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Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Now read about how those two actions helped in the creation of a powerful prototype to prevent teenage death by suicides.
Every year the Presencing Institute (PI) hosts its u-lab 2x journey, a 4-month innovation lab for change-makers to deepen and accelerate their prototype ideas from concept to action. In February 2022, Monica and Stephan Bissig in Switzerland, Tania and Fernando Campos in Brazil, Simona Cattabiani in Portugal, and Eduardo Magallanes in the U.S. embarked on this journey as a team, with one clear goal: to identify new, systemic approaches for suicide prevention in teenagers.
At the start of the project, they didn’t know exactly what to expect. But with curiosity, and applying the Theory U methodology, an innovative prototype emerged that started to generate unexpected results. In fact, by detecting suicidal messages before it is too late through a novel algorithm, and by focusing on listening, understanding, and establishing meaningful connections with suicidal youth, the prototype has already resulted in hundreds of messages from suicidal youth in Brazil alone stating that this initiative has helped to save their lives.
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