Introduction

This report presents, in summarized form, the activities carried out and outcomes achieved through the investment of resources obtained from LEAD International through the Special Opportunities Fund project named “Startup support for LEAD Brazil’s Programmatic Strategy for 2005/06”.

This project resulted from a perceived need to deeply rethink and reform LEAD’s longtime flagship program, the LEAD fellowship, and design new programs that, while preserving the spirit of LEAD, both continued to be “cutting edge” and economically feasible. The original project proposal describes in greater length the critical thinking behind this idea summarized here. Essentially, the Brazilian experience had been showing high potential for funding new programs but faced a growing challenge to raise resources to support the traditional LEAD cohorts. The idea, therefore, was to integrate fully into a revised cohort model these “LEAD-like” programs.

The past experience in Brazil with the Pronord and Prolides programs, as well the success in securing funds to launch the Redesenvolvimento program supported our belief that these programs, once seen as secondary in relationship to the LEAD Program, could become the core to a viable new LEAD.

This SOF project was required to provide the core funding to support the new programmatic strategy in Brazil.

The stated aims of the program were to:

• offer at least three new local/thematic programs in 2005, and up to five by 2006;
• engage participants, through the training programs, in projects of impact in the respective fields of each program;
• graduate annually between 50-100 highly networked individuals;
• link each program to the international LEAD training, with a minimum expected number of 10 graduates of these programs attending full LEAD training and becoming LEAD International Fellows.