The Ageas Foundation and CUF announce, in a press release, the eight projects that will join the 2nd edition of ÍMPARES, an acceleration program aimed at supporting social impact organizations that want to scale up and prepare to receive impact investment.
According to the same source, over 12 months, the eight organizations will benefit from mentoring, personalized support, and training in areas such as strategy, impact models, team development, business model, and investment communication.
The selected projects are:
- Braining – A platform that combines Virtual Reality and AI to transform rehabilitation in stroke cases.
- Cuidadores – Promotion of well-being and empowerment of informal caregivers.
- DAT – Dance, Arts & TangoTherapy – Association that uses TangoTherapy and the arts for social inclusion and health promotion.
- iMAGINE by DiVERGE – Program for young adults focused on employability and social inclusion.
- Lira – Organization that supports neurodivergent women at all stages, from diagnosis to learning self-regulation strategies in daily life.
- NoCode Institute – Training for non-technical talents in digital skills without code through No-Code technologies and AI.
- UNE-IDADES – Platform for intergenerational house sharing between seniors and students, which combats loneliness and the difficulty of access to housing.
- VEM – Mobilidade com Dignidade – A “humane Uber” service with Guides who are properly trained and accompany people who need mobility support.
The selection of these projects, from a total of 122 applications, resulted from a rigorous process that included an intensive bootcamp where tools and essential strategies were shared to help the organizations prepare to scale.
The second edition of this initiative “again demonstrates the strength and dynamism of Portugal’s innovation and social impact ecosystem and continues the results of the first, carried out between 2024 and 2025, in which projects such as SEMEAR Cerâmica, Upfarming, and DIGNITUDE MAIS reinforced their structure, financial sustainability, and scale, demonstrating the relevance of this program for strengthening social solutions in Portugal,” says the note.
“Without scale, social problems cannot be solved! This is one of the maxims of the ÍMPARES program and it was at the origin of the selection of these eight social innovation projects. All of them are scalable, relevant, and are managed by teams in whom we believe and recognize value,” states João Machado, President of the Ageas Foundation.
“At CUF, we believe that no social challenge is solved in isolation. Our participation in ÍMPARES reinforces the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships to scale innovative solutions. When we unite capabilities from different sectors, we can transform good projects into sustainable social responses with real impact on people’s lives,” underlines Mariana Ribeiro Ferreira, Director of Corporate Citizenship at CUF.
For the organizations that will join this acceleration program, expectations about what they can gain from their time in ÍMPARES are high. “Participation in ÍMPARES comes at a key moment: structuring growth, measuring impact rigorously, and ensuring that the project’s expansion maintains its scientific, ethical, and social base,” highlights Mariana Lucas Aguiar, co-Founder of Lira, anticipating that “in a year, the success of the ÍMPARES experience will be knowing that any woman in Portugal can begin the process of identifying her neurodivergence and find, in daily life, support that helps her understand herself and take care of herself.”
For Daniela Seabra, Founder of VEM – Mobility with Dignity, “ÍMPARES represents exactly the type of support we are seeking at this moment: close, demanding, and oriented toward real impact.” In terms of future prospects, the leader anticipates that “in a year, success will be that we are conducting more than 1,000 missions per month, impacting more and more people and communities, in a consistent and high-quality way. It will mean having a structured operation, the right partnerships, and a confident team, certain that we are prepared for the next big step: internationalization.”
The 2030 Agenda for Impact foresees that Portugal mobilizes 200 million euros for social innovation by 2030. In this scenario, the capacity-building of promoters of social entrepreneurship initiatives takes on a priority role. The ÍMPARES program emerges as a direct response to this need, through support for organizations that have already proven their value and that now seek to consolidate sustainable growth models. Such a measure contributes to the robustness of the country’s impact ecosystem.
