Low-cost methodology project for initiating an internalization network for values.
SUMMARY
This text aims to present the Co-captains project and its protocol for identifying blind spots.
We are in a specific context: minors in Brazil, from the JACOMINESP association, in a vulnerable situation. Not all of them, but those with the minimum conditions to engage with questions about their own future and who are potential multipliers of the protocol. The problem for these minors seems to be a lack of alignment between their mental processes. So, what is the best way to align them at the lowest cost?
The proposal makes three bets:
First: the problem of crime in the context of Samambaia-DF is not a lack of values, but a lack of alignment.
Second: a five-question algorithm can reduce noise sufficiently for the action to occur with more aligned values.
Third: a small subset of these smaller ones, once aligned, can multiply the effect without permanently depending on a facilitator: being a Co-Captain.
Validation will determine if the bets are correct and can help us gather more evidence to support investments in education.
Introduction
They are not starving; they have access to relatively inexpensive nutrition provided by the government, and they have a roof over their heads. Therefore, my hypothesis is that the main obstacle for minors is not a lack of values, but the absence of internalized direction and a protocol for arbitration among their legitimate internal processes competing for the same scarce resource: attention.
In the absence of a clear framework for decision-making, they choose what provides short-term support.
They conflict with peaceful and moral concepts presented in schools.
Conflict increases the noise.
Noise undermines trust.
The result is not immoral: it's disorientation. Therefore, we first propose reinforcing a guiding principle, an internal point of reference.
Examples of what occurs in the cognitive processes of minors:
Competition
two processes:
wants to restore social values
They want to be part of a strong group and not feel alone or different; it's a coalition instinct.
Both claim priority. The strongest impulse wins, not always the most morally and ethically driven one internally.
Lack of coordination
Nobody fights.
But they also don't cooperate.
Example:
open networks
skip topic
procrastinate
Energy is dispersed. Any path and direction are accepted, regardless of internal ethics or morals.
Alignment
The mental processes are cooperating.
The action happens almost automatically.
A state similar to flow. It aligns the child's personal desires with those of the group, which tends to cooperate and think about what is best for everyone.
Literature review
For the construction of a protocol, an algorithm with fewer errors, low cost, and higher benefit. We consider the entire spectrum of system construction: From philosophy to mathematics and engineering.
To further unify the existing evidence on education and personal development into a clear and testable algorithm, we began by searching from the most general to the most specific.Analyses of educational interventions related to Effective Altruism. This search led us to a process of specific materials and proposals for personal productivity.
1. Where to begin: filtering before any comparison.[
When someone decides to invest in education, the temptation is to compare every possible type: schools, curricula, technology, tutoring, scholarships. This is unfeasible. The literature on Effective Altruism proposes a shortcut: instead of comparing everything, use two filters before anything else.
First filter: cost per measurable result.A meta-analysis by J-PAL, the economics lab of MIT and Harvard, compiled 96 randomized evaluations of tutoring programs and found a mean effect of 0.37 standard deviations: the equivalent of a student advancing from the 50th to almost the 66th percentile. It's not that tutoring seems to work, it's that it works when measured with the same rigor as a clinical trial. The same J-PAL shows skepticism about interventions without this level of evidence: increasing teachers' salaries without changing the method, distributing tablets, or building schools without pedagogical change show much smaller or inconsistent effects. Note: the review focused on high-income countries, which limits direct extrapolation to Latin America, but establishes the mechanism.
Second filter: long-term satisfaction and flourishing.Well-being research shows that what best predicts life satisfaction is not absolute income, but three things: autonomy (feeling that you have chosen your own path), close relationships, and a sense of purpose. An intervention designed to develop clarity of personal direction and meaningful connection targets these three points, even before touching on academic performance.
These two filters together already eliminate most options. What remains is: low-cost interventions, with a replicable protocol, focused on close relationships and personal guidance. This is exactly where structured 1-on-1 mentoring thrives.
