Empower Rio's Slums: Hub for Social Innovation

October 1st, 2022

Dear donors,

Once again, we are grateful for the opportunity to receive your support. It is a pleasure once again to bring you the most recent updates and exciting news here from the Hub of Innovation, a space dedicated to favela innovation and entrepreneurship in Rio de Janeiro.

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As a space that thrives on physical presence, COVID-19 was rough, but thankfully the last couple of months has buried those post-pandemic, empty house sorrows for good. Gradually, community leaders,  entrepreneurs, students, and social projects returned to use our space to develop their activities, build connections and improve their skills. Since May, the average public using our coworking space for free has been increasing, with around 180 visitors per month.

Offering a professional and comfortable coworking environment that embodies the heart and soul of the favela has become our primary objective. Today we are open practically every day of the week, from 9 am to 7 pm, so that any community resident can study or work for free - and with comfort - to go after their dreams. However, the potential of the COMMUNITY INNOVATION HUB is not limited to this. We want to offer an infrastructure comparable to the best workspaces across the city. But in addition, we invest in training focused on community entrepreneurship. We believe that the favela holds the answers to solving its problems, therefore if we create a fertile and innovative ecosystem here, we will undoubtedly begin to see the transformation unfold and flourish.

A lot has happened here at the tables of our coworking space. Social projects continue to use the office to carry out their activities:

• Batucavidi - The batucada project of our board member and former incubee, Ísis Maria, taught social marketing classes to 10 young students in August.
• Casa do Mar - Our oldest partner project continues to offer daily English classes and tutoring to around 30 children monthly, putting them in contact with foreign volunteers.
• Play Life - This football and sports social project for the community, based in the upper part of the favela, uses our classroom to provide tutoring for about nine little athletes every week.
• Favela Experience - In partnership with AK&P and G Adventures, visits to the community are carried out with the opportunity to get to know the active social projects and their leaders, thus awakening social awareness in travelers through impact tourism and guaranteeing essential revenue streams for projects that transform lives inside.

At the same time, in the last few months, we have focused our energy on returning to participate in events that add value to our community. In July, we collaborated with logistical and communication support for the ophthalmological inclusion social actions of the NGO RENOVATIO in Vidigal, which resulted in 513 consultations and the distribution of more than 300 pairs of glasses. In August, we hosted a seminar as part of the BLOCKCHAIN RIO CONFERENCE, the largest Web3 event in Latin America. It was an incredible achievement to host more than 80 people from the favela interacting with web 3.0 innovators inside our house. We were honored to see our work in this area being recognized at such an important event. And from this partnership, we created CriptoConecta, a monthly meeting to exchange ideas with residents about disruptive technologies. Through this event, we will ensure that the favela has an equal chance to take advantage of blockchain technologies and compete in the future global labor market.

Gradually, we see our vision of building a favela fluent in innovation and technology coming to fruition. New partners believed in the proposal and brought their initiatives to develop here at the COMMUNITY INNOVATION HUB with us:

• Festa das Crianças do Vidigal - The largest event aimed at childhood and adolescence in the community, with around 1,000 people involved, is now being produced and managed from within our office, with the technical support and mentoring of the Favela Inc team.
• Os Favelados Pode Podcast - Finally, the pilot of the community podcast recorded on our premises was born. A program aimed at valuing the intelligence that springs from the community, in affinity with the values we build here. We hope this is the first of many programs recorded at the VIDIGAL COMMUNITY INNOVATION HUB.

We understand that making this space available for free is our obligation. But we want to go above and beyond. We are working on genuinely cultivating an ecosystem of favela entrepreneurship. Every Monday, we are pleased to welcome our in-house Start-up expert, Thiago Asevedo, to conduct strategic consulting and mentorship sessions with local community businesses. Soon we will be proud to observe the birth of authentically favela-based start-ups led by people here in Vidigal. For 2023, we are already working on launching the second rendition of our marquee Community Business Incubation Program, supported by the expertise we have built up over all these years and a vast international network of partners, mentors, and experts.

We are proud of what we have accomplished since recovering from the pandemic, but we know this is only the beginning, and there is so much more to accomplish. Thank you again on behalf of everyone here at the VIDIGAL COMMUNITY INNOVATION HUB and FAVELA INC for supporting us and being part of our journey. More than ever, our people count on the generosity of people like you to help us keep our heads high and our hearts strong as we ensure a bright future for the residents here.

The challenges are significant, but we remain calm with the security of having you, donors, by our side and the Vidigal community in our hearts.