Third time’s a charm. After the third call of the contest and with the last 33 projects selected, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has now finished the process of creating the Gulbenkian Knowledge Academies, one of the greatest initiatives of this kind in Europe.

Two years after the beginning of the process, there are now Academies in every district of the country and in the autonomous regions working towards the development of seven social and emotional competences (adaptability, self-regulation, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, resilience and communication) considered to be fundamental so that children under 25 can deal with sudden life changes, like those resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The response to the call was exceptional – a total of 1279 institutional consortiums (gathering public, private or non-profit institutions working with social solidarity) presented projects in different fields (culture, education, sports, health, solidarity or technology). In total, the National Network of Gulbenkian Academies mobilizes more than € 6M, of which around 50% is supported by the Gulbenkian Foundation.

The Gulbenkian Knowledge Academies were launched in 2018 based on the studies by the World Bank, the OECD and the World Economic Forum which indicated that 80% of the children who begin school today will have jobs that do not exist yet, 50% of jobs are at risk by automation and 40% of today key competences will change in the near future.