La Red FestiLab.

The lack of coordination between local leaders of remote or marginal communities that promote solutions in their own region, young leaders who apply self-managed disruptive development without the support of the state. The few opportunities for local communities is one of the main problems related to social inequality, which is our goal to solve it by applying social innovation through the model of cultural integration, bringing together community leaders from science, art, technology and social entrepreneurship (CATEs). This proposal has the ambition of generating an ecosystem of collective development throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, identifying young local leaders for the different Latin American communities, forming integration nodes called: community laboratories. In this way, the FestiLab Network promotes sustainable community empowerment for open governance between the state, young local leaders and our society.

We are 154 million young people (between 19 and 35 years old) in Latin America and the Caribbean, and there are approximately 20 million young people called Ni Ni (they neither study nor work). The fundamental problem that is repeated throughout Latin America is the lack of opportunities for education due to social inequality resulting from a fragmented cultural identity. This lack of identity generates disinterest in community leadership and lack of motivation to face their own local problems, considering that 40% of the unemployed population in Latin America are young, these millions of affected young people end up dedicating themselves to self-employment in their own locality. Among the factors implicated in youth unemployment, it is related to labor and educational informality, reason for the lack of access to opportunities for a better quality of learning and socioeconomic development in rural communities to promote community intervention by connecting local leaders.

Our target audience are local leaders, those young people who live the critical reality in their locality and intervene through initiatives related to CATEs. For four years the Red Festilab has been working with various youth leaders of the CATEs using social innovation, every year in Peru cultural integration events are held bringing together the regional state, CATE leaders and citizens, all participating in solving real problems of their own locality. 

The process of social innovation is based on the integration of collective intelligences at the level of local communities, managing solution-proposals according to the priority needs of each community, thus promoting citizen participation led by agents of change and municipalities in each region.

Our solution is a service based on the co-creation of open spaces for cultural integration, uniting scientists, artists, technologists and social entrepreneurs (CATE leaders) with civil society through citizen participation events where local problems are solved with the support of the municipalities. This is a management process for social innovation to strengthen a collective development ecosystem throughout the country and, in this way, it is intended to replicate throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, we work under a sociocratic process using problem solving materials With canvas-type models and agile methodologies, finally, each leader has the possibility of a Latin American exchange through our network that favors the union of Latin American peoples.

We are a multidisciplinary team (pf 54 local leaders) of young activists who have worked together to impact societies through community management. We are very resistant and flexible to change, that is why we want to continue improving and solving greater challenges with this financing.

Our main key resource, of course, are local leaders. These agents of change have as key activities to carry out a cultural integration event that lasts three days: 1) academic festilab (oral presentations at universities or hackspaces); 2) festilab hackacthon (real community problem solving with municipalities, local leaders and society) and 3) festilab without borders (the free knowledge fair, you can connect with different local leaders from all over Latin America). Our allies are the Bio Summit community of the MediaLab MIT because I am a Biofellow, and so to impact a large number of young leaders of the CATEs and the local governments of each country that replicate this model of cultural integration. Our development is about a service to create an ecosystem of collective development where local or marginal communities benefit by living in the informality of a business or the lack of opportunity for education, as Red Festilab we want to impact millions of young people in communities rural or decentralized uniting their young local leaders to achieve open dialogue with citizens, the results are measured under the evaluation of citizens using an app to generate their vote for the proposal-solution developed by leaders for their own locality.

The financing of expenses is covered through collaborative self-management, this mode of financing has been maintained in a sustainable manner, but the need to achieve the support of a fund for social innovation that strengthens Latin American integration at the regional. It is very important that reciprocal and autonomous collaboration be maintained between the different regional nodes.

I believe that applying this grant we can gain greater visibility throughout America, because we have allies that could support us to go further with the TPrize award by connecting more local leaders throughout the Latin American region.