Lamonier Barbosa was working at a gym in Rio de Janeiro when he heard about an opportunity to be trained in AI.

The AI bootcamp, available from Microsoft at no cost, promised to build on what Barbosa had already learned tinkering with broken computer parts before the COVID pandemic abruptly shut down the global economy a couple of years ago.

Life for Barbosa during the pandemic was hard. His mother died from cancer, and lockdowns forced him to manage his grief in isolation as he struggled to pay rent. “It was a very complicated moment,” he recalls.

Once pandemic restrictions were lifted, Barbosa enrolled in programming courses offered by a popular technology education platform and later joined Microsoft’s AI training. “I always had this desire to learn and spent a lot of time studying,” says Barbosa, so, “I thought: This is a great opportunity.”

Today, Barbosa has an internship working for a multinational technology consulting firm that helps large companies use AI to build smarter, more efficient business systems. “Through the AI training program my life was totally transformed — from water to wine,” he says with a smile.

Barbosa is one of 2.5 million Brazilians who have taken advantage of the chance to learn how to use AI through a new Microsoft initiative, announced in September 2024, called ConectAI.

Working in collaboration with the Brazilian government and 26 official partner organizations, ConectAI aims to help skill 5 million Brazilians to use AI by the end of 2027 and has already trained half of them. As part of the initiative, Microsoft is also investing 14.7 billion Reais over three years—approximately $2.6 billion– in cloud and AI infrastructure in Brazil. The effort builds on previous training initiatives Microsoft has offered in Brazil beginning in 2020. Since then, the programs have trained 5.3 million Brazilians in digital skills, including AI.

ConectAI offers free online courses through LinkedIn Learning and partner platforms, covering everything from AI fluency and digital literacy to more advanced technical skills. It also aims to leverage the Brazilian government’s ongoing investments in digital and AI infrastructure to support economic and job growth, expand access to quality education and ensure Brazilians have the skills they need to compete for the jobs of the future.

Today, more than 93.6% of Brazilian households have access to the Internet, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). And Brazil has more mobile phone lines than people, with many Brazilians owning at least two mobile phones, one for work and one for personal use. According to the National Telecommunications Agency, the country has 268.6 million mobile phone lines for its population of 213 million.

But there is still a digital divide for people living in low-income neighborhoods and communities, such as Vivian Vasconcelos, a resident of Maracanaú in Ceará. “Nowadays, children are born interacting with technology. But I only started engaging with it when I was 14,” she says. “So, I developed a desire to learn so I wouldn’t fall too far behind, especially because it’s an essential tool both in the workplace and in education.”

“My plan when I was a child was to go to law school and become a criminal lawyer, and over time, to become a police chief, judge, and prosecutor,” says Vasconcelos, who is descended from the indigenous Pitaguary and Tapeba peoples. “That was my goal.”

After studying logistics in a technical high school, Vasconcelos learned she could take free courses in customer service, basic computer science and app development through a program created by Trust for the Americas and sponsored by ConectAI that promotes digital and AI skills. Vasconcelos had no computer at home, so she walked 40 minutes four times a week to a building in a nearby town outfitted with computers for students and job seekers.

Then her mother told her about a Microsoft course covering the latest developments in AI and a chance to work with a mentor. What Vasconcelos learned from her Microsoft mentor is something she’ll carry with her “for the rest of my life,” she says.

The experience “was really meant to broaden and deepen my knowledge of AI,” Vasconcelos explains. “It also served as an incentive to learn more…I kept asking myself, ‘Oh my God, will I ever be able to do that? Develop an app like that?’ I’m really into details, so the more someone explains things in depth, the more curious I get …to want to develop something myself.”

Without easy access to books, Vasconcelos says she appreciates the opportunity to learn through AI assistants and the internet. Her newfound AI skills have helped her make the most of her new job in a local textile factory, where she hopes to join the IT department. But she has not given up on her dream of studying law. “When you have a goal, age doesn’t matter,” she says. “What matters is the achievement.”

For Julia Ribeiro, achievement has been a way out of a difficult start and onto an exciting new path she never conceived of when she was a little girl.

“When I was younger, I thought I was going to be a doctor,” says Ribeiro, “but then everything changed.”

Ribeiro lives in Riberão Preto, in the southeastern state of Sao Paulo. The region plays a central role in Brazil’s agricultural economy and is known for coffee cultivation. Luckily for Ribeiro, it is also a bustling educational hub.

Midway through high school, when she was 14, Ribeiro’s parents divorced. When her father left, he cleared out the family’s bank accounts, and her mother’s job as a housecleaner barely covered their basic living expenses. She joined the National Service for Industrial Training (SENAI) as a young apprentice through a construction company and began technical studies in administration.

