“Instituto Beja’s Laboratories are intended to incubate collaborative philanthropic projects. It is a space for joint experimentation and development of projects with multiple actors, each contributing their expertise. In this environment, we will test new social technologies, new models of approach, and how we deal with issues within philanthropy. These are actors with different polycapitals, experts in their agendas, with common values, looking at issues in depth over the long term.”
Maria Vogt
Director of Strategic Partnerships and Innovation and Member
of the Executive Committee of Instituto Beja
The Laboratories were the solution found by the Instituto Beja to create spaces for joint experimentation focused on themes and agendas that the Institute considers relevant in the brazilian context, always seeking to reduce inequalities.
The Laboratories embody the Instituto Beja’s belief in the power of polycapitals and strategic partnerships, as they enable different actors to come together in a learning environment in order to accelerate, measure, and scale models, test hypotheses, and develop solutions and methodologies, in addition to designing possible paths for transformation, prototyping new social technologies, and, above all, reflecting together on the future and the practice of philanthropy.
In 2025, Instituto Beja had three laboratories: New Longevity Lab, Imagination and Innovation in Philanthropy Lab, and Health Lab. Learn more about each of them:
New Longevity Lab
The inversion of the age pyramid is a social and demographic phenomenon that is increasingly attracting attention in Brazil. It is characterized by a decrease in the number of children and young people and an increase in the elderly population, producing, in graphic representation, an inverted pyramid with a compact base and a broad top.
In other words, this means that the country is aging. According to data from the 2022 Census conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the total number of people aged 65 or over in the country (more than 22 million) reached 10.9% of the population, an increase of 57.4% compared to 2010, when this contingent corresponded to 7.4% of the population (or just over 14 million people).
Given this context, the Instituto Beja, together with Ashoka, the Itaú Viver Mais program, and the RD Group, created the New Longevity Lab, inspired by Ashoka’s global initiative, which mobilizes its network of social entrepreneurs and society as a whole to respond to the opportunities and challenges of accelerated population aging in Brazil and worldwide.
With the slogan “New longevity is about aging while transforming the world,” the Lab aims to bring together, in a space for experimentation, actors with different experiences and backgrounds to think together about possible paths for longevity in Brazil, in addition to reinforcing the importance of this issue and awakening public interest in it.
More than just creating this space for exchange, Instituto Beja acted as a network catalyst, offering not only physical infrastructure but also institutional legitimacy to bring together diverse actors: academia, the private sector, civil society organizations, social entrepreneurs, and public managers around the agenda of care and health.
“Instituto Beja is a strategic partner of the New Longevity Lab because of its commitment to co-creating spaces for public dialogue capable of advancing, in a qualified and pluralistic manner, the paradigm of New Longevity – which recognizes and expands opportunities for people to contribute throughout their lives. In 2025, this partnership was central to the maturation of the Lab, especially by enabling the experimentation of formats that connect knowledge, social listening, and collective action.”
Marília Duque
Ashoka Co-leader in New Longevity in Brazil
Main actions of the Laboratory in 2025
In 2025, the New Longevity Lab continued some of the actions undertaken in the previous year, such as the Mapping of the Social Innovation Ecosystem in Longevity – launched in September 2024 –, advocacy work on the topic, and coordination to enable media coverage, such as in the
Longevity section of Nexo Políticas Públicas and at the Brasil em Debate event. In addition, representatives from the Laboratory attended national and international conferences and meetings on care, health, innovation, and aging.
Collaboration in Open Government – Digital Curriculum for Older Adults:
The New Longevity Lab participated in the co-creation of a guiding curriculum for the inclusion of older adults, integrating digital inclusion, critical literacy, citizenship, and transformative skills as foundations for active longevity. The year concluded with the completion of the first full version, which recognizes older adults as agents of transformation. The document is currently under review by the Ministry of Education (MEC) and will move to a public consultation phase before its finalization.
Collaboration in the 6th National Conference on the Rights of Older Persons (CONADIPI):
Invited by the National Secretary for the Rights of Older Persons, the New Longevity Lab participated in the 6th CONADIPI, held in December 2025, in Brasilia, with the theme “Multicultural Aging and Democracy: Urgency for Equity, Rights, and Participation.” It contributed to the development of priority proposals under Axis 5 – Consolidation and Strengthening of the Role of Councils for the Rights of Older Persons as Brazilian State Policy, in Working Group 15, which deals with Education, Citizenship, and Multiple Old Ages.
