Gennuso Gustavo
Organization: Fundación Gente Nueva
Year Founded: 1989
Country: Argentina
Website: www.fundaciongentenueva.org.ar
Geographic Area of Impact: Argentina.
Model: Leveraged Non-Profit
Focus: Children and Youth,Education,Enterprise Development.
Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Argentina, 2007 The Innovation Gustavo Gennuso came to Bariloche almost thirty years ago to study nuclear engineering at the prestigious Balseiro Institute. While he continued until 2000 to work in that capacity, his most important contribution has been to transforming the educational systems that keep young, rural, poor Argentines from taking advantage of opportunities for personal and professional growth. In setting up schools to provide job skills for youth, he and his colleagues ended up putting in place a host of other initiatives to support improvements in people’s lives, including quality primary and secondary education, day care centers, business apprenticeships, teacher training, dental care, youth and sports clubs and centers for the elderly. Together with poor disenfranchised communities, Gente Nueva has even spearheaded significant advances in the area of property rights. To date, more than 5,000 students have passed through Gente Nueva’s classrooms, and an additional 3,000 have benefited directly from its various programs. Among the most important innovations Gente Nueva has pioneered is the concept of “community managed public schools” that are free but run by Gente Nueva and the communities it serves. In this model, teachers’ salaries are supported by the state whilst the selection of the teachers is made by Gente Nueva and the community according to specific criteria they have developed to safeguard the quality of these learning institutions. The “community managed public school” was approved by a state law in 1987, calling for these schools to be free and supported by state funds. In 2006, Argentina passed a national law recognizing the legitimacy of the community managed public school, taking the model pioneered by Gente Nueva. While Gente Nueva never set out to influence directly national and state public policy, as the organization gained legitimacy and credibility for successfully taking on seemingly insurmountable challenges, the government began seeking its counsel and involvement, particularly in the area of educational reform. In this way Gustavo Gennuso and Gente Nueva have exercised the true role of the social entrepreneurial organization – designing, testing and measuring innovative approaches to social and economic problems, turning these into opportunities to reverse trends and mindsets so that public policy can, in turn, accelerate their adoption on a much greater scale. Background Today in Argentina, approximately 50% of the population is poor, and 20% is indigent. The richest 10% are 30 times wealthier than the poorest 20%. Unemployment is high, and even higher in Bariloche where a quarter of the population do not have work – a figure that increases to 75% in those communities where Gente Nueva initiated its activities. A culture of apathy and dependence characterizes many of these communities and is passed from parents to children. A number of governmental and non-governmental organizations have sought to address poverty and unemployment but their offerings focus on training alone – leaving out the development of entrepreneurial qualities that enable people to create and run a small business. In addition, such programs focus on the individual, neglecting the creation of social networks and other types of support that are instrumental in helping individuals advance towards their objectives. Gente Nueva has helped build the strategic alliances across local institutions engaged in productive activities, including businesses, educational centers, and individual professionals that can help each young person develop the entrepreneurial attitudes as well as the technical and administrative skills that are important to success. Strategy The principal mission of Gente Nueva is to ensure that the poor are empowered to act on their own behalf, using education to enable that process. But as Gente Nueva went about setting up educational institutions in collaboration with the communities, other needs kept being detected – land rights, health, the situation of older adults and of youth, to name a few. Over time, these aspects were incorporated into the activities of Gente Nueva. Today, Gente Nueva has 10 “community managed public schools” located in the poorest areas of Bariloche. Each school becomes a community center after school hours. Of the schools, two are pre-schools that take children from 45 days of age to 5 years; two are primary schools, three are secondary which also include adult education, and three are technical schools that include basic education and skills building for young people and adults. All are supported by the government that pays for teachers’ salaries while Gente Nueva and the community are responsible for the selection and monitoring of teachers and aspects related to infrastructure, upkeep, and food. Preparation and insertion of young people into the labor force is a primary driver for the organization and to that end, Gente Nueva provides them with the skills for specific job opportunities in Bariloche and elsewhere, and also connects them with employers. As part of the enterprise-creating activities, Gente Nueva’s technical schools bring together groups of three to six person teams with one professional to support the design and venture shaping process. These teams present their projects and Gente Nueva assesses the feasibility of each, awarding seed money to those that are favorably assessed, and providing further guidance to those that are not. Gente Nueva monitors the venture’s progress, lending support where needed. In addition to affecting directly the lives of the poor in Bariloche, Gente Nueva is making its presence felt in the nation by influencing public policy, particularly in the area of youth and adult employment education, including teacher training to include ways to encourage students to develop entrepreneurial attitudes. The Entrepreneur Gustavo was born in a conservative rural town in the province of Buenos Aires. A gifted student, he won a scholarship to study nuclear engineering at the Instituto Balseiro in Bariloche. The courses were tough and students stuck to their books. But Gustavo found himself wanting to be involved in something other than studying. One Sunday, a fellow student invited him to church, and he went along because he had nothing better to do. Yet he found himself inspired by the priest who gave the sermon. It turned out the priest was working in one of the poorest areas of Bariloche, struggling to start a school there to address the glaring educational gaps in that community. Gustavo, who had always been attracted to challenges, realized he had found a significantly different challenge to nuclear engineering – and perhaps a more complicated one. Among his concerns was the need to prepare the poor to access full employment that would open opportunities for personal and collective improvement. In 1983, the first school, a primary school, was instituted and in 1985, he started the first job training school for the poor. As a result of the success of these efforts, Gustavo and his colleagues went on to spin off all the other schools and initiatives that are part of Gente Nueva today. Gustavo has recently founded a social business named "Emprendimientos Tecnología para la Vida" (Life Technologies Ventures) with the mission to select, manufacture and diffuse sustainable technologies for the human development of the poorest sectors. This is in line with being a social, economical and enviromentally sustainable company. This company is for labor inclusion of young people as well. Recently ETV won the first prize in Business in Development Challenge Argentina.
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