2. What doesn't work, and why everyone still believes it does.
Before showing what works, it's worth understanding where the field went wrong. Not for the pleasure of pointing out flaws, but because error is instructive. The main competitor to 1-on-1 interventions in the minds of directors, politicians, and funders is what is called Social-Emotional Learning (SEL): programs that teach children and adolescents to recognize emotions, resolve conflicts, and develop empathy.
Why does everyone believe that SEL works?
Imagine you're a school principal and a consultant comes in with a program called Social-Emotional Learning. The name is convincing: who could be against teaching children to deal with emotions? The material is beautiful, the teachers receive training, and three months later you administer a questionnaire, and the children say they feel more able to recognize what they are feeling. You believe it worked.
The problem lies in what was measured.
The wrong ruler
When you teach a child emotional vocabulary and then ask, "Can you identify your emotions better now?", the answer will almost always be yes. You've trained them to answer exactly that. It's like teaching someone to memorize the rules of chess and then testing if they know the rules—of course they'll do well. The real test is different: two years later, did this child fight less? Did they make less impulsive decisions? Did they finish school? When researchers measured these outcomes, the ones that really matter, the picture changed completely.
What the numbers show
A 2024 review examined 17 SEL studies with adolescents, looking for which program had sufficient evidence to be recommended. To picture what "sufficient evidence" means: think of a four-step ladder. On the first step, there is only initial evidence. On the second, moderate evidence, the minimum for a doctor to consider prescribing a medication. On the third and fourth, high and very high confidence. None of the 17 programs reached the second step. None.
A 2023 review went further and found something even more disconcerting: some programs had a slightly negative effect. Not just useless, potentially harmful. Imagine going to the gym three times a week and coming back slightly weaker than before.
Why the mechanism was wrong from the start.
David Yeager identified something more fundamental: the premise of SEL may be flawed. SEL assumes that adolescents have a skill deficit, that they misbehave because they don't know how to name emotions or resolve conflicts. The evidence points to a different diagnosis: adolescents misbehave when they feel disrespected or invisible within the group.
The practical difference is enormous. If the problem is a lack of skills, you create a curriculum and teach them. If the problem is a lack of status and respect, no curriculum will solve it, because the teenager needs to be treated differently, not taught differently. It's the difference between giving someone a manual on how to make friends and simply treating them as someone whose opinions matter.
Why does this matter for One Pace?
It's not that social-emotional programs are bad. It's that they've become a field dominated by good intentions without rigorous protocols, and good intentions without protocols don't generate evidence. One Pace starts precisely from this diagnosis: instead of teaching emotional skills from the top down, it treats the adolescent's vision of their own future as something worthy of being heard. It's not a curriculum. It's a structured conversation.
Sources for this section:
Psychiatric Services (2024), review of 17 studies of SEL in adolescents.
Meland & Brion-Meisels (2023), slightly negative effects in some programs
Yeager (2017), Future of Children, mechanism: status and respect, not ability.
3. The right format: why 1-on-1 changes everything
The experiment that defined the field
In 1984, researcher Benjamin Bloom asked a question that seemed simple: what happens when an average student receives individual tutoring instead of group classes? The answer surprised the field of education so much that he called the result a "problem," not because it was bad, but because it was too good to ignore and too expensive to replicate.
The average student in a conventional class is, by definition, in the middle, outperforming half of their classmates and being surpassed by the other half. After individual tutoring, this same student began to outperform 98% of their classmates. Not because they became more intelligent, but because the teaching was calibrated precisely for them: each question answered the moment it arose, each gap filled before it became an obstacle, each step at the right pace.
To illustrate: line up 100 students, from worst to best performer. The student in the middle is in position 50. With individual tutoring, he moves to position 98, surpassing 48 classmates. The group remains the same; it's his context that has changed.
Bloom called this "the two-sigma problem," "sigma" being the technical unit of this scale. And the problem, for him, was: if it works this way, why don't we do it for everyone? The obvious answer is cost. Each student would need a dedicated tutor. Until now.
