A non-profit project accelerator.

I started to collaborate with Scholas Occurrentes in September 2014, designing and facilitating Design Thinking workshops with high executives of big companies like IBM, Microsoft, or Google. These workshops were an important part of the schedule of the Second Worldwide Education Congress organized by Scholas in the Vatican.

Generate a paradigm shift in education through the integration of educational communities.

Scholas Occurrentes is an initiative aimed at young people in the world that has its origin in Buenos Aires in 2001 when Jorge Bergoglio was Archbishop in the City. Driven by Pope Francisco, Scholas works with schools and educational communities around the world to educate young people in the commitment to the common good. It links technology, art, and sport to promote social integration and the culture of the meeting for peace through education.

Understand the needs of the school’s network and engage big partners to solve them.

During the workshops, we proposed a big challenge to connect the big technological companies who collaborated with the school’s needs.

In the first session, we analyzed the context of the problem using different maps: system maps, stakeholders maps, and a mind map built using the "Pope's Brain" topic. We designed and shared these exercises between the groups to mix different perspectives: social, educational, and technological.

At the second day, we generated ideas and matrixes that helped us to find valuable solutions for the educative community and viables from an economic and technological point of view.

In our last session, we designed prototypes of the best ideas using storytelling technics. In a private audience, we were very lucky to share the ideas and projects with Pope Francis and convert one of these in a great project to still working with my team and Scholas when we came back to Madrid.

One platform to connect them all.

During the workshops, entrepreneurs were identified as a key part of the process and a powerful source of ideas, and we started to think in an accelerator of educational and technological projects, nonprofit, connecting the entrepreneurial talent, the resources of large companies, and the needs of the Scholas.Social network (a virtual community with more than 400,000 Schools around the world).

Back in Madrid, we designed the right processes to turn entrepreneur’s ideas into useful tools for the community. We did a deep immersion on our Actors Map and designed several blueprints to connect all elements in a flow that comes with the submission of ideas by entrepreneurs and ends with the incorporation of the tool developed in an accessible space for all Schools Network. This is how Scholas Labs was born to make a real difference for schools in need.

We apply visual design and agile development to materialize the entire ideation in an open, usable and accessible platform where the community itself chooses the most interesting projects to accelerate based on a schedule of calls, with the goal of launching 12 projects per year. The selected projects are within the acceleration program where entrepreneurs are supported by a team of services and mentors of large corporations.

Making noise around the world: Labs Jam

The first year, we launched the platform to try different models of collaboration, proposing challenges and making calls to receive projects from entrepreneurs around the world. In parallel, we designed a process based on Lean methodology that would allow us to support entrepreneurs in all phases of the project and accelerate their ideas.

For the second year, in order to reach a larger community and spread the work and methodology of Scholas Labs, we organized a Jam simultaneously in 5 cities of the world (Madrid, Buenos Aires, Rome, Miami, and Mexico) to work on a common challenge for a full weekend. I was very lucky to coordinate the seasons in Mexico and to be close to nice and engaged people from the educational community.

Using technology and education to help children fulfill their dreams.

Today, companies such as IBM, Google, or Microsoft are actively involved in the project with all kinds of resources. The platform has received more than 800 projects to be accelerated and moreover, 15 of them are in the acceleration phase.

As one of the project coordinators, I help entrepreneurs to develop their ideas, connect with enterprises and make the projects real. In addition to the acceleration of the projects, we work actively to understand and transmit the needs of the educational community and connect them with talent and resources, as well as to ensure the responsible use of technology within the foundation.