The two winning teams in the Gulbenkian Award for Adult Literacy have already been selected within the scope of the partnership established between the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and MIT – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Gulbenkian Award for Adult Literacy was set up for technological solutions in two of the five categories in the MIT Solve competition – “Good Jobs & Inclusive Entrepreneurship” and “Learning for Girls & Women”. Competing in the first category, the winners Tamo Junto (Brazil) and Humans in the Loop (Bulgaria) are to receive support for their promotion of adult literacy levels and inclusive economic growth through digital literacy.

The announcement of the two winners was made on 29 September by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Trustee Carlos Moedas at the end of the MIT Solve 2020 challenge.

In addition to sharing the 50,000 dollar prize, the Gulbenkian Award for Adult Literacy winners shall spend the forthcoming months participating in the MIT incubator and studying the ways in which they might expand their intervention to Portugal as indeed defined in the competition regulations. Their interventions in the national terrain, which are to receive Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation support, are planned for the second half of 2021. 

Across its competition categories, the MIT Solve 2020 challenge received a total of 2,600 solutions arriving from 130 countries. 
 

About the winners

Tamo Junto (Brasil) is an online and free platform that has helped Brazilian microentrepreneurs to develop their businesses. Their strategy has involved providing a virtual environment able to shorten the distances between microentrepreneurs and the knowledge they need for their business – definition of prices, getting goods and services to the market, financial management, among others – and thereby reducing inequality in Brazil.

Humans in the Loop (Bulgária)  for persons displaced due to situations of conflict or violence, provides training and employment opportunities in one of the most innovative industries in the market: Artificial Intelligence. Through this initiative, the objective is to contribute to constructing the labour force of the future, with training, experience and employability for professional humans in the loop.