Important caveat:Bloom's study was conducted with small samples, in specific domains such as mathematics, and over short periods. It's not the final word; it's the starting point. The field has spent the following decades trying to understand why it works and how to replicate the effect with fewer resources.
What mentoring generally achieves
If pure individual tutoring is expensive, what happens with mentoring, a regular relationship between an adult and a young person, with support but without the precision of a tutor? DuBois and colleagues analyzed dozens of programs with high institutional investment in 2011: money, structure, mentor training.
The average effect was real, but modest. Going back to the line of 100 students: the middle student advanced 8 positions, from the 50th to the 58th percentile. This is not insignificant; it means that mentoring works. But it also shows that money and structure alone are not the missing ingredient.
An important note to avoid getting lost in the numbers: DuBois measured the average effect of all mixed mentoring, both generic and specific, together. It's like measuring the average effect of all headache remedies without separating aspirin from placebo. The next section shows what happens when you break down this number.
4. But not just any one-on-one: the focus shifts.
Doubling the effect without doubling the cost.
When Christensen and colleagues separated mentoring programs by type in 2020, they found something that DuBois' average numbers hid. Generic mentoring, where the mentor is basically an "older friend" without a defined agenda, had a g-effect of 0.11. Going back to the line of 100 students: the middle student advanced 4 positions, going from the 50th to the 54th percentile.
The mentoring program, with its specific and defined focus, had a g-value of 0.25, moving from the 50th to the 60th percentile. That's 10 positions, more than double.
To understand why this happens, imagine two doctors. The first says, "Tell me how you are," and listens attentively. The second says the same thing, and in the next session already has a plan with three concrete actions based on what he heard. They both care equally. They both listen equally well. What differs is that one has a map of where to go after listening. This map is what makes the effect more than double—not more empathy, more structure.
The cost of adding structure is minimal. What changes is the mentor's clarity on what to do with what they've heard.
The closest case to One Pace
In 2017, Sara Heller and colleagues published the results of a controlled experiment, the gold standard of research, equivalent to a clinical trial, with economically disadvantaged young people in Chicago. The population was almost identical to the one that One Pace aims to reach.
The results were significant: arrests fell between 28% and 35%, arrests for violent crime fell between 45% and 50%, and the high school graduation rate rose between 12% and 19%. The cost was approximately US$1,850 per participant per year, about R$9,000 at the exchange rate at the time.
What's striking isn't just the result, it's the mechanism. The program didn't work because it taught emotional intelligence. It didn't work because of generic mentoring support. What changed was the young people's ability to pause before reacting automatically in ambiguous situations.
Imagine a busy intersection with no traffic lights. Every car makes split-second decisions: who goes first, who brakes, who honks. Small misreading decisions lead to accidents. Installing a traffic light doesn't make drivers smarter or more empathetic. It only introduces a pause where before there was only reaction. It's this pause that the program created in the young people of Chicago.
Important caveat:The program was delivered in small groups of up to 15 people, not strictly one-on-one. The logic of the mechanism applies to One Pace, but the delivery method is different; it's worth monitoring whether the individual format amplifies, maintains, or reduces the effect.
5. The mechanism: what the protocol needs to contain
Knowing that mentoring with a specific focus works better than generic mentoring doesn't answer the most important question: focus on what, exactly? What differentiates a structured conversation from a simply friendly one? Research points to three ingredients that, together, define what the protocol needs to contain.
Ingredient 1: Connection with the future self
Hal Hershfield and colleagues conducted a simple experiment in 2013: they showed young adults images of themselves aged in a virtual mirror, a photorealistic version of what they would look like decades later. Then they measured how much each person had saved for retirement. Those who saw themselves older saved significantly more money.
The mechanism isn't obvious, but it's powerful. When the future self seems like a stranger, someone distant, abstract, difficult to imagine, decisions about its well-being are made as if they were decisions about a complete unknown. You sacrifice less for the well-being of a stranger than for your own. When the future self becomes concrete and closer, this psychological distance diminishes, and the decisions change.