Circuit of Meetings of the Longevity and Engagement Ecosystem of the Culture of Care and Health Network:
Instituto Beja hosted the hybrid meeting promoted by New Longevity Lab, which brought together organizations such as Noora Health, Favela Compassiva, RD Saúde, Family Talks, Observatório de Cuidados da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and UniPeriferias, along with more than 70 initiatives. The meeting aimed to develop diagnoses, commitments, and action fronts through the activation of a permanent collaboration network focused on health and care practices and innovation—a subgroup dedicated to advocacy for the health and care of older adults.
“The year 2025 was marked by the consolidation of the Laboratory as an orchestrator of the longevity ecosystem through the coordination of networks and the production of collective intelligence, reflected in the expansion of partnerships, participation in decision-making forums, and events. In addition, we strengthened our interface with the media and public opinion with more than 500,000 views between articles, editorials, podcasts, and reports that position longevity as an agenda for democracy, economy, care, and inclusion.”
Marília Duque
Ashoka Co-leader in New Longevity in Brazil
Approaching academia:
In 2025, New Longevity Lab approached different Brazilian higher education institutions. With the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), it established a cooperation agreement for the development of a New Longevity Hub, in order to train leaders and produce applied evidence on work, organizations, innovation, and intergenerational equity. With Faculdade Cásper Líbero, it established a strategic partnership to incorporate longevity into education, generate university extension programs, and co-create content on longevity in Brazil, such as the eight episodes of the Podcast on Mapping Social Innovation in Longevity. With Loughborough University/ British Academy, it contributed to a multi-territorial research project analyzing how digital inclusion influences contribution, work, health, and social participation in maturity
“The partnership with Instituto Beja enabled the Lab to function as a living laboratory, open to designing, testing, and adjusting solutions to complex challenges, such as aging, in a country marked by profound structural inequalities, strengthening institutional and collective learning.”
Marília Duque
Co-leader of Ashoka in New Longevity in Brazi
Cooperation Agreement with the Generations and Future of Work Forum:
The Lab collaborates on the project to develop generational indicators and disseminate age inclusion practices through a partnership with Brazil’s age diversity business collective.
Partnership with Sírio-Libanês:
Immersion in social intrapreneurship in health with professionals from Faculdade Sírio Libanês, connecting innovation, care, and organizational transformation.
By connecting listening and knowledge production with arenas for debate and policy formulation, the Instituto Beja helped the Lab expand its capacity for public advocacy, reinforcing its role as an orchestrator of the ecosystem. Instituto Beja’s experience and track record in advocacy also contributed to guiding the formation of a Working Group working to build a collective agenda aligned with the Brazil Cares National Care Plan, reinforcing the recognition of caregivers as agents of transformation.
Lessons learned this year
- The importance of creating spaces for meeting, mediation, and continuity so that connections can be converted into collective intelligence and coordinated action;
- The presence of a reliable institutional actor is essential to activate networks, reduce asymmetries, and foster genuine collaboration;
- Holding meetings in a hybrid format combines
knowledge exchange with collaborative networking;
- Dialogue between organizations and international and national experiences allows international evidence to be translated into concrete challenges in the brazilian context;
- Complex agendas such as care and longevity require continuous, collaborative, and politically situated processes.
Philanthropy Imagination and Innovation Lab
Partners
Term
2024 a 2029
“Imagining, shaping, and narrating futures collectively to transform the present.” This introductory phrase summarizes the objective of Instituto Toriba: to combine research, futures literacy, and narrative-building to catalyze social transformation and actively imagine and design the realities we want to see flourish.
It was this desire to work with the theme of imagination and futures that sparked Cristiane Sultani’s curiosity back in 2023, when Graciela Selaimen, still as a consultant and in the process of structuring the Instituto Toriba, curated and facilitated the second edition of Filantropando.
“We believe philanthropy is facing a crisis of imagination and institutional models, not only in Brazil. Philanthropy needs to reinvent itself, or it will quickly lose relevance. Even though philanthropy has been around since the early 20th century, inequalities are only increasing. So what kind of philanthropy is this? Who does it serve? To address this crisis, we must imagine new structures and new forms of relationship between philanthropy and society, governments, and public policy, as well as new ways of understanding what philanthropy can be moving beyond a traditionally vertical and asymmetrical relationship. Spaces for co-creation, mutual learning, and shared decision-making within philanthropy are still in their infancy in Brazil.”
