Lucía González Navarrete explains that even as a child “she was obsessed with changing things.” This spirit of improvement led the industrial engineer to found the sustainability and innovation project consulting firm Edenway, together with Sébastien Dalmas. But it was a talk at a school that reconnected González with her childhood. “The director of the center asked me how I could integrate sustainability into the school,” recalls the protagonist. She was the spark that encouraged González and Dalmas to found Natives, a digital platform with multimedia content on sustainability aimed at educational centers around the world.
Based in Barcelona, Natives was born in 2019, although the first experiences with schools were not until 2020, the year the Covid pandemic broke out. Overcoming the virus bump and after an investment of 250,000 euros, the startup has managed to gain a foothold in 700 educational centers in 14 countries on four continents.
To reach even more schools, the co-founders want to raise 700,000 euros in investment within the framework of a strategic plan to integrate a thousand more centers in three years. The money will also be used to develop new functionalities. To carry out its growth forecasts, the startup has the support of Social Tides (Inco and Google), New European Bauhaus Booster 2.0 (EIT) and Netmentora.
González, who leads the project while remaining a founding partner of Edenway, points out that since 2020 they have carried out more than 200 projects linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); They have trained more than 2,000 teachers and have reached more than 50,000 students between 3 and 17 years old. The platform, which employs four people, costs one euro per year per student, which has led Natives to invoice around 80,000 euros in 2023.