Van Gelder applied this logic to adolescents and risky behavior. Young people who wrote letters to their future selves reduced delinquent behaviors compared to the control group. Not because they received instruction on what not to do, but because the letter created a link between who they are today and who they will be. This link changes the calculation of decisions that seemed to have no consequence.
The letter to your future self is not a creative exercise. It's Hershfield's mirror in text format, and that's why it's a promising candidate as the starting point of the protocol, before any other conversation, provided it's validated.
Ingredient 2: the pause before the automatic reaction
The Chicago program we analyzed in the previous section, which reduced incarcerations by almost half, didn't work by teaching emotional skills. It worked by creating something much simpler: a moment of pause between stimulus and reaction.
In environments of high social pressure, many ambiguous situations are automatically interpreted as a threat. Someone looks at you in a certain way, it's a threat. Someone walks past you without asking permission, it's a threat. The reaction comes before the thought, and automatic reactions in complex social contexts generate consequences that accumulate over time.
The protocol doesn't teach young people to feel differently. It teaches them to notice that there is a moment between stimulus and response, and that this moment can be inhabited. It's the difference between the intersection without traffic lights that we saw before and the intersection with traffic lights: it doesn't change who the drivers are, it only inserts a pause where before there was only reaction.
Ingredient 3: Treat the young person's vision as a starting point, not as a problem to be fixed.
Yeager identified that programs that directly teach skills have weak evidence, but programs that make the adolescent feel respected and have status within the process work. The difference lies not in the content taught, but in the facilitator's attitude.
A mentor who arrives with the answer, "you should think about doing X," is repeating a classroom structure that has already failed. A mentor who arrives with a genuine question, "where do you see yourself in ten years?", and treats the answer as a legitimate starting point, not as a dream to be moderated, is doing something structurally different.
The protocol doesn't prescribe destiny. It maps what already exists in the young person's mind and helps to make it clearer and more real. Authority over one's own life remains with the one who lives it.
What the protocol should not promise
The Happier Lives Institute showed that even well-established interventions, such as therapy and income transfers, have difficulty demonstrating a lasting effect on subjective happiness. This doesn't invalidate the interventions, but it serves as a warning: measuring what you didn't cause creates weak evidence.
One Pace should measure what it promises: clarity of personal direction, ability to imagine the future self, reduction of harmful automatic decisions. If these effects appear, others—well-being, performance, relationships—may follow. But promising happiness as a direct result is a gamble that the available evidence does not support.
Sources for this section:
Hershfield, H.E. et al. (2013). Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings. Psychological Science.
van Gelder, J.L. et al. (2015). Thinking about the future in criminal behavior. Criminology.
Yeager, D.S. (2017). Social-emotional learning programs for adolescents. Future of Children.
Happier Lives Institute, limits of measuring happiness as a direct outcome.
6. Who can be a mentor: the non-professional model
One of the most important practical questions: does a mentor need to be a psychologist, therapist, or specialist? The evidence says no, and that this is not a limitation of the model, it's part of what makes it work.
Who has done this on a large scale?
StrongMindsThe organization has implemented group therapy delivered by former clients and trained community agents, not clinical psychologists, in several countries, including Brazil. The model is recommended by the World Health Organization for low-resource settings, and the results have been published in international medical journals.
Friendship Bench(Zimbabwe) went further: cognitive-behavioral therapy delivered individually by completely lay health workers, including community grandparents with no clinical training, trained in just a few weeks. The format is strictly one-on-one, the results were robust, and the model has been replicated in other countries.
What do these models have in common, and why does it matter?
In both cases, the person delivering the intervention doesn't have technical credentials. There's something else: they went through the process. That conveys something that no manual can transmit.
Imagine learning to swim by reading a book versus learning from someone who nearly drowned and learned. The book describes the movements with technical precision. But the person who nearly drowned knows the exact moment panic sets in, what happens to their breathing, what it's like when the water starts to make sense. This lived knowledge is not inferior to technical knowledge; it's different, and for certain processes, it's more transferable.
