The Public Innovators program held its second edition in 2023, with the participation of 55 public officials from 12 institutions. The Acceleration Lab financially and technically accompanied the development of two proposals: Kuña Arandu from the Ministry of Women's Affairs and Poranduha from the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Some of the insights for this cycle were: Moving from a training program to a continuous public innovation service. Should a third edition of the program be carried out, according to the available resources, the possibility of increasing the number of participating teams within the same ministry is currently being considered, aiming to catalyze the experience and, after the program, to create an internal Innovation Laboratory that could serve as a practice space for the institution's officials and from which other internal initiatives could be accompanied in a stable and continuous manner. The developed pilots are missionally relevant for the institutions, but the appropriation and scalability of the developed solutions is still low. Nine public innovation pilots received funding and technical support during the 1st and 2nd editions of the program, but their institutionalization within the respective ministries still represents a significant challenge. While the general coordination of the program makes significant efforts to socialize the results of the pilots with the highest authorities of each institution, internal human or financial resources have not yet been allocated to bring them to an optimal stage of maturity, and in some cases they expressed the expectation that the Public Innovators Program could assume this responsibility. Within the framework of the second edition of the Moiru Community Challenge for Social Innovation, two initiatives focused on SDGs 5 and 8 were implemented: (1) Mr. Carrot - Rescuing Flavors and (2) Ta'aro - A Life Project with groups of students and university professors from the National University of Itapúa (UNI). The need to work in the territory: The experience of working with the National University of Itapúa demonstrated the value of focusing efforts on a territory, as opposed to working at the national level. This created an advantage to be able to customize methodologies and tools and implement them with a higher level of ownership with local stakeholders. It also brought close knowledge of the most urgent problems to be addressed and the design of solutions already adapted to the local reality. Co-create with academia is an opportunity to make university extension a reality: The Moirū pointed out the potential of involving universities and academic centers in addressing the challenges faced by their territories and communities. Approaching community processes of social innovation from these spaces offers an interesting opportunity to make university extension projects a reality, connecting research and teaching functions with community work that applies the knowledge generated to the resolution of local problems. Many university outreach projects are already, to a greater or lesser extent, and with different levels of maturity, examples of social innovation, but 1) they are not sufficiently visible, 2) they need to improve, systematize, or better integrate tools and methods of social innovation, and 3) they can better deepen their link with communities and grassroots organizations. Documentation and analysis of existing outreach projects from different universities is a pending challenge.The need and challenge remains, however, to find good analytical and abstraction skills to better focus the problems and solutions that emerge from the project design process that this opportunity enables. Connecting students and teachers to the communities, generating immersion in the community context of each problem is another challenge that remains for the future. Another challenge for the future is how to generate this immersion in a way that enables a more direct interaction with local referents and organizations that are already facing the challenges on a daily basis, in order to better focus on the problems. To reach each community faces costs and logistical challenges that are not easy to solve, but that we believe are worth considering in the design of future community challenges of social innovation. Some ways to explore include establishing continuous contact with referents that act as community focal points, or designing the process so that each project is linked to a community initiative or organization with ongoing actions, seeking the space for innovation within those actions or initiatives.

The Country Office is coordinating a Resource Mobilization Strategy based on the identification and systematization of "products" developed within the country office that can be easily and versatilely replicated in different thematic areas in coordination with key allies. In this sense, within the proposals of the Acceleration Laboratory, Moiru and Public Innovators stand out as potential vehicles for this purpose. A proposal was presented to the Management Unit of the Presidency of the Republic (UGPR) from the Governance portfolio of the country office to develop a Moiru within the framework of the National Strategy to Combat Corruption (ENCC), the proposal was very well received and is currently in the design and adaptation phase. As part of the evaluation of the Ta'aro Pilot - A Life Project, the interest of other community stakeholders was identified, such as the Government of the Department of Itapúa, the municipality of Encarnación and Cambyreta in supporting and replicating the program promoted by the National University of Itapúa. The Innovadores Públicos program is in the process of analysis and design of its third edition, with a new program governance scheme considering that the National Innovation Strategy (ENI) will now be executed from the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications (MITIC) from where other innovation programs (mainly digital) are executed with funding from international cooperation (IDB and KOICA). We were invited to present the Public Innovators initiative as panelists within the Ibero-American Week of Public Innovation in the Dominican Republic, as well as the SDG Summit, unfortunately it was not feasible to articulate the participation of an authority for the event.

In the framework of Moiru, surveys, focus groups and semi-structured interviews were conducted with different local stakeholders, government, municipality, civil society, private sector foundations and of course the National University of Itapúa (UNI) mainly in the design and evaluation phases of the methodological proposal of the Community Challenge for Social Innovation around the barriers and challenges for the fulfillment of SDGs 5 and 8 mainly. This experience helped to identify the main challenges related to working with the prison system and the prison population. In addition, several national reports and reports of civil society organizations developed on the subject (CODEHUPY, National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture, Penal Execution Code, among others) were consulted. Semi structured interviews and focus groups were carried out during the project with the sixteen participants deprived of their liberty at the Social Rehabilitation Center (CERESO). Mr. Carrot Pilot, the development of the proposal and the pilot were based on extensive research on the problem of carrot discarding in the district of Ma. Auxiliadora district, the type of data used was based on official documentation from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, the National Institute of Statistics, and interviews and focus groups with producers in the area. At the end of the project, the socialization of this report and the proposal of 6 potential solutions to address the problem was carried out with the participation of representatives of international cooperation, national and local government, university teachers and students, NGOs and local committees. As part of the Public Innovators pilots, in the case of Kuña Arandu, one of the main sources of data consisted of the systematization of reports developed by the Ministry of Women over the last few years on gender issues, as well as the identification of variables and national sources (United Nations, INE) to monitor the progress of each of the SDG 5 targets at the national level. Regarding the Pilot of the Non-Contributory Pensions Directorate, the Poranduha App is the optimization and digitalization of an internal procedure, and most of the data used were based on the team's experience, legal regulations and surveys to beneficiaries and family members of the service, as well as the consultations made in the previously enabled channels such as the web. The app has already been developed and field tests will be carried out in the coming weeks.

The methodologies applied throughout the Moiru phases: 1) Design of the Challenge focused on the SDGs; 2) Training and support in the design of proposals to selected teams; 3) Selection of Winning Proposals; 4) Implementation of the selected pilots and 5) Evaluation of the pilots. The results were appropriate for obtaining insights, data and, above all, building relationships of trust and respect with the main local stakeholders, the university and its various branches in the department of Itapúa and subsequently, the partner institutions and organizations in the implementation of the pilots (CERESO, Arapoty, Economic and Social Observatory of UNI, Carrot Producers Association, among others). The applied methodologies also facilitated the appropriate systematization of university extension experiences, promoting the replicability of successful practices in other institutions at the regional level through adequate articulation. The Public Innovators experience represents a space for R+D+i where participating public officials can put into practice the tools and methodologies developed during the 15 weeks of training. Developing solutions requires an additional commitment to the tasks normally performed by civil servants, but it is also a rewarding space for them where they can see how their ideas turn into something concrete and tangible.

The second editions of both Moiru Initiatives and Public Innovators were developed, that is, in this second iteration of both programs we had the opportunity to collaborate and co-create with new strategic allies, adding new criteria and experiences. However, we believe that both learning cycles still represent very relevant opportunities for the sustainable development of the country.