Graciela Selaimen
Founder and Executive Director of Instituto Toriba,
Consultant and Member of the Executive Committee of Instituto Beja
This led to the collaboration between Beja and Toriba, which materialized in the Laboratory of Imagination and Innovation in Philanthropy. A space for experimenting with new ideas, possibilities, approaches, and systems of thought for Brazilian philanthropy, based both on international examples of what is already being done and on other processes taking place in Brazil that philanthropy has not yet analyzed.
To achieve its objectives, the Laboratory operates across three dimensions: self (the individual), ecosystems, and institutions. What they all share is a connection to processes of future literacy, mindset change, and educational pathways that foster awareness.
“Gradually, we are deepening our reflections and introducing new themes that contribute to transforming how we think. In doing so, we are planting seeds for new ways of thinking in the field of philanthropy and opening up possibilities for experimental spaces within institutions themselves, building on this work with leaders.”
Graciela Selaimen
Founder and Executive Director of Instituto Toriba,
Consultant and Member of the Executive Committee of Instituto Beja
All transformation of thought begins with personal motivations (self dimension). Filantropando, for example, one of Instituto Toriba’s responsibilities with Beja, always seeks to introduce thought-provoking themes from a reflective perspective, subtly engaging each participant’s personal motivation for being there.
Main actions of the Laboratory in 2025
Organization and curation of Filantropando:
One of the Laboratory’s main actions is the curation of Filantropando, which, in 2025, took place in Belém (PA), during COP 30, and thus brought new challenges for the promoting organizations. In addition to creating an alternative theme, so as not to have the same approach as the official Conference program, this edition also presented challenges in coordinating the participants’ schedules, a mission in which Toriba and Beja counted on the support and partnership of the Instituto Clima e Sociedade (iCS). Instituto Toriba was also responsible for coordinating with local artists, who were present at Beja boat – Filantropando’s headquarters in Belém – throughout the meetings.
"Conversations about the Futures" meeting:
In 2025, the Laboratory coordinated and promoted the meeting “Conversations about the Futures with Peter Bishop, a U.S. academic researcher specializing in futures studies and founder of the global movement Teach the Future, which promotes “future literacy” as a skill for students and educators. The meeting was aimed at a group of 45 people in leadership and decision-making positions in philanthropic institutions, with the goal of inspiring them by sharing processes that are already happening in different parts of the world, both within and outside of philanthropy, as well as discussing the importance of strategic anticipation and preparation for navigating uncertainties in a rapidly changing world.
Support in coordination with indigenous philanthropic funds:
Since 2024, Instituto Toriba has supported Instituto Beja in its dialogue with indigenous philanthropic funds, created and self-managed by indigenous people. Among the main connections established were contacts with Josimara Baré, an indigenous climate activist from the Baré people and administrator and coordinator of the Fundo Indígena Rutî, who participated in the third edition of Filantropando in 2024; the partnership with the Conselho Indígena de Roraima (CIR) and support for the Fundo Indígena Rutî; and rapprochement and dialogue with Valéria Paye, executive director of the Fundo Podáali – Indigenous Fund of the Brazilian Amazon, the first Amazon-wide mechanism for raising and redistributing resources to indigenous people, organizations, and communities.
“Our collaboration in the Laboratory of Imagination and Innovation in Philanthropy represents a space for open dialogue where we experimentally explore how collective imagination, speculative design, and epistemologies from the Global South can renew and expand philanthropic practices. What sets this partnership apart is the mutual trust that allows for creative risk-taking – both on the part of Beja, in supporting methodological experiments still in development, and on the part of Toriba, in opening ourselves up to learning that challenges our own practices. It is a relationship where collaboration takes on a profound meaning: it is not a one-way transfer of knowledge, but a shared path where both organizations learn, experiment, and transform together.”
Graciela Selaimen
Founder and Executive Director of Instituto Toriba,
Consultant and Member of the Executive Committee of Instituto Beja
Lessons learned this year
- Conversations, debates, and exchanges in the philanthropic world need not be limited to topics such as impact, numbers, indicators, results, and metrics;
- Discussing the sensitive and imaginary world requires courage to break with the prevailing logic, which is pointing to the dismantling of the structures of philanthropy as we know them;
- Philanthropic innovation requires openness to radical experimentation, not only in methodologies, but in how the relationship between philanthropy and social transformation itself is conceived;
- The importance of allowing oneself to “be in process,” open to adjusting practices and learning;
- The importance of individual, institutional, and collective reflection in spaces where there is less fear and reactivity;
- Mutual trust is the basis for creative risk-taking;
- Using the right language to spark the interest of the philanthropy audience in order to reduce their resistance to new ideas;
- Art is an important component in awakening sensitivity in people;
- Philanthropic knowledge is something that is built continuously, through genuine dialogue between peers committed to transformation;
- With the right stimuli and provocations, people are in fact willing and open to debating sensitive issues and the assumptions that have guided the world of philanthropy.
