Disclaimer: Until today, all the texts in this blog have
been about companies or business men/women but, this time, this text will be
about UPrise, a youth association which focus its impact in education,
environment, political and financial literacy, among other aspects. UPrise
Talent is one of the fastest growing students associations. Thus, for all the
readers, I think this text might interest you for two main reasons: firstly, to
get to know better this association and its impact in the surrounding
communities; secondly, to understand how you can move from having an “Eureka”
moment to building an youth association with 100+ Uprisers involved.
What is UPrise Talent and how was born the idea
Recently, I
had the opportunity to get to know better Filipe Sousa and the youth
association UPrise Talent. UPrise Talent focus, as aforementioned, in ranging
topics from education, to the environment, not forgetting youth sedentary and
unhealthy lifestyle, or even political and financial literacy, for instance.
The idea of
founding UPrise started during a barbecue at Filipe’s home, when he discussed with Ricardo
Correia and João Fins how they could solve the problems they
had already detected in the past. As Filipe points out “If you are going to found a company or an association you need to first
identify clearly the problems or social necessities and only then develop a
strategy and operational instruments to solve them.”
How to start to put in practice a new
concept
In the
beginning, although there were many doubts, the founders started to highlight
some key areas: HR, Marketing, Communication, External and Internal Processes,
Web Management and even Positioning of the association were widely discussed.
From day one,
they believed the idea could spread geographically from Barcelos, which in fact
occurred, not only nationally as worldwide. However, they always fostered a
localization approach, changing their strategy and their approach in the
different cities.
The expansion and the growth of the association
Founded in 2017, in a short time span, UPrise is already present in 2 Portuguese cities besides Barcelos (Porto and Coimbra) and in Brazil. This happened thanks to two main aspects: firstly, UPrise’ founders always assured high ambitions inside the association, namely, they always stretch their goals and they run the association with an overarching objective of “changing the world”; secondly, due to a combination of strategy, hard work and team spirit of all the people involved in this growth.
“It is a huge reason
to be proud, but we also know that fast growth requires dynamic and flexible
follow-up of its structures, never limiting the scope for innovation and
individual creative freedom that sets us apart.” said Filipe, when I asked him
to comment the exponential growth of UPrise. In his words, the geographical growth
is just one variable of an integrated global strategy. After all, the main
priority remains to really have an impact in each city they are present in and,
only after having achieved that, think about continuing their expansion to
other locations.
UPrise members, its activities and the
future
In total,
UPrise has 110 UPrisers members in the end of 2018. The culture of the
association is to encourage every member to make a difference, in a
personalized and unique way. In UPrise, the status quo is about defying the
main human resources methodologies adopted worldwide. However, of course, there
are some internal divisions, to facilitate the workflow and the specialization
of the members, as Web Management, Marketing,
Communication, Financial and Commercial Relations, Legal, Talent Management and
Health & Movement. Furthermore, there also occur several formations (guided
by UPrise’ Corporate Partners) and social and technical projects that UPrise
develops.
Fortunately, and, besides the impact in the
community, UPrise had also impact in their members. For instance, 100% of
the members of Talent Academy have raised their school average since they
entered UPrise, which shows the values that are fostered in this association.
UPrise Selection and Integration Process
Regarding the
selection of the UPrisers, Filipe assured that UPrise makes this process as
personalized as possible, taking into account interpersonal differences.
Notwithstanding, there are cross-cutting criteria: motivation, interpersonal
skills and values are the most important traits for this association. After the
first selection phase, in which motivation and past experiences are assessed,
there are two other phases, a group dynamics and an interview, in which the interview stance varies according to the
department the applicant is planned to be allocated to.
For Filipe,
this is the hardest part of managing UPrise. “Each application we receive means 1) recognition for our work, 2) a
(positive) increase in competitiveness between candidates that will raise the
level of who we select because we have a larger pool for interests parties from
which to select and 3) this increase in the number of candidates makes the recruitment process more difficult
but, at the same time, causes a greater motivation on the part of those who
join us. By 2) and 3), we see that each candidate, just by applying,
effectively improves UPrise. After all, Filipe, Ricardo and João have known
other recruitment processed and stand for making a difference relative to them,
never rejecting any candidate with a simple “Thank you for having applied”.
UPrise connections to the job market and
its new department
UPrised has
already worked with several companies, as KPMG, Speak and Lead or Sonae, for
example. All the relationships with corporate partners, as PrimeIT, for
instance, are personalized and can be initiated either by the company itself or
by UPrise. There are only 2 restrictions that UPrise poses in terms of
partnerships: 1) direct competitors of
actual partners already in force are not eligible or 2) companies with which
UPrise do not identify by an ideological issue. It is from this latter point
that UPrise opted out by not partnering with fast food chains.
Recently, UPrise has created a new division, related with Health and Movement, that will have the focus of doing research, gathering theoretical and technical knowledge, in order to then apply it in multiple initiatives. This department intends to integrate students the the areas of health and physical activity, such as Medicine, Sports and Physical Education, among others.
How
to create a new project and the main takeaways
For all those readers who wish to gain insights
about how to create and start a new project, the main takeaways from my
conversation with Filipe were: 1) Only will and good intentions are not enough:
having a good structure from the beginning about what is needed for your
project to be successful is critical; 2) Challenges will always happen, and in
the beginning, technical ones (for instance, setting up a website) will be a
constant, thus, you have to learn how to cope with them; 3) Having a
multi-skilled team that believes in the project is fundamental.
The mindset, according to Filipe, has to be to try
to evolve from each step, regardless of being a failure or an achievement, as there
is always space for improvement. What makes a difference is how you approach them,
in an ever-ending process: “I can say I have already broken several traditional
internal methodologies. We are not afraid of being disruptive in a social
context but we also do it internally.” mentioned Filipe.
Another takeaway severely referred by Filipe
was: “If you are optimistic surround yourself with pessimistic people. If you are
pessimistic, surround yourself with optimistic people. It is not by chance that
the mortality rate of start-ups is extremely high. A good idea is not enough.
You got a good idea. Now destroy it. Why is it going to go wrong with absolute
certainty? If your idea survived this question then it is time to be positive.
Make it happen. It is not difficult to trust you when you succeed, difficult is
when you are trying to succeed. And no one will trust you if you do not trust.”
This should be, according to Filipe, the posture to adopt, in order to find a
balanced way of approaching your project. 
In conclusion, the most important
part is to take the plan into action. Although this might seem intuitive, most
of the people sometimes worry too much about how perfect the plan has to be,
and they never put the plan into practice. Without doing that, you can never
learn from the challenges you would face and you can never really evolve. After
all, “Action may not always bring happiness to your projects, but there is no
happiness without action”.
Finally, I would like to thank
Filipe and UPrise Talent for all the insights provided and wish them the best
for their future endeavors!
Dear Readers,
I hope this article was useful
for you and, in case you want to know more about this youth association, just
visit https://uprisetalent.com/.
