Almost 500 young people on the waiting list to enter the Tumo Coimbra educational program

Tumo Coimbra, a free educational program focused on creative technologies, currently has 914 participants, aged between 12 and 18, and has almost 500 on the waiting list to join the project.

The project started in September, in a confluence of desires and investments from companies linked to Coimbra, national foundations and the City Council, operating in the former CTT building, in the city center, provided by Altice Portugal for the program that seeks to combine technology and creativity in training of young people.

“We are very satisfied with the results of Tumo Coimbra in these first six months”, stated the program director, Filipa Cunha, in a written response sent to the Lusa agency, highlighting that in a data survey carried out at the beginning of 2024, the degree of satisfaction of young people it was 6.8, on a scale of 1 to 7.

For Filipa Cunha, although Coimbra was the first example of its kind in Portugal (Tumo started in Armenia in 2011 and has centers all over the world), the team considers that it has been possible to give young people, “regardless of their socioeconomic level , a disruptive learning space with a differentiating offer in technology and arts, where creativity, critical spirit and resilience prevail”.

According to data from Tumo Coimbra sent to the Lusa agency, there are currently 914 participating students, of which 70% are aged between 12 and 15 and the remainder between 16 and 18.

Currently, Tumo has 495 young people on the waiting list and has a dropout rate of around 9%, continuing to welcome “new young people throughout the year”.

With a current capacity of 1,050 students, Tumo Coimbra intends to reach “1,500 young people in the coming years”, believing that an increase in places will be possible in the next academic year. Regarding gender, almost 60% of participants are male and 40% female, he said.

Around 80% of students are enrolled in the municipality’s public network and 12% benefit from school social action, a figure slightly below the municipality’s overall rate, which, according to the Coimbra City Council, has around 16% of students benefiting from social action. school, between the 3rd cycle and secondary education.

Tumo Coimbra, which opened at the end of September and whose educational activities began on October 2, offers two-hour face-to-face sessions, twice a week, in areas such as animation, game development, programming, music, graphic design or robotics, among others.