Main users: Wider community

Mini-shopping commercial and social centres, the Galleries encourage entrepreneurship with socioeconomic impact, transform peripheral regions and empower socially vulnerable entrepreneurs.

The Entrepreneur Galleries create shopping and social centres in peripheral and less developed regions of São José dos Campos. They empower the local community and support microentrepreneurs, based on the idea "from community to community", driving prosperity and economic and social development. Managed by PqTecSJC with support from SEBRAE, SENAC, Neighbourhood Associations, Commercial Association, and the Secretariat of Economic Development, the Galleries serve as a new model of consumption and social coexistence in their neighbourhoods, where they stimulate socioeconomic development and promote entrepreneurship. They help the local workforce gain qualifications, generating work, income and sustained growth, and contribute to integrated urban development with a methodology that is aligned with a broader vision of entrepreneurial culture.

Encouraging and empowering people in vulnerable situations who have entrepreneurial potential to open their own business, generating jobs and income, based on the construction of commercial spaces, in the poor regions of the city, allowing the local community to have access to quality products and services, at accessible prices, without the need to travel to major shopping centers in the city. It identifies entrepreneurs, traders and self-employed workers and offers qualification, training and support to organize themselves as a business society, to settle in a specially designed environment to serve the local community, offering products, services and spaces for socializing and entertainment. From the informal seamstress who attends the neighbourhood to the street food vendor, from the hairdresser to the tattoo artist, all these entrepreneurs become pastry shops, beauty salons, tattoo studios, cafes and restaurants. Previously underserved areas with high crime rates and serious social problems, they became lively spaces for shopping and entertainment that made a direct impact on local people.

In its 8 years, 94 entrepreneurs and 30 companies have graduated and settled in the Galleries. The two shopping centers are recognized and widely used by the community for shopping, meeting points, and entertainment. A digital transformation track for small businesses offered tenant companies help gaining qualifications and technical assistance to create digital platforms for promotion, marketing, customer attraction and online sales, and trained staff to use existing platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Ifood, UberEats, Rappi. This increased sales and revenue by 25%, even amid the pandemic lockdowns and compulsory closures which hit small local businesses especially hard. The program overflowed the borders of mini-malls, attracting other local merchants who joined to create seasonal and festive campaigns for Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Festa Junina and Easter, creating a large network to promote and stimulate local consumption.

Community, society, micro-region entrepreneurs (1km radius), government agents, and civil society.