UBUNTU academy

The third edition of the UBUNTU Academy continued to operate. This initiative was led by the Padre António Viera Institute and was co-funded by the Porticus Foundation, the Montepio Foundation and Lipor. Partners of the initiative included EVERIS and IADE. Launched in 2010 to undertake informal educational activities aimed at young people with leadership profiles from disadvantaged backgrounds, the UBUNTU Academy aims not only to provide training in leadership so that these young people can be agents of change within their communities but also to develop and strengthen service models benefiting the community and entrepreneurship, drawing on the influence of figures such as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Aristides Sousa Mendes, Sang Suu Kiy and Desmond Tutu.

In 2015 the Ubuntu Academy III, which was run simultaneously in Lisbon and Porto, held 17 seminars in Lisbon, 15 seminars in Porto and 4 joint seminars in Lisbon and Porto, one of which was residential.

Social projects launched by some of the trainees in 2014 also continued to operate with very positive results. These projects included the Ubuntu Academy of Guinea-Bissau, the  Embarca project, which took place in the neighbourhood of Navegadores in Oeiras and was funded by the Schools Programme, which promotes educational and social inclusion among children and young people aged between 6 and 24 and also seeks to enhance their future employability; the Desingosta project, which is run by four former trainees who now manage four spaces in the working-class neighbourhood of Moinho das Rolas in Oeiras (the spaces in question have been transferred indefinitely by the company Teixeira Duarte for the purposes of carrying out social work among the neediest residents); and also the project Vidas UBUNTU, which is run by a former trainee and funded by the Active Citizenship Programme, which has been working with pupils and teachers from 110 schools around the country to promote democratic values through a storytelling methodology.

The third edition of the Academy began with 135 trainees in Lisbon and Porto, 24 voluntary trainers, 30 volunteers in the fields of training for entrepreneurship, 54 students and voluntary teachers who supported specific activities, and 20 social projects which are in development.

The assessment is to be carried out by the Portuguese Catholic University.