Seven out
of ten companies in Latin America report difficulties finding candidates with
the experience and skills they need, according to a survey by human resources
firm Manpower. The situation could worsen, considering that nearly half of the
skills companies seek will change over the next five years, as indicated in the
World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report.
That same
report highlights the growing importance of soft skills including resilience,
flexibility, agility, motivation, self-awareness, curiosity, and lifelong
learning, alongside more technical, digital competencies. Yet, traditional
curricula typically do not address these skills, leaving a significant gap
between conventional education and the realities of the modern workforce.
Felipe
Prado (Chile, 34 years old), along with his co-founder Natalia Pérez, developed
Swarmob, a learning platform that aims to empower young leaders to transform
the world through a global and intercultural lens. The platform enables
educators to design educational experiences in which students learn by
developing real-world impact projects in response to local social and
environmental issues aligned with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs).
Swarmob
promotes what it calls Network-Based Project Learning, a model built on three
key principles: Flexibility, the platform adapts to the unique culture of each
educational institution rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all model, Autonomy, instead of providing static content, the platform offers tools for
educators to become active creators, tailoring experiences to students’ needs
and local sustainability challenges, and Networked Learning, it incorporates
collaborative features that accelerate innovation by connecting student
projects with other institutions beyond their own.
Prado, who
graduated in Psychology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, was
actively involved in Chile’s 2011 student movement. During those protests,
students demanded a “free, public, and high-quality education," but the concept
of “quality” sparked broader discussions about the future and the crises it may
bring. Along with his co-founder, Prado realized how challenging it is to
implement meaningful, lasting social change. “It became
clear to us that education must prepare people to put their creativity and
talent at the service of dialogue and collaboration processes of greater scale
and complexity,” he reflects.
After
working in the education sector, Prado recognized a series of critical
challenges. “We saw the
need for a vision where students were truly at the center of educational
innovation—where their autonomy was respected and nurtured, preparing them for
the unimaginable. At the same time, schools needed tools to help them
self-organize and systematically transition to new teaching paradigms aligned
with this vision.”
More than
11,400 students, aged 6 to 25, have already benefited from Swarmob. It has been
adopted by numerous institutions across Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and the United States. So far, students have created 1,631 sustainability related
projects. According to Swarmob’s internal data, 76% of students report feeling
more motivated to learn, while 93% of teachers say the platform helps them
teach more effectively using a project-based approach.
Swarmob has
received several international awards, including: United Nations Award for one
of the top 10 mechanisms advancing the 2030 Agenda, The TecPrize for
educational technology from Tec de Monterrey and Selection for HundrED’s Global
Collection of the 100 most impactful and scalable education innovations
worldwide. As a result
of this work, Felipe Prado has been named one of MIT Technology Review in Spanish 35 Innovators Under 35.