Health Lab – CID-SP Emergências project
Partners
Instituto Beja, Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (HCFMUSP), Escola Politécnica da USP (POLI USP) e Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)
Term
2024 a 2029
The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the challenges that Brazil still faces in ensuring access to healthcare, a fundamental social right guaranteed by Article 6 of the Federal Constitution, but still denied on a daily basis to millions of brazilians.
In the State of São Paulo, for example, the public health system faces structural challenges in managing urgent and emergency care, marked by high patient demand and operational constraints. The lack of fully integrated criteria for prioritizing and allocating patients affects both system efficiency and clinical outcomes, making the task of modernizing the public health system’s emergency care bed management even more complex.
The migration from an analog model to an intelligent system, with the goal of reducing the average regulation time from 17 hours to 2 hours, would allow for the enhanced use of technologies such as advanced data integration, artificial intelligence, telemedicine, and the Internet of Things (IoT), facilitating decision-making processes with efficiency gains in bed regulation.
However, reducing patient allocation time depends on reviewing and optimizing existing processes. Without redesigning operational flows and prioritization criteria, the adoption of new technologies tends to reproduce existing inefficiencies in the system.
To contribute to CID-SP Emergências (Public Health Data Intelligence Center) – a research, innovation, and institutional coordination project aimed at improving the regulation of urgent and emergency care beds in the state of São Paulo – Instituto Beja established Health Lab in 2024 as a support and coordination front for this agenda, developed in partnership with the Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (HCFMUSP) and the Escola Politécnica da USP (POLI USP).
Instituto Beja brought Accenture on board as a key partner in conducting and managing the project, adopting its methodology focused on structuring and governing complex and multidisciplinary initiatives. The approach combines institutional alignment, process improvement, and technology incorporation with continuous monitoring and adjustments along the way, promoting institutional learning and the initiative’s sustainability.
Faced with a highly complex project involving multiple institutions with different roles and capabilities, requiring robust coordination, integrated governance, and continuous communication, Instituto Beja acts as a strategic partner, mobilizing philanthropic capital to bring together key players, strengthen governance structures, and support changes in processes and practices, amplifying the impact at a broader scale.
“The partnership with Instituto Beja is strategic because it connects science, care, territory, and innovation. In addition to working directly with vulnerable populations, Beja plays a fundamental role in supporting structural initiatives, such as theInstituto Tecnológico de Medicina Inteligente (ITMI) and the Centro de Ciência para o Desenvolvimento (CCD), contributing to transforming academic knowledge into concrete solutions for the public health system. This coordination expands the impact, sustainability, and social reach of the actions.”
Dra. Ludhmila Abrahão Hajjar
Full Professor of Medicine at USP and Director of Cardiology and ICUs at Rede D’Or. Cardiologist and Intensivist
Main actions of the Laboratory in 2025
In-depth understanding of the system:
Mapping of flows, workdays, processes, and main pain points in the regulation of urgent and emergency care, creating a common basis for redesigning the system.
Preparation of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs):
Definition of requirements, architectural principles, and progress in the organization and cleaning of databases, enabling the development of prioritized MVPs.
Structuring of execution:
Hiring research fellowships and adopting management tools, strengthening governance and project coordination capacity.
“The main lesson learned is that innovation in health requires solid alliances committed to real impact. The relationship with Instituto Beja shows that strategic philanthropy, when aligned with science and public policy, accelerates complex projects such as ITMI and CCD. We also learned that listening, presence in the territory, and long-term commitment are as important as technology and financing to generate systemic transformation and equity in health.”
Dra. Ludhmila Abrahão Hajjar
Full Professor of Medicine at USP and Director of Cardiology and ICUs at Rede D’Or.
Cardiologist and Intensivist
Lessons learned this year
- Coordination between multiple partners with clear management roles;
- Establishment of transition strategies to ensure continuity in the event of temporary technical support;
- The importance of alignment and synchronization between institutional timelines and implementation schedules in projects involving research, innovation, and implementation across different sectors;
- Relying on mapped processes and technical documentation.
