas. We intend to give opportunities to them.

“There is still a huge gap in literacy in Brazil. It’s good that we launched the app in the school where I studied because I knew how it was. I have a lot of fond memories of those times, of course, but mostly of playing football! I just thought that I could do more and I’m doing more. We have a lot of examples of athletes doing that. I’ve been inspired by what LeBron James, Lewis Hamilton and Marcus Rashford are doing. So, I began doing something for my neighbourhood first, but who knows if it can grow across Brazil.”

Vini and his family have always helped São Gonçalo, his local area within Rio. When he was younger, not yet earning big money as a footballer, his family made smaller donations and helped in any way possible. Now that he is a Real Madrid player and Brazil international, he can do more. He is the sole investor in the institute, spending nearly R$2 million of his own money to get it off the ground.

“It was good to unite football and education. This app is something that makes studying more fun. We had been working on it for a year and a half, and the pandemic also made us see how important it is to give better conditions to the people in the communities. There’s a big educational gap [between the classes] that we are trying to help reduce. I visited the kids a few months back and I saw how important this is, and how the kids feel better by doing the activities,” he says.

“They use the app while they are in school. It has a lot of exercises and levels which they have to answer correctly to pass. We also do face-to-face activities with the students, always using sports as the background for maths and Portuguese, for example. But they learn more about social problems in the world, like how we need to better treat the environment and treat people with equality.”

Bruna Ferreira Matos, an eight-year-old student at the school, is one of the kids using the app. She is very glad to be part of it. “It has a lot of puzzles. I loved it and I feel like it’s easier to learn with Base than with my books. I would like to use it more often, like everyday, because it’s so good.”

The school, named after the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, is the first one to receive the project. But Vini Jr and his staff plan to expand it next year. This is only the start.