The third edition of the Social Innovation Sprint Session ended on December 5th with the presentation of the work by the undergraduate students of the third semester of Computer Science at Insper. For three weeks, the class organized into four mixed groups of students from Insper and Heliópolis and conducted immersions in the favela, located in the southeastern zone of the city of São Paulo. The Sprint is an activity of the regular curriculum carried out at the end of each semester in Computer Science, as a pedagogical proposal to connect learning with real-world challenges. The focus of the third semester Sprint is social innovation.
The students carried out three immersions in the territory to understand the context and converse with people from the community. Through empathy and interviews, they comprehended some of the problems in these vulnerable territories. Each group had to work on a previously identified challenge and propose a technological solution. Subsequently, using their technical knowledge and Design Thinking, they delved deeper into the problem, created solution prototypes, and ultimately developed applications. The projects stand out for their social value, one of the objectives of the Sprint.
The partner in the territory is the Union of Nuclei, Associations of Residents of Heliópolis and Region (Unas). Seven scholarship students, members of Unas, participate in the Sprint at each edition. Fabio de Miranda, Program Director of Computer Science at Insper, believes that the moment is one of consolidation and respect for the community's time, the most vulnerable link in the partnership. From the second edition of the Sprint, implementation scholarships were created to allow the best proposals to be effectively put into operation in Heliópolis. It's a way of giving back to the community for building together an enriching experience for the education of Insper students.
There are many potential technological solutions for the problems of the favela. In all opportunities, the creation was done in conjunction with the youth of Heliópolis and other local actors. “Something very cool is that this activity ends up inspiring some young people who are not yet in college to consider studying at Insper and discovering our scholarship program,” says Miranda. “It ends up becoming another movement to burst the bubble for both sides and help everyone overcome certain prejudices.”
For professor Paulina Achurra, Institutional Coordinator of the Center for City Research | Arq.Futuro Lab, it is gratifying to see that the partnership is advancing each semester. “We feel that Unas already sees us as reliable and long-term partners, that we will continue to work in the territory and not disappear tomorrow,” says Paulina. “That trust is very important for building local capacity. Additionally, it is very motivating for the class, as the opportunity to talk with people and work on a real solution for real problems, which will be implemented and used, is usually new for those at the beginning of their undergraduate program."
Four projects were developed this semester, identified from the pain points and needs of the Heliópolis population. The theme of domestic violence against children and adolescents motivated the project with the Psychological Assistance Center (Napsi) of Unas. The registration of cases in the community is done manually, on paper and in an Excel spreadsheet, but there is still no practical way to analyze the data and, therefore, give visibility to the issue's magnitude. The group's proposal is a control panel that works as a registration system and allows the creation of graphs to understand the demand, with filters for gender, race, religion, age group, type of violence, and ZIP code.
The Student Portfolio, in turn, is a digital tool to track the personal progress of students at Luiz Gonzaga do Nascimento Júnior Municipal Elementary School, known as EMEF Gonzaguinha. The public school in Heliópolis is seeking a more humanized way to recognize the individual trajectories of children beyond what is reflected in grades and attendance—the only information currently kept from the school experience. It does not consider the influence of external factors on low grades or absenteeism, such as health history and family problems. According to professor Marília de Santis, director of EMEF Gonzaguinha, the first pilot experience with the tool will take place from 2025.
For the Heliópolis and Region Homeless Movement, an app was designed to facilitate the registration of candidates for homeownership and the tracking of the service waitlist within the community. The current system is manual, paper-based, and the Excel spreadsheet option was abandoned after a sequence of data losses and recoveries. The empathy map showed that volunteers of the movement feel frustrated with the slowness and inefficiency of the process while considering the importance of ensuring access to housing and social justice. Digitalization would allow the volunteers to focus on other strategic activities and provide greater transparency in the process.
A fourth demand is the digitization of records at the Center for Children and Adolescents (CCA), improving the storage and organization of the institution's registry, which offers socio-cultural activities for children aged 4 to 14 in the school off-hours. The records are not standardized and can have up to 116 fields to fill out. The solution presented by the students would eliminate the need to manually rewrite the records every year and reduce the risk of inconsistencies in the information or loss of the paper file. Moreover, better data visualization would result in more precise knowledge of the actual demands regarding children and adolescents.
Paulina Achurra emphasizes the evolution of the Social Innovation Sprint Session. In February, Insper is expected to offer scholarships for students who will implement two projects from the Sprint in Heliópolis, one of them at EMEF Gonzaguinha. The allocation of scholarships is also being refined with the help of the Unas team, which took the initiative to recommend to Insper the names of young people who already work with the organization's equipment.
Student Vitor Raia was part of the group that attended Napsi. “I had never worked on a project more focused on the social side,” says Raia. “We visited Heliópolis three times throughout the process and got to know the observatory, the library, and the lookout. In our group, there was a colleague who lives in Heliópolis. I'm not sure to what extent our project managed to make a difference for the community members, but we had the best intentions. This perspective of working with people from different backgrounds, which adds so much to personal and professional life, makes us reflect on our daily lives and encourages us to broaden our horizons. I felt embraced by everyone.”
For student Ana Beatriz da Cunha, who worked on the Student Portfolio, the Social Innovation Sprint Session was one of the most remarkable experiences of her education. “During this activity, we delved deeply into the problem architecture process, seeking to understand the user's pain in-depth and explore viable technological solutions,” says Ana. “This project was very special because for a significant part of my life I studied in public schools and later in a popular prep course. In these environments, I learned how transformative education can be, especially for people like me, whose families could not afford private education. Still, my family always encouraged me to pursue my dreams. The Student Portfolio represents, for me, a concrete opportunity to give back and contribute to transforming education in Brazil, helping students and teachers organize and track their learning journeys more accessible and efficiently.”