What started out as a casual exchange of ideas over coffee as now materialized into a mentorship programme for highschool students from my small hometown (Coruche, Portugal).

I am the co-founder of Bora. We started in 2020, with a small team of volunteers, and are now offering one-on-one mentorships for 38 students from the Secondary School of Coruche. Here's our statement of purpose:

Success should not depend on social context. Finding vocation and meaning in one's career  should not come as a privilege only for the children of a few. In a thriving community, everyone succeeds according to their abilities, not their parents' network of contacts.

This was the motivation behind the "backstage" development and now launch of the 1st edition of the BORA mentoring programme, designed for secondary school students in Coruche, encouraging them to aim high at their goals, make informed choices and embrace challenges, while sharing an attitude of taking responsibility for their own decisions. 

Throughout the year, each of the 38 participants in the first edition will have the voluntary and personalized guidance from a mentor with a remarkable professional background (also former student in Coruche), as well as access to a programme that includes several conferences and activities, such as volunteering. Everything is designed to open their horizon across the borders of our village and increase confidence in their ability to make decisions about the future.

We are grateful to the teachers for the invaluable work they have been doing for generations in Coruche, and hope we can be a useful complement to their charismatic mission of marking lives and discovering the talent in each of us

May this initiative have echo throughout the country!

I am incredibly passionate about this project and have faith in its impact. We do this for the kids, and if through this programme we can see change in one single participant, I deem all the time and dedication put into the development of Bora to be worth it.