Mayor Claudio Castro, together with his team from the area of Social Innovation, visited ColungaHUB to learn about the innovative potential of the community and the work model of the Laboratory.

Left to right:
Gabriel Nesvara, Colunga Laboratory Coordinator, Arturo Celedón, Director of Development Colunga, Nicolás Azócar, Responsible for Renca Municipality Innovation; Esperanza Cueto, President Colunga; Claudio Castro, Mayor of Renca; Fe Sánchez Director of ColungaHUB; Pilar Egaña, Director of Communications Colunga y Carolina Leiva of Municipality of Renca.

"There is very little innovation in the municipalities in Chile (...) We want to challenge the industry and the municipalities themselves," said the mayor of Renca during his visit to ColungaHUB. He added that his motivation for learning about spaces for social innovation is because "we want to connect with others who know a lot, we have enough to learn and we want to observe what has happened," he said.

The Innovation Laboratory of ColungaHUB, which has the support of Corfo, offers civil society organizations a space to improve the quality and effectiveness of their initiatives and find new solutions to the gaps, failures and opportunities presented by the challenge of transformation of the society.

"From the foundation what we have learned is that where there is a greater value is in the accompaniment and training, that is very important for organizations. There is a super unique opportunity to generate spaces, "he said. Esperanza Cueto, President of the Colunga Foundation.

While Fe Sánchez, Director of ColungaHUB, emphasized the importance of creating spaces that take into consideration the needs of people who will have access to training spaces. "The important thing of replicating the logic that has worked in other sectors is to generate a product or service that responds to the nature of the people with whom we are working, in his case with the people of Renca," he stressed.

During his visit to ColungaHUB the mayor of Renca and his team had the opportunity to see the work of organizations such as For a Career, Course Council, Football More and Interpretation.