Project “Na Lida da Vida”

experience report about guidance for the work with graduating students from the psychology course in Federal University of Ceará, Brazil

Abstract

This text presents experiences developed in the extension project “Na Lida da Vida: work orientation and workers' health promotion”, which involves professors and students of the Psychology course at Federal University of Ceará, State of Ceará, Brazil, linked to the Work Psychology Nucleus (NUTRA/UFC). The project, created in 2019, aims to promote actions of work orientation and prevention and promotion of workers’ health among young people in the process of labor insertion in the theoretical framework of Social Psychology of Work. We present the work carried out in three semi-directed groups with concluding Psychology students, one in-person in 2019 and two virtual in 2020. The participants' experiences have been of suffering, anguish, uncertainty and fear about their future work, as well as feelings of helplessness, unpreparedness and vulnerability intensified by the context of Covid-19. We emphasize the importance of spaces for caring and reflection on this moment of transition; of the elaboration of contextualized labor insertion plans; and of the construction of support networks to face the difficulties presented by this public, especially in the pandemic context.