Dragon’s Den Panel Reaches Out to Students of Pavão-Pavãozinho High Schools

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A Dragon’s Den-style panel, made up of business entrepreneurs, start-up accelerators, and NGOs, grilled high school students from the favela communities of Pavão-Pavãozinho and Cantagalo in Copacabana yesterday.

The students from the school Solar Meninos de Luz, a charity-run school based at the foothill favelas, showcased their business ideas to help aid the communities where they live.

The students aged 17-18, in their final year of high school, pitched their ideas to a panel consisting of restauranteur Waldir Lopes, Betânia Pontelo of start-up accelerator abeLLha, Natale Papa Jr of NGO Novos Líderes Empreendedores, and Jander Silva Lima from Gastromotiva, an international gastronomy social enterprise. Each, in turn, gave their professional opinion and advice on each student’s project.

The students each had ten minutes to deliver their business idea. They learned skills through NGO Edumais’ Entrepreneurs course. Edumais is an NGO that works alongside Solar Meninos de Luz in the favelas of Pavão-Pavãozinho and Cantagalo.

The course builds a strong foundation of problem-solving, leadership, presenting, and aiming high. The entrepreneurs’ course is delivered half in English, and half in Portuguese, so the presentations were in the same bilingual format.

Anna Bowman, the Edumais course founder, expressed her desire for the students to learn real-world business skills: “this sets them apart from their peers as most youngsters leave school with little knowledge of the business world” she stated.

“For students, the ability to get their ideas out of the classroom makes them feel empowered. The panel gives them the confidence that their ideas are valued, which they can carry forward into other areas of their lives,” said Anna. Students learned to create marketing plans, branding, budget costs, and market research.

A broad range of business ideas was presented. Ana Vitória’s sustainable approach was to sell surfboards made from recycled plastic bottles on the beach. Vitoria Roberta focused on culture; she showed her passion for dance with performance and pitched opening a dance school in the community.

Thales Alves wants to help the community with their bills by undercutting pharmacy expenses on medicines. Other ideas were affordable English learning through Instagram, cross-cultural education through Peruvian food, and helping alleviate depression through photograhy.

The eventual winner was Henrique Gabrielle (18), who developed his idea of teaching programming skills with weekly classes for teenagers in the community to gain employability skills. Henrique delivered a solid pitch to the “Dragons”, who were greatly interested that he was self-taught in programming.

Henrique sees his future in education and helping others, “I intend to go to college to get into mechanical engineering; I also want to better myself and continue to expand on my programming. I plan on also becoming a volunteer to help others with their English, and in 2022 I will share my knowledge on programming with others in the community.”

Along with cash prizes, Jander from Gatomativa offered the opportunity for two students to take a professional gastronomy internship.