December 9, 2019
Regional director tells how the Social Innovation Management program was instrumental in his work with young leaders of Latin American Leadership Academy.
The mission of LALA (Latin American Leadership Academy) is to form a new generation of conscious and innovative leaders, through activities such as “boot camps” that are immersive programs of 7 days focused on leadership development and social innovation for young people from all over Latin America between 14 and 18 years.
Marcelo Peterlini, current Regional Director of LALA, met the project for the formation of young leaders in its first edition in Brazil and since then his professional career is linked to this project. LALA identifies young people who have proven leadership potential, a passion for Latin America, a willingness to develop as an entrepreneur and a history of community service and continues to empower these leaders by connecting them to the ecosystem: a network of change agents made up of former academy students, former boot camp students, members of national hubs, corporate and educational partners.
Through EduLab, a project that in partnership with higher education institutions applies LALA’s teaching methodology, they also lead the change in higher education in Latin America, sharing evidence-based educational best practices and contributing to the development of more leaders across the region.
Marcelo, who underwent the Social Innovation Management program (SIM) in 2017 tells how crucial it was to go through the program for the work they do today, “Amani Institute was essential for me to to be in a position of leadership in the organization, the experience expanded my network and gave me more confidence to talk about the social impact of putting into practice what I learned.
Matheus Silveira, participated in LALA in 2019 and tells how this experience was part of his trajectory “I see this period as a milestone in my journey of self-awareness, besides being a very decisive moment for the development of my future.
After LALA, he tells us that he learned to take the phrase “be yourself” very seriously. “I found out who this “you yourself” who has always lived within me is. At LALA we stayed in a week of immersion together with our colleagues from different regions of Brazil with very different people but with converging values and ideals, which created a space where I could act as I always wanted and still continue to be part of a group, something that until then was unimaginable for me,” explains this young man from São Paulo.
Currently, the LALA immersion process is taking place in the Amani Institute space in São Paulo, Marcelo tells us a little about the importance of the Amani Institute for LALA and how the space can contribute to the experience of young people “There are a lot of synergies between Amani Institute and LALA, we have a common mission, we want to plant the seed of social impact in the mind of young people, Amani Institute’s space has enabled us to show the size of the community of people who are working in the social impact sector. It is here that young people begin to see the possibility of following a path of social transformation. We are feeding an increasingly larger network and hope that this contributes to bringing the sector together”.
