Blend Edu

Inequality in the workplace is a major issue that needs to be addressed in Brazil. Blend Edu is a social impact startup that creates educational experiences to promote diversity in Brazilian companies, building an inclusive culture. Our current goal is to launch “Diversidade SA”, making it the first and largest virtual learning community to address organizational diversity in Brazil.

Currently, our goal is to create the largest enterprise community in Brazil focused on diversity and inclusion. In the next 4 years (by 2023), we plan to reach 250 companies (200 of the largest companies of Brazil and 50 scale-ups). By doing so, we hope to reduce inequality and create equal job opportunities for all.

There’s a common belief that Brazil is a diverse country: our population has 51.4% of women, 52.9% of black people, 23% of people with disabilities and it’s estimated that 8.7% are LGBTI. However, when looking at the executive positions of the 500 largest companies, we see it’s only composed of 13% of women, 4% of black people and 0.6% of people with disabilities. This “glass ceiling” is the top of the iceberg, which demonstrates that companies fail to create an inclusive environment.

The pay gap between men and women is - on average - 30% in Brazil. In one survey, 1 in 5 recruiters stated that they would not hire an LGBTI person and 68% of Brazilians claim to have witnessed some homophobia in the workplace. At the same time, 23% of black people in Brazil were victims or witnessed some situations of racism in the labor market.

Inequality in the workplace is a major issue that needs to be addressed! 

There are proven results for organizations that invest in inclusion. Companies with higher diversity levels have a financial performance 35% better, employees are 17% more engaged and 75% perceived a positive space for innovation.

The mission of Blend Edu is to create an inclusive future through the power of education. Every solution we design is focused on creating equal opportunities for women, black people, LGBTs, people with disabilities and refugees in organizations. But, in order to achieve this goal, we need to raise awareness and educate people around the importance of diversity.

Therefore, "Diversidade SA" end users are leaders and employees (informal leaders of diversity affinity groups) of organizations that want to create an inclusive culture.

In our platform business leaders and employees will be able to engage in live webinars, valuable content and discussion forums, so they can understand how to create and manage diverse teams. Therefore, many Brazilian companies are understanding that diversity is not only the right thing to do, but it's also connected to better and sustainable results. On the other hand, companies are still struggling to implement effective diversity programs.

Diversidade SA is a product that aims to support companies (throughout their formal and informal leadership) in this journey, so they can create equal opportunities for minorities.

After working for 7 years with organizational diversity, I decided to create Blend Edu, a social impact startup that creates educational experiences to foster empathy, diversity, and inclusion in the workplace. Our major goal is to launch “Diversidade SA”, making it the first and largest virtual learning community to address organizational diversity in Brazil (see the demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...).

Diversidade SA is a B2B product that works in a subscription business model. The company signs an annual plan in order to have access to live webinars with famous specialists. The webinars will also be recorded and uploaded into the platform, so the user can watch it on demand along with materials, news, discussion forums, and best practices.

This product aims to unify in one single (digital) collaborative environment the best content about diversity (live webinars, best practices, discussion forums, etc.), making it available to companies from different sectors and industries for a lower price, generating exponential impact and networked learning.

Currently, our vision is to create the largest enterprise community in Brazil focused on diversity and inclusion. In the next 4 years (by 2023), we plan to reach 250 companies (200 of the largest companies of Brazil and 50 scale-ups). By doing so, we hope to reduce inequality and create equal job opportunities for all.

In the long term, we hope that our approach will cause disruption and become a best practice worldwide. We might envision the opportunity to scale globally (creating a platform in Spanish – focusing in Latin America) or partnering with local companies/organizations in order to replicate our model in other regions.