Empower Rio's Slums: Hub for Social Innovation

Dear donors,

Happy new year to all of the amazing contributors who have helped support Favela Inc.'s Hub of Innovation. Here in Vidigal we are continuing to work hard to keep our spirits high and continuously work to create a truly unique space that provides local favela residents with access to tools, knowledge and infrastructure that would be otherwise hard to come by without traveling outside the favela.

In our last update we shared with you that we had conducted a variety of infrastructural improvements to make our space even better. Additionally we shared that we were welcoming some new team members to the organization that would help us to improve our operations and grow. 

At that time it seemed that we had gotten through the peak of the pandemic and that things were slowly moving back to normalcy. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case and the new variant of COVID-19 has continued to wreak economic havoc on the residents of the favelas. This required us to take a hard look at our core priorities and focus on ensuring the survival and sustainability of Favela Inc. at the institutional level. After extensive conversation with our management team and our strategic partners, we realized that we would need to scale back some of our plans and ground ourselves in the necessities of the current situation.

That being said there are still so many important updates and exciting things to share with you about the current and future status of the hub of innovation:

• We recently brought on a new director to run the space who has years of experience as an owner of cultural spaces in the nightlufe district of Lapa. Welcome to the team Bruno!
• The expansion of the current space to include the lower level of the building expanded the total space from 130 square meters to 250 square meters (2700 sq feet). We are working with potential sponsors to house on the new floor: a café, stage for presentations and workshops, and a gaming zone.
• Renovation of the meeting room along with new tech equipment to facilitate collaboration and hybrid meetings;
• Partnership discussions with three major companies to create amazing educational programming for the community and bring much needed investment into the space to guarantee our overhead costs.
• A redesign of the branding strategy of the space (including potentially a new name) in order to create a more inclusive feel for favela residents followed by an inter community marketing effort to bring more people into the space (pending the pandemic permits)
• English classes going on three times a week in partnership with a local school totaling around 30-50 students.

With the newest COVID variant still spreading throughout the community and the world we are taking our time to start normalizing activities to original capacity in order to ensure the security of the community. In the meantime we will continue to focus our efforts on team building, marketing, fundraising and partnership development and improving our infrastructure for the near future.

Thanks again from all of us here at Favela Inc. for continuing to support us and be a part of our journey. Now more than ever the social sector is counting on generous people like you to help us stay resilient and working hard to help those most vulnerable in our communities. We look forward to bringing you a lot of incredible updates and news in our following GlobalGiving Report in 3 months as our team is highly focused on designing an impact hub that can become a global reference in this sector.

All the best,

Ana Beatriz Ribeiro