Interview with PRAMOD CHINTAPENTA, Futurely COO
December 20, 2021
Interview with PRAMOD CHINTAPENTA, Futurely COO, digital platform for university orientation and e ITS.
High school represents the first, great step towards the intellectual and professional growth of any kid. However, what should come after this path is not always a simple and conscious choice. Yet, to make the wrong choice may mean to undermine one’s future. Futurely goes precisely in this direction: to help young high school students, to make a wise decision, right and as much as possible in line with their attitudes and passions. Let’s see what it is!
What’s Futurely?
Futurely is a digital platform that aims to help young students in after-school orientation through an online platform. Through different paths, young people can more easily identify the passions and skills that characterize them, on which to build their professional future. The added value of the platform is precisely the mentors, young workers able to enthusiastically explain their concluded university experience and establish with high school students an equal, direct and more conscious relationship.
How does Futurely work?
By subscribing to Futurely you can take advantage of several features:
– Personality Test and the presentation of the list of the more suitable university faculties ;
– Analysis of skills and advice on how to develop them; guided creation of a curriculum
– List of criteria for university choice; methods on how to evaluate and make the choice
– Information catalog on universities; evaluation of options for studying abroad; a tool to prioritize University options and to define a shortlist
– Exchange and comparison with young workers
– Section dedicated to the templates for the presentation of the PCTO at the degree
Futurely path webinar hours are recognizable as PCTO hours, although such recognition is at the discretion of the school itself. In this sense, there are three different ways to participate in Futurely webinars:
– Community offer (10H PTCO)
– Premium offer (20h PTCO)
– Elite offer (30h PTCO
If you want to know more about the platform, read the interview with PRAMOD CHINTAPENTA, Futurely COO!
Hello First PRAMOD CHINTAPENTA, nice to meet you and thank you for the time you are dedicating to us. Tell us something more about this beautiful project
The pleasure is ours, we are always happy to talk about our project! Futurely is a digital path that wants to help future generations achieve their future, developing skills, going on new interests, by promoting excellence and innovation, giving you the chance to better know yourself: we do not give closed answers, but we horizons, and help children to grow according to three key factors: awareness, curiosity, and courage. It is a concrete way of supporting young people, through a personalized and structured path in twenty progressive steps, starting from self-knowledge to reach the right choice about the university to attend.
How and when did the Futurely idea was born?
Elisa and Mariapaola started working on this project when Elisa was finishing her degree at MIT and Mariapaola was beginning her MBA at Harvard, in 2019: they realized how little support high school kids had to face such a delicate and important moment as choosing their own future. Choosing what to do when you grow up is difficult for everyone. If life is made of small continuous choices that gradually lead you to choose a certain path, there are moments that weigh more than others, and the choice of university is one such moment. This choice has a deep weight on what will be our professional and personal life. And yet, high school boys are too often left to themselves in this choice. This leads to short-term problems: one in three university students is dissatisfied with the choice and one in four changes after the first year. There are also long-term problems, which have an impact on employment in our country, on talents and on the ability to innovate. Let’s say this is a problem that combines deep social, economic and human aspects.
How long did it take to shape the project?
From the moment Elisa and Mariapaola structured the idea to the moment they launched the first Futurely class it has been 14 months. In reality, however, Futurely is constantly evolving: day by day we modify structures and paths, introducing new elements and expanding our offer. Recently we also launched Futurely in the USA, adapting the proposal to the American market.
How are kids and schools responding?
In Italy, the project is enjoying a decent success: we are currently in dialogue with 1% of Italian high schools, from 2019 to today we have met 9000 students and 700 of them have taken part in our paths.
The right choice about University Faculty means investing concretely and well on your future: in your opinion, what is the situation of Italian students in this sense? And what has changed compared to the past generations?
Today, 30% of university students are dissatisfied with their choice and 20% change university after the first year. There are also wider repercussions on society, with companies not finding profiles to hire and young people not finding jobs. Schools and parents do what they can, but there are not always the resources available. Futurely was born before the pandemic, to solve a problem that is very deep and that was definitely accentuated by the pandemic. With the Pandemic there are fewer and fewer resources available, it is simply no longer possible to go to universities to participate in open days. In addition, kids feel more and more disconnected from the surrounding world. The pandemic has increased everyone’s laziness a little and this does not motivate them into looking to their future with boldness and hope.
The positive side is that today, compared to the past, there is more sensitivity on the theme: our kids are not more willing to settle for something that does not like and that does not satisfy them, they want to be certain to choose the perfect career for them and that can be rewarding, and, in this choice, are absolutely supported by the parents.
How did you launch your project?
We followed an approach that we could call “learning by doing”. We started with support from Harvard, which makes various resources available to students and selects ideas to support – Futurely was selected by both the I-Lab and The Rock Accelerator. These are several programs that provide dedicated resources for students who have promising ideas. There, with the support of guidance experts, professors and Italian psychologists, Elisa and Mariapaola set up the main structure of the path, which they began to test on small classes of students (who participated for free), from which they received fundamental feedback. When we defined all the steps, we started building our network of contacts with schools and mentor networks and set up a marketing and communication strategy. Today we still keep learning from our mistakes and improve day by day.
A small case of success that you take credit for??
The greatest success for us is the feedback of the students that, at the end of the path, that manage to attend the university they actually choose An email in particular, sent to us some time ago by a girl of ours, struck us and we would like to share an excerpt with you:
You have helped me achieve an overview of the world and the possibilities around us that no one has ever given me the chance to achieve. I have been accompanied and guided on an inner journey that I had never done before, probably all of these ideas and characteristics of my person that came out, were already part of me, but without you, I would not have known them, you helpem rearrange those pieces and I’ll be forever grateful.
You have accompanied me in a fantastic growth.
I believe that you, your team, your mission will succeed in something that not even thirteen years of school unfortunately have not been able to pull out: you give us the awareness, which is so important and fundamental, but which most of the time is kept hidden.
You know how to bring out the best of each of us, which then corresponds to finding ourselves, our most sincere identity, which will then be the guide for our future. You help us to believe in ourselves, in our potential, you tell us that we can do it, when before us we see and we are shown a lot of obstacles.
You’re a force.
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