14 de July de 2026
On the 15th, the Best Practice Prize award ceremony took place. The prize, granted by the Jacobs Foundation, honored Labedu this year alongside Fundación Escuela Nueva and Imagine Worldwide. The organizations were recognized for their work based on the effective application of scientific evidence, the use of a clear results framework, and the potential for scaling up and implementation worldwide. The event took place in Zurich, Switzerland, where the Jacobs Foundation is headquartered.
During the opening of the ceremony, the host organization’s CEOs, Simon Sommer and Fabio Segura, highlighted the Jacobs Foundation’s efforts over the past 30 years to help children grow into successful people able to thrive to their full potential. “We are here tonight to celebrate three examples that show us that change in education is possible if we believe in the transformative power of evidence,” the leaders stated.
In her speech, Beatriz Cardoso, who shares Labedu’s leadership with Andrea Guida and Nicole Piedra and represented the organization at the ceremony, reflected on the importance of producing knowledge about implementation processes to drive transformation, and on the challenges faced by Brazil that Labedu’s work engages with.
“Brazil is a country that still faces very deep problems for every child to reach their learning potential. That is why we advocate for and work on evidence-based projects, with care and deep respect for the professionals in the education system. That is also why we pursue systemic changes, which are not quick or miraculous, but which have consistently contributed to the learning of thousands of children.”
In closing her remarks, Beatriz thanked the partnership of the Labedu team and the other organizations, and looked to the future. “We are not satisfied with improvement for a few; we dream of gradual step changes that consolidate quality education for all. We want to turn the extraordinary into the ordinary! It is an enormous privilege to be recognized for this—rest assured that we leave here dreaming even bigger.”
From left to right: Fabio Segura, co-CEO of the Jacobs Foundation; Lavinia Jacobs, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Jacobs Foundation; Vicky Colbert, founder and director of Fundación Escuela Nueva; Beatriz Cardoso, director of the Education Lab; Karen Levesque, Director of Research at Imagine Worldwide; and Simon Sommer, co-CEO of the Jacobs Foundation.