On April 27th and 28th there was a meeting of the Collegiate Confies Prosecutors (Confies is the National Council of Foundations to Support College Institutions and Scientific and Technological Institutions) for 2022. The event was held at São José dos Campos, in the state of São Paulo, at the Funcate headquarters, and was attended by Brazil’s main support foundations, which met to address issues regarding incentive to research in the fields of science and technology.

With about 35 participants, the 2022 meeting is a milestone for the event, which, after two years without actual physical meetings because of the pandemic, was once again held with participants present. Fiotec sent two representatives, Marianna Magalhães, lawyer, and Liz Mônica, Law Advising manager.

Fernando Peregrino, Confies president, spoke about the progress in fund raising, even in this moment of crisis, and about how the pandemic changed people’s perception of science. “We are celebrating a very strong action, by the foundations, in the directing of fund raising for the supported universities and science and technology institutes. In the past two years we have been facing a crisis in the country, because of the pandemic. And yet we have had a 50% increase in the volume of resources the foundations have administered in this period [...] Science has proven to be the solution for the country. It was very difficult to make the society understand the role played by science, but the vaccine is a symbol of this role. Vaccines came from scientific institutions, supported by foundations”.

As the meetings resume, countless issues were expected to be addressed at the event. Due to the abundance of subjects, the event consulted the attending representatives in a democratic fashion to determine which issues would be of interest for the majority, to make sure the two days of debates would be productive.

The event boasted the significant participation of federal prosecutor Carine Delgado, who mentioned the importance of improving the dialogue between the Attorney General’s Office and the support institutions. “We no longer have that vision of a prosecutor whose role is only to provide an opinion, period; not at all. We need to think about how to align, how to uniformize all thoughts, standards and interpretations, so we can achieve public interest beginning with these partnership modalities”.

During the meeting, some difficulties faced by the foundations on a daily basis were mentioned, such as lack of acknowledgement of their relevance for science and technology institutions and universities, which has a negative impact on the daily work of support foundations.

With information extracted from videos produced by Funcate.