What StrongMinds and Friendship Bench have demonstrated is that, for interventions based on reflection and relationship, not on surgery or clinical diagnosis, the lived experience of the facilitator can be as effective as, or even more effective than, academic training, provided there is a clear protocol and sufficient supervision.
The risk that needs to be managed.
A layperson-based model with a protocol has a known weakness: quality can degrade as the training deviates from the original approach. Those who trained those who trained those who trained may deliver something quite different from the initial plan. StrongMinds addresses this with highly structured materials and recurring supervision. Friendship Bench addresses it with regular meetings between facilitators. One Pace needs to have an answer for this before scaling, not after.
The transition from mentee to mentor needs to be designed in the protocol.
What the evidence from these models shows most clearly is that the transition from receiver to giver cannot be left to chance. When it's spontaneous, the conversion rate is low. When it's designed within the arc of the process, "the next step is for you to help someone as you were helped," it becomes part of the identity that the process builds. In AA, the 12th step is literally carrying the message to others. In the Friendship Bench, completing the process includes an invitation to facilitate the next cycle. One Pace relies on the same logic with the co-captain: it's not an optional bonus, it's part of what it means to have completed the process.
And a precise understanding of what that relationship is, and what it isn't. The co-captain doesn't occupy a permanent position of authority over the other's boat. It's someone who crossed a similar bridge, at a time when the sea was a little calmer, and can show where the loose plank was. When the sea changes, and it changes, the person who knows best about navigating that specific storm might be you. The bridge creates mutual recognition, not eternal debt.
Sources for this section:
StrongMinds / IPT-G, therapy delivered by trained laypeople, recommended by the WHO.
Friendship Bench (Zimbabwe), 1-on-1 model by community workers without clinical training.
7. What is One Pace betting on?
For whom is this bet made?
Effective Altruism was largely developed by people with significant financial surpluses in the Northern Hemisphere asking how to make the most impact with those surpluses. The answer made sense in that context: donate where every dollar goes the furthest, which is often interventions in very low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
This model presupposes a financial surplus. For a Latin American middle class that does not have this surplus, the question changes: what can someone without much money but with time, experience, and clarity offer that generates real impact, including for themselves?
One Pace is an answer to that question. It doesn't ask for money that doesn't exist. It asks for what can exist: one hour a week with someone who is still finding their way, from someone who has already crossed a similar path.
What the review indicates
The literature gathered here does not prove that One Pace works. It indicates that its direction is not contradicted by existing evidence, and that the design avoids the most documented pitfalls in the field.
Specifically, the evidence shows that:
One-on-one teaching outperforms group teaching in a magnitude that no other educational variable has replicated (Bloom, 1984). Focused mentoring has more than twice the effect of generic mentoring (Christensen et al., 2020). Social-emotional skills programs without a rigorous protocol do not generate robust evidence; some are even slightly detrimental (Psychiatric Services, 2024; Meland & Brion-Meisels, 2023). The mechanism that works is not teaching skills, but creating a connection with the future self and pausing before the automatic reaction (Hershfield, 2013; van Gelder, 2015; Heller et al., 2017). Interventions delivered by lay peers with a clear protocol work on a large scale (StrongMinds, Friendship Bench). And the transition from receiver to giver needs to be designed into the process, not left to chance.
Why is this model particularly well-suited to the Latin American context?
Interventions that depend on continuous external funding grow linearly with available resources; each additional person to be helped requires more outside funding. The One Pace model, if the chain is maintained, grows differently: each person who completes the process has the capacity to start another cycle. The marginal cost per person falls as the network grows.
This isn't free; the co-captain's time has real value. But it's a resource that can exist locally, without depending on external donations, favorable exchange rates, or the decision of a distant funder. For contexts where the scarce resource is money but not time and accumulated experience, this is the structural difference that matters.
