A young person can learn to write code and still have little idea how a network carries their data, how an account is compromised, or who sets the rules of an online service. The Instituto da Hora in Brazil starts from that missing layer. Founded in 2020 by computer scientist Nina da Hora, the nonprofit works on data, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity with an explicit focus on Black and Indigenous people active in technology. In a 2021 interview, da Hora spoke of helping Black girls feel they belong in computing and of never having had a Black math or computing teacher. Its training program Encriptades brings that agenda down to the level of networks, systems and practical digital care.
The institute’s own description makes a pointed claim about expertise: debates over AI and security should include people whose communities are usually treated as users or targets of technology, rather than authors of its rules. This does not mean identity alone confers technical authority. It means decisions about risk and access can be distorted when a narrow professional class defines the problem for everyone else. Who can investigate a breach, challenge data collection or design a safer service depends partly on who has been taught the underlying machinery.
The Encriptades program page set out an eight-week, in-person 2026 course in Rio de Janeiro, scheduled to begin May 4. Its curriculum covered computer science, cybersecurity, internet governance, networks and digital-care practices, with projects and employability mentoring. The page currently says applications are closed. It does not publish independently verified completion or placement results, so the syllabus and announced structure are the evidence we have. Those details are enough to identify a meaningful educational choice: teach how systems operate and how institutions govern them, rather than reduce technology education to a list of coding languages.
Security training is often marketed to companies as a defensive purchase. Encriptades frames it as knowledge that can circulate among people whose data and labor are already inside those systems. A worker who understands an authentication failure or a deceptive link has a different position from one who can only follow a checklist. A person who studies internet governance can ask why a platform’s defaults favor one kind of user. These are skills with labor-market value, but they also change the terms of public participation.
The project cannot solve structural exclusion by itself. A short course cannot guarantee a job, and technical knowledge does not compel employers to share power. Its design nevertheless disputes a familiar sequence: first invite underrepresented people into basic coding, then hope the deeper questions of privacy, control and policy will somehow follow. Nina da Hora’s institute places those deeper questions at the beginning. It treats a network as something to understand, contest and improve, rather than as invisible plumbing beneath an app.