Now that my assignment for F123 has ended, and because I didn’t provide many updates during the whirlwind of the last part of my assignment, here are some of the highlights of my work during my FMS assignment in Brazil for F123 below:
- Volunteered at the Social Enterprise World Forum conference: A conference focused on social entrepreneurship that brought together experts in the field from all over the world and was hosted by impact investor NESsT in Rio de Janeiro. This was a really exciting opportunity and it gave me a great excuse to skip classes for a week and take some extra time on the weekend to visit Rio. I also got to meet a former FMS scout from the prior term in Brazil and another MIIS student who had flown all the way from California for the conference. I met a lot of interesting individuals in the field of impact investment and social entrepreneurship, and got some helpful contacts for F123. Moreover, I met a few graduates from my Master’s program at FGV. To learn more about this conference, read this former scout and volunteer’s take on it here: http://blogs.miis.edu/elmapaulauskaite/, as well as another fellow volunteer’s post here: http://ong-entreprises.blog.youphil.com/archive/2012/11/16/a-premiere-for-social-business-in-brazil.html.
- Attended F123′s ceremony for the Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2013: This ceremony was held in true Brazilian fashion and was a kind of Oscar’s award ceremony for social entrepreneurs in Brazil. And F123 won the Social Entrepreneur of the Future Award! Watch the video below from the ceremony (sorry, it’s in Portuguese): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rJVSsrbLAw&feature=plcp and see Fernando Botelho’s acceptance of the award below. Thanks to everyone who helped with voting for F123! (We ended up getting the 3rd most votes of all the candidates with 14.7% of the total votes, which was great considering the relative size of F123 compared to other nominees, and was a factor in winning the award.)
Fernando Accepts Social Entrepreneur of the Future Award
- Conducted a market sizing and market forecast for potential sales in all Spanish-, Portuguese-, and Spanish-speaking countries worldwide and got some very interesting results for F123.
- Managed 2 Virtual FMS scouts who helped with translation, social media marketing, and marketing to NGO’s in French-speaking countries (I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to manage people again, although I had never done so virtually before).
- Helped with social media marketing and tried to establish partnerships with NGO’s throughout Latin America
- Helped establish a partnership between F123 with a university in the US and Brazil (which is still in progress)
