The Costa Rica Ministry of Education announced the launching of a project that will teach Portuguese language to students from six public high schools starting in 2017.

“Falemos Português” is the name of the project that will benefit teens from technical high schools in Santa Ana, Sabana Sur and Pavas and the bilingual experimental schools from San Ramon, Grecia and Belen.

In each of the schools there will be two groups of 17 students each that will receive three hours a week of Portuguese. In total 204 students will benefit from the project.

According to data by the Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency, there’s 29 companies in the country that require workers that speak Portuguese.

“This will allow students to have work opportunities with the acquisition of linguistic competences. They will also have more opportunity to opt for one of the scholarships offered by the Brazilian Government”, explained Sonia Marta Mora, Minister of Education.

The investment of this initiative is of close to 16 million colones, and it will extend through 2019.

This is the fourth language included by the Ministry of Education in public schools in Costa Rica, since they already offer English, French and Mandarin in other schools. The Mandarin project began in March of 2016 with six high schools but is extending to four other schools in 2017 with the objective that at least 600 students learn this language.