Ribeiro threw herself into her studies and decided to take introductory courses in machine learning. “I had no other option than to work hard,” she says.

To help support herself and her mother, “I applied to everything I could,” Ribeiro remembers. Her determination paid off when she was offered an apprenticeship as a service desk analyst at a large educational group that manages schools across Latin America and globally. “The machine learning course helped me to understand a little bit more about the world I was going to get into,” she points out.

After graduating from high school, Ribeiro enrolled in Microsoft’s AI-900 and AZ-900 courses—introductory certifications that provide essential knowledge in artificial intelligence and cloud computing—while attending a technical and vocational school within the SENAI network.

SENAI partners with industry to ensure student education aligns with business needs and is a longtime participant in the ConectAI initiative. Through SENAI, Ribeiro learned about a Microsoft AI course in cloud computing available at no cost. She jumped at the opportunity, spending 10 hours every Saturday over 8 weeks learning about AI and cloud computing.

Although she is still a college student, Ribeiro recently landed a coveted job as an infrastructure and cloud analyst at the same educational group– earning 10 times what her mother made as a housecleaner. “Someone trusts me,” she says with a smile.

The student credits her Microsoft courses, especially classes in the company’s Azure cloud, with helping her land her cloud analyst job, where she troubleshoots and uses AI to write code. “All these courses helped me … find solutions to help the group grow this technology and make it safe,” Ribeiro says. She was also selected to be one of the Microsoft Learning Ambassadors helping her colleagues learn to use and leverage AI to boost productivity.

Today, Ribeiro earns enough money to pay for her mother to go back to school to become a nurse. “Now she can do the work she’s always dreamed of,” she says.

What she loves about technology, Ribeiro says, is that it is always changing, providing new opportunities to learn and grow. “It never gets old, and it’s nice to keep up,” she notes. Once Ribeiro finishes her studies in cloud engineering, she plans to study software development.

But “I’m already in my dream job,” she says, “and at an age I would have never expected.”

Helping inspire students to see a future beyond what they thought possible is a passion for Virginia Chagas. It’s part of what drew her to a career as a teacher. A longtime technology enthusiast, she is a cheerleader for leveraging technology to help students learn and grow.

Recently, after a fight at school between students, Chagas suggested the class to use of AI to create posters with messages of respect and unity, showing that technology can be a bridge for empathy and dialogue.

Now working within Rio de Janeiro’s sprawling public school system, Chagas has had to shift her focus to managing a daily onslaught of administrative tasks. The teacher takes part in initiatives that bring schools, teachers, and the Municipal Department of Education closer together, contributing to teaching projects, teacher training, and support for school teams.

According to the city’s education department, around 65,000 students are enrolled in about 140 kindergarten through 9^th grade schools in Chagas’s district in Rio de Janeiro, alongside about 4,000 teachers. Rio de Janeiro has the largest public education network in Latin America, according to Unicef.

To keep learning and supporting other educators, Chagas works closely with Nova Escola, another nonprofit that is part of ConectAI, including courses on AI applied to education. Nova Escola offers professional development and lesson plans aligned to Brazil’s national curriculum standards.

Leveraging AI, Chagas ensures her department reviews and responds to hundreds of emails that flow into the district offices each day. Each of the 185 schools in her district has its own challenges and needs, from managing lunch vendors to repairing infrastructure to integrating updated curriculum. Emails come from all directions, from students, parents, fellow administrators and teachers.

So Chagas was thrilled to discover through Microsoft AI training that she could connect her email and documents to M365 Copilot, the AI companion and assistant, and ask for help. “I didn’t know that was possible!” she laughs. “It’s great!”

At her direction, Copilot analyzes and summarizes emails, extracts deadlines and drafts potential email responses for her review. She also uses AI to help document the work done to support students with special needs.

“This is a highly responsible department. We make sure to review everything carefully, keep drafts, and conduct thorough checks before anything is finalized,” says Chagas. “The AI tool helps a lot.”

Chagas encourages teachers in her unit to access free AI training to help them with lesson planning, grading and communicating with the administration and parents, and make more time to work directly with students.

She believes that AI tools, such as Copilot, do not replace teachers but help optimize time, plan more efficiently, and create space for what she says only humans can do: teach with meaning, presence, and care. Chagas advocates that teachers don’t need to do more, they need better conditions to succeed.

“Teachers are sometimes tired, afraid and overwhelmed with work,” she notes. “I’ve been in their shoes. That used to be my role. But we need to always be open to discover, to understand, and the school needs to evolve with society.”