Vinnicius

Ashoka Young Changemaker
Vinnicius Rodrigo Ferreira Nazaré
Brazil
Elected in 2021

About Vinnicius

Vinnicius founded a startup dedicated to creating games for children about social issues.

Vinnicius' initiative stems from his sensitivity to two issues: the discouraging nature of traditional education and, social issues, such as violence, human rights, and the devaluation of local culture. To face these two challenges, Vinnicius involved his colleagues from his technical school to create a startup called Somos Cordel, which creates games and other pedagogical tools that engage children and young people about social issues. Vinnicius understands that transforming skills can be encouraged and refined with games and the practice of programming. His team co creates and disseminates innovative teaching practices with analog and digital games. The startup still is developing an open platform for all interested schools to access them. The games highlight issues related to the cultural reality (context) of the region, while also providing tools for skill development. An example of one of the issues discussed is religious intolerance, whereby some of the skills they focus on include collaboration, cooperation and teamwork. Somos Cordel's team has eight people whose skills span across the following domains: programming, design, marketing, financial management, and PR. Every week, everyone gets together to define and evaluate goals. The tools created by Somos Cordel's youth are used in 18 schools in various states. To increase the scale of activities during the pandemic, gamification classes are being created so that they can be followed asynchronously by interested schools. The work continues to be recognized by important organizations in the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem, such as Forbes magazine, BritishCouncil, Porvir, and TED.