The Bolsa Família program illustrates both the potential and the limitations of this type of distinction. Through compulsory redistribution via taxes, a mechanism that starts from those who have and goes to those who don't, without either party choosing the relationship, the program reduced extreme poverty in Brazil by between 33% and 50%. But its effect on real learning is small, and its impact on personal development has never been measured because that was never the objective.
One Pace doesn't compete for that space. It tackles what no income transfer program touches: not what's missing from the table, but what's missing from the question "where am I going?". And it does this without requiring anyone to force others to contribute; each cycle begins with those who want to give back what they've received.
In Brazil, initiatives like Sonhar Acordado, an NGO present in 13 cities with over 5,000 young volunteers working with vulnerable teenagers, already demonstrate that the peer volunteering model has acceptance and scale.
One Pace doesn't start from scratch in terms of social infrastructure. The difference lies in the protocol: fewer top-down values, more direction built from what the young person already possesses, and with sufficient structure to generate replicable evidence.
What the review does not demonstrate
That the specific five-question protocol works. That the rate of conversion of minds to co-captain will be sufficient to sustain the current. That the effect lasts beyond the short term. Only empirical validation can answer these questions.
One Pace doesn't need to be revolutionary. It needs to beat a historically low baseline—programs without evidence that consume resources and good intentions—with a fraction of the investment, in a format that is locally sustainable and grows with those who have already gone through it.
Alignment and personal development
I analyzed several productivity and mapping proposals I found here on LessWrong, and each one had interesting points that I could incorporate. I would like to briefly present each idea, the central issue that defines it, and then a proposal to unify them a bit more.
Minsky, in "The Society of Mind," asks: How is the mind constructed? → How does a society of simple agents form hierarchies and teams? What is missing? He doesn't explain where this society is heading, nor how it organizes itself for external purposes.
Dehaene, in "This is How We Think" (Brazilian translation of Consciousness and the Brain), asks: How do internal agents compete to become conscious? → Through a global brain workspace: a mechanism that distributes, at once, only one mental content to all regions simultaneously, making it conscious. What's missing? It's a static amphitheater: it describes the competition, but doesn't say where it should lead.
Schwartz, creator of the Internal Family System model (also known by its English acronym, IFS), asks: How do the internal parts heal themselves? → Each part is treated as an agent with its own intentions; healing comes from listening to these parts and allowing the Self, the most stable and compassionate part of the person, to take the lead. What's missing? It's a therapeutic model, not a planner. It doesn't connect to day-to-day goals or concrete tasks.
Culadasa, in "The Enlightened Mind," asks: How to train sustained attention? → Through progressive stages of introspection and control of distractions. What's missing? You train the instrument, the attention, the rudder, the helm, but you don't connect it to a map of external objectives.
Kaj Sotala, in "A Mechanistic Model of Meditation," asks: How does introspection detect conflicts between subsystems? → A sensory channel that improves with practice, revealing competition between internal agents. What is missing? There is no protocol to translate this detection into organized actions to achieve goals.
Classic productivity methods, such as David Allen's "Getting Things Done" and John Doerr's "Objectives and Key Results," ask: How to organize goals and tasks? → Through hierarchies of objectives and concrete actions. What's missing? It doesn't model the internal agents that block execution. It's like having a map without knowing the state of the ship and crew.
Source
What is useful about it?
What's missing?
How does One Pace solve this?
Minsky, Society of the Mind
Mind as a society of simple agents
External direction; where is this society going?
Add "ship" with route, mission, and vision as a shared destination.
Dehaene / GNW
Competition for consciousness via the global workspace.
Direction and allocation criteria
Give the amphitheater a mission-based filter hierarchy.
Schwartz / IFS
Internal parts with their own intentions; healing through listening.
It doesn't connect to daily tasks or specific goals.
Agents mapped and listened to within a mission hierarchy.
Enlightened Mind
Sustained attention through progressive introspection.
It does not connect the instrument (attention) to a map of objectives.
Microtasks linked to a long-term vision as an external anchor.
Mechanical model of the mind
Introspection as a sensory channel that detects conflicts between subsystems.
No protocol to translate detection into organized action.
