"In ColungaHUB the space is great, the people are very nice and it shows that there is a different sensibility with the problems"

Since the year 2012, Fabian Schiaffino, Executive Director of Mapocho Foundation, began with the realization of the TEDx talks at the Federico Santa María University, where he studied Commercial Engineering. In this interview he tells us how he took these talks to a form of social visibility for organizations and leaders of vulnerable populations.

How did the Mapocho Foundation start?

What brought us together was the realization of TEDx talks in La Pincoya in 2015. The motivation we had was to empower leaders and social organizations to also believe the story that they were leaders and agents of change in their own populations. It is believed that the agents of change are in spaces of power, but that does not apply to vulnerable populations such as La Pincoya, and we were convinced that they had to be made visible and given the courage they need to be able to grow their organizations. We work with more than 20 leaders and help them to make their organization better known. Since that date we have not stopped with projects.

How did you get to the social world?

I always had the concern to be able to develop different projects, but what sparked my passion happened in 2011 when my university had gone to unemployment. I was watching Facebook when I came across the talk "Do schools kill creativity" of Sir Ken Robinson, which is the most watched TED talk, and I realized the potential of audiovisual material to reach new generations. I was interested in the format and started to find out more about the TED talks and from there I started to put these cycles into my university. The other important milestone was that I started working at company B "Algramo"In La Pincoya with José Manuel Moller, and that helped me unite these two worlds.

What projects are you currently developing?

We are working with the Ministry of Economy on the project E3Coop, that the year 2016 contacted us to help them to visualize how cooperativism has taken charge of many social problems at the neighborhood level. This is a campaign that relieves cooperativism through the same young people who are now in this movement, since they can serve as a reference to understand that cooperativism is also an option for social entrepreneurship.

We are also working on the creation of a Citizen Innovation Laboratory in the district of Renca, which we visualize as a space for participation where the inhabitants can develop projects to solve problems in their community.

What do you think about being in ColungaHUB?

We were working on a cowork of company that, although it was a friendly space, did not tune much with us. We were a foundation within ten companies and obviously our objectives were different, so we could not have such a direct connection. We wanted to come here because there were similar goals and because there was the possibility of collaboration.

Our biggest challenge as a foundation is to develop experience with grassroots organizations, we have worked with them but we have a hard time detecting them and we are always looking for organizations that can help us that aspect, and obviously in spaces like ColungaHUB there are many organizations that already have a tremendous path travel. Since we arrived in September 2017, we have verified what we expected when we arrived here. In ColungaHUB the space is great, the people are very nice and it shows that there is a different sensibility with the problems, they have another perspective of life and I at least I found it very positive.