Hablemos del Peru

We need support in the form of an initial investment to execute the Phase 1 of the project "Hablemos del Peru" ("let's talk about Peru")

"Hablemos del Peru" is a social innovation center, which, based on the analysis and massive dissemination of the country's history and culture, seeks to generate behavioral changes that strengthen national identity, social cohesion and civic values in an intercultural framework.

We have four projects, being the main one:

1. History dissemination web/app platform, for the massive Peruvian audience, using videos, social media, memes, etc. to viralize our history, with free and friendly access, showing an objective analysis of the events that influence our current situation, in order to generate greater social awareness that increases the national identity and cohesion.

The other three are complementary to support the same social impact:

2. Educational platform on history and culture, for people interested in investing in a modern/didactic way of learning about the country.

3. Diffusion of Peruvian music, for the massive audience, to promote local music through an app and public stores.

4. Promotion of experiential tourism, in general, with agreements with at least 12 communities that are already providing this service.

During my professional life I've worked in technology, leading telecommunications/cloud projects, first from a Telco, then from a large technology vendor, finally building my own company, successfully.

During this ~20-year period I've had the passion for contributing to my country through technology-based social innovation, and I've tried to do so with "hobby-like" projects. The difference now is that I'm ready to dedicate my life to this single purpose, as my country's situation cries for help while corruption and inequality levels arise.

I believe we should start focusing on the root causes of our social problems, through serious social innovation projects which focus on the long-term, as our governments are usually looking to cover the symptoms only.

I had the idea of "Hablemos del Peru" in 2014, while running another side project for local music dissemination (active for 2 years with discrete results but tons of lessons!). The main idea is to build an honest collective memory of how our country evolved to today, as it has been demonstrated that (1) we keep repeating the mistakes of the past, and (2) learning about multicultural history generates social cohesion, national identity and civic values, key components of a less corrupt, equal society.

We focus on reducing social inequality by fighting corruption and coloniality (including elitism, racism and others). For that, we have three hypothesis backed by social studies, linking the education in history and culture to an increment in social cohesion, identity and civic values, which as the same time impact in the reduction of corruption and inequality in the long-term.

Even though this project applies to most Latin American and other "third-world" countries, we are focusing first in Peru, a multicultural country with 30+ million citizens, but very centralized at the capital, Lima (where one third of the population lives), at many levels: wealth, privileges, infrastructure, health, education, etc.

Through our technology-powered, social innovation main project, which consists on viralizing the history and culture of the country through all possible media and in modern formats, which also include analytics to learn from historical patterns, we aim to contribute mainly in the social cohesion and national identity that we need to reduce corruption and social hierarchies.

This is a social innovation center that expects to generate quick short-term sustainability through the subscription-based projects (#2 & #3) which will maintain the one that generates the biggest impact (#1)

More info here.

Education is known as the key factor behind reducing corruption; there is a study (Uslaner/Rothstein) linking long-term educational investment (especially around national identity and social cohesion) since 19th century, with current corruption levels, which has been analyzed as the main reason behind Nordic countries being the happiest year over year (World Happiness Report, 2020)

Given this, what makes us unique, is that we use technology to dramatically accelerate education, avoiding waiting decades before obtaining results. For example:

• We will not sit and wait on a cultural platform, we will go after the people through the media they most consume, in the format they prefer (from academic videos to Whatsapp memes, even TikTok videos!)
• We will rely heavily in (historical) big-data & analytics, which will automatically correlate historical events, finding patterns that let people learn instantly, through quick charts, facts from the past that explain our present and prepare us for the future. For example, historic corruption costs per-government since 1810, as shown below.

• We are focusing on the latest UX/UI trends to design our educational platform with tech-powered didactics, including dynamic timelines, whiteboard animations, and tools that are not being leveraged today in Peru.

As mentioned before, we have analyzed Peru's situation and saw big challenges/opportunities. Peru is placed down in #63 in the World Happiness Report 2020, mainly explained by corruption levels, social cohesion and economics.

We think the first two (corruption, social cohesion) are main drivers for inequality in Peru and where we as social innovation center can contribute. This is further analyzed in an article I wrote on January: Can Peru be a happier country?

Our project is based on the hypothesis that building a more honest, collective memory of our country and how it evolved towards today, through viralizing its historical, key events, is the single strongest action we can take at the educational level to enhance social cohesion, national identity and civic values. 

There are many social studies that support our theories, including Latin American philosophers (P.Freire, E.Dussel), professors (Y.Estrada, E.Uslaner), scientists (B.Rothstein), institutions (IHGB), analysis (WHR2020) among other sources like, why not, the Nordic countries experience, which invested heavily in national identity and social cohesion teaching the 19th century.

That is why, we strongly believe we will be successful, and the long-term measures that work (strategic education) will translate to medium-term impact, by using the latest technology trends.