Question algorithm that transforms detection into micro-action.
Classic productivity
Hierarchies of objectives and concrete actions
It does not model the internal agents that block execution.
Internal agents are treated as variables that the protocol maps before planning.
“One Pace,” what is the question? How do we translate an abstract purpose into a temporary coalition of attention that produces concrete actions?
→ Considering the competition, the division by agents (IFS) and the ways to align them, the workspace (amphitheater) and giving it direction (ship), the system would detect at what level of the ship or territory there is discoordination or mutiny at the helm and organize them so that the mental agents cooperate towards the objective.
What is missing?...
Metaphor
Considering the references, for mentoring, agent systems, the alignment of a guiding principle, the protocol proposed here has a central metaphor: the mind as a ship with a crew navigating the violent sea of uncertainty, "One Pace" at a time.
What would be the cheapest and most functional step that could promote more values and less crime?
This is the treasure we seek in this project, theOne Pace.
To operationalize the metaphor:
theshipwould be the person
Thehelm and the captain,consciousness, attention resources
The vision would be as one sees oneself in the future.
ThetreasureThat would be the minor's long-term mission.
ThemapIt would be the set of definitions that the protocol helps to build: who I am, what I want, what the next step is.
A crewThese would be the internal processes (agents), simplified as: social, motivational, intellectual, bodily, that compete for executive attention.
Theconflict and lack of coordinationThis would be the possible state of any system with multiple processes and saturated with stimuli.
The One Pace doesn't try to silence the crew. It tries to give the captain a map before asking him to take the helm.
Therefore, we first propose a protocol to, firstly, map the route, and secondly, identify which crew member is pushing and in which direction. Here we will focus on a proposal to first map the route in a playful way.
Resources needed - Phase 1
The map
Each piece is a printed or custom-made card with a question. The participant can answer it in writing, by drawing, cutting out images from magazines, or dictating it to the facilitator. If they cannot answer at the moment, they take the card home. There is no deadline or mandatory order.
Not just a mood board for inspiration, not a plan of goals, but a personal navigation map, built in pieces, at each person's own pace.
The initial map has five pieces:
0. Personal satisfaction scale: "Has your teacher ever given you a grade in Portuguese? What grade would you give yourself for life satisfaction (perhaps with illustrative emojis, to have a reference point for long-term measurement)?"
Do you think it's possible to be a better person here in the association with me? , engagement, minimum openness test
How do you see yourself as an adult? Long-term vision.
What would be different a year from now? , bridging the gap between the long and medium term.
What changes in you during your next vacation? - tangible goal
What can you do this week? Immediate micro-action.
The map serves two functions simultaneously: it's a tool for reflection for the adolescent and an entry filter for the association. Those who can answer, even partially, demonstrate a minimum capacity to engage with questions about their own future; this is a dry coal that can be caught, because we want to create a chain reaction of good.
The map is not definitive. It can be updated, remade from scratch. What matters is not that it is permanent, but that it exists. That the teenager has named, even if provisionally, who they want to be and where they want to go.
What makes the map different from an entry form is what it represents to the person who creates it. It's the only place where the teenager pastes what they love, writes what they want to be, draws what they imagine for themselves, and can hang it on the wall. Not as a task, but as an achievement. Each completed piece is a rare little figure: something they managed to name about themselves, which was previously scattered in noise. The act of collecting, of completing, of seeing the puzzle taking shape tends to be motivating. The map is the first act of being a fan of oneself.
Proposal ofprotocol
The facilitator does not conduct an interview. They lead a navigational conversation; the goal is to help the participant name their vision of themselves and their own treasure, not to evaluate them. The tone is one of genuine curiosity, not screening.
The sequence has five moments, each corresponding to a piece of the map:
0. Personal satisfaction scale:"Has your teacher ever given you a grade in Portuguese? What grade would you give yourself for life satisfaction (perhaps with illustrative emojis, to give us a long-term benchmark)."
