The pro bono project ‘Oficina dos Sons’, developed by JUNITEC – Junior Enterprise at Instituto Superior Técnico to help children with learning difficulties associated with reading/writing won the European award “Most Impactful Project”, awarded by the Junior Enterprises Europe (JE Europe). The announcement was made on March 3, during the JE Europe Winter Conference, in Brussels.

Aware of the obstacles of pedagogical intervention for children with learning difficulties associated with reading and writing, the JUNITEC students sought to “develop a solution that would allow any child to have access to this service for free”. ‘Oficina dos Sons’ is a free online platform with several games that help any child work on phonological awareness exercises dynamically and interactively. To this end, according to the JUNITEC website, “different games will make it possible to associate sounds with words and/or images, leading children to develop their language and writing skills while playing and having fun”.

The Most Impactful Project award honours ‘Junior Enterprises’ that have stood out in the previous year for their excellence and is awarded as part of the European Excellence Awards. This is an initiative of JE Europe, an organisation that represents more than 34,000 students from 380 Junior Enterprises in 16 European countries.

JUNITEC was elected the ‘Most Promising Junior Enterprise’ in Europe by JE Europe in 2021, and the ‘Junior Enterprise of the Year’ in Europe in 2023. JUNITEC was founded in 1990 and aims to bridge the gap between Técnico students and the Portuguese business world.