Avaliação de impacto social em negócios sociais em educação: estudo de caso

Abstract

Quality education is a challenge for everyone: none of the objectives proposed by UNESCO in 1990 to improve access to education and promote quality education will be achieved globally by2015, year that was proposed as a deadline to achieve the goals. Brazil faces several problems in education. For example, less than 20% of the adult population has completed higher education, although the offer for those services is growing. Due to governamental problems that prevented the offer of public education services, several initiatives have arisen from the nonprofit sector, partnerships between big companies and civil society organizations as well as entrepreneurial initiatives, with a common goal: supplying the demand that is not attended sufficiently or efficiently by the government. They are the social business .

Enterprises that aim to generate social value beyond the economic value face the challenge of being both sustainable financially and effective socially. It is essential that their business processes are well structured, especially the business evaluation. In addition to operational and financial indicators, there is a need to mind the social perspective.

To understand evaluation within social businesses, this thesis studies the case of Veduca, an Educational and technology-based company, which aims at democratizing access to high quality education in Brazil. Methodology consists in company case study and interviews with founders and employees to understand how the social value proposed by the company is generated, specifically its theory of social change, and how the evaluation and use of indicators is carried out within the company.

The results of this research show that Veduca has its proper theory of change, whose challenge meets a real problem of its context. Veduca has coherent strategies for implementation, however, the indicators for measuring impact are relatively superficial. In addition, there was an evaluation process in stage of building; the main challenges are the application of information taken from indicators’ measurement on business decisions and the dissemination of an evaluation culture within the company.