1. Engagement: a story like this: "I need to get to know you, because we have a goal here, we want to save the world, and you? So, to get to know you, we have to see your treasure map. Do you know Captain Luffy? Leaving aside all the arguments that I don't know how they work in real life. Luffy doesn't have a complete map of where the treasure is. He has clues that the treasure exists and he knows who he wants to be when he gets there, and that's the beginning of everything so he doesn't get lost. Luffy didn't grow up in an easy environment, he didn't have a mother, everyone said he couldn't be what he wanted to be, he had problems. Nobody believed in him at the beginning. What he had was a clear answer to the most difficult question: who do you want to be? With that, even losing support, even without knowing the exact path, he continues sailing. The crew follows him not because he has a plan. They follow him because he doesn't negotiate that answer with anyone. 'I want to be the king of the pirates!'"
Things to watch out for: Skepticism is acceptable. Indifference can be a sign.
2. Vision, long term "Luffy wants to be the king of the captains. Imagine you as an adult. Who are you? What have you achieved? The map doesn't say that having things is bad. It's the opposite: when you know who you want to be, it becomes easier to see what you really need to get there. With that, what serves your path becomes visible." If it stalls: don't insist. Leave a moment of silence. If nothing comes out, offer the card."Take this question with you. Think about it calmly. Bring it when you have it."
3. Mission
“You can’t take everything on board, the world has scarce resources and we’re constantly destroying them, so we have to think carefully about what I really need to be who I want to be. Luffy wants the One Piece, a legendary treasure; he knows he wants it because he knows who he wants to be. The treasure has meaning because identity came first. Without it, anything seems important and nothing seems enough. For example, if I want to be a pirate, what good is a car that doesn’t work in water? It’s better to have a good ship, right?” Luffy needs the treasure, but first he needed to find a ship.
3. Bridge, medium term "And what about a year from now? What would be different? What do you need to become who you want to be? Luffy needed friends, and you?" Function: It connects the long-term horizon to the present. If the vision from step 2 was vague, the bridge often helps to make it concrete.
4. Goal, next cycle "And what about your next vacation? What will have changed? What do you need for your next vacation to become who you want to be? Luffy started looking into how to get a boat, and you?" What to look for: Is the goal their own, or is it what the teenager thinks the facilitator wants to hear? If it seems performative:"And what would you really like?"
5. Micro-action, immediate "What's the smallest thing you can do? Sometimes to have a ship, you need to get the first plank of wood. What do you need, no matter how small, to become who you want to be?" This is the most revealing moment: it tests whether the teenager can translate vision into concrete action.
Special cases
Stuck on a question:Offer the card, think it over, there's no rush, come back later if you want. The question should never seem like a barrier.
Vague or very short answer:Accept without pressure. A single word is already a piece of the puzzle. The map starts incomplete, and that's okay.
Strong emotion appears:Pause. Offers support. The map awaits.
What the map does is exactly that: before any task, any goal, any plan, it helps answer this question. Who do you want to be? With an answer, even if incomplete, even if provisional, the ship has direction. And with direction, even the chaos of the sea becomes navigable information, not a meaningless threat.
Initial validation methods
The protocol validation has two phases. The initial goal is not to prove that One Pace works, but to identify the minimum signs that it is worthwhile to continue developing it.
Phase 1, Concept testing (2 to 4 weeks)
What to watch out for
How to measure
Engagement with the protocol
How many completed at least 3 pieces of the map?
Breaking point
Which question did they struggle with most often?
Quality of responses
Are they personal or performative? Vague or concrete?
Coal temperature
Can the facilitator identify at least one teenager who has the potential to multiply?
Minimum success rate: 2 out of 10 complete at least 3 pieces; facilitator clearly identifies at least 1 hot coal.
Phase 2, Behavior (2 months)
What to watch out for
How to measure
Identity retention
The teenager can still answer: who do you want to be?
Behavioral transfer
"Did you make any different decisions last week because you remembered your map?"
Concrete application
At least one case study of application in a real-world decision
Minimum success rate: 1 concrete application story; 2 