Aurora is today a reference in support of families and as social entrepreneurship example. Currently focused on Sleep and Breastfeeding, but with a much broader vision of the future, Aurora asks for a reference to support parents throughout their journey.
The idea behind Aurora arises from the need to bring to today’s families the information that was once passed from mother to mother, but that with the reality of the day-to-day lives of families in developed countries has been lost. Families are currently experiencing parenting with anxiety, fears and constraints due, essentially, to the lack of awareness of the normal development of babies and children, as well as the lack of support to solve the difficulties of everyday life.
Aurora, then, puts all available scientific knowledge at the service of families in order to calm their anxieties as well as help to solve difficulties felt, giving constant and an always-available support (24/7).
“It takes a village to raise a child!”
ancient African saying
In mid-2017, the project that would give rise to Aurora leaves as a Finalist in the CANVAS Contest – PROJECTS THAT MARK by the European Commission – Entrepreneurship Scholarship 2017. The business and sustainability plan thus begins to become aligned.
In 2018, Aurora begins to take the first steps, in its automated interaction with parents and families, helping them, initially, only with issues in the area of breastfeeding. Soon after, we made available some playful tests, for pregnant women and pregnant women, to immediately start, then, the tests of their sleep monitoring program, for babies and children, from 0 to 6 years old.
About 200 families participated in the various testing phases.
In the 4th test phase, 86% of parents, who took the program with Aurora, declared that their children’s sleep improved, either by decreasing the number of wakes or by decreasing the time to fall asleep and the consequent increase in the total number of hours of sleep and rest.
We were in May 2018 and thus entered the Portuguese market that same summer. We were in the news in several reference national media such as the Observer (“O Observador”).
At this time, Aurora ends up winning the HACK FOR GOOD bootcamp 2018 from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
We are recognized as an innovative social project in the area of support for children and young people and this again gives us some visibility in the media, this time a reference national radio station, TSF.
https://www.tsf.pt/sociedade/dois-mitos-relacionados-com-o-sono-das-criancas-9972226.html
https://www.tsf.pt/sociedade/um-peluche-uma-fralda-e-toda-a-seguranca-9897452.html
It is still in 2018 that we reached the first 1000 users (families helped by Aurora) and AuroraTechAI, Aurora’s formal and official home, is opened. During the 2018 Websummit, where we were on display for 3 days at the Hack for Good stand (as part of the bootcamp prize), the English version of Aurora is launched and with that, we open the doors to the world.
It is also around the same time that we became incubated at the Casa do Impacto of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa (also as part of the Hack for Good award), the first incubator of social projects in the country.
With the recognition of Gulbenkian, Aurora is also invited, at the end of 2018, to formalize itself as an Innovative Social Entrepreneurship Initiative (ISEI) and to submit an application for funds from PORTUGAL SOCIAL INNOVATION.
Thus was born PelaFamília – family promotion association, with the support and as an incubator of IEBA – Center for Business and Social Initiatives.
The approval of the support of Portugal Inovação Social is effected in the summer of 2019 in the Training component.
At the end of 2019, we tripled our users and we now have a service offer specifically aimed at companies in the context of reconciling life / family / work.
Also in 2019, Aurora is also the winner of the EUROACE CETEIS award, Transfrontier Support Centers for Innovative Entrepreneurs, that gave us access to WebSummit 2019 and the incubation at the Pedro Nunes Institute, Incubator for technology-based projects, in Coimbra, Portugal.
At 2020 Aurora is now available to around 700,000 employees from 60 national and international companies in partnership with Inspiring Benefits and with approximately 4000 families who were helped by Aurora.
And we still don’t know what the future holds, but we know that Aurora will be here, with us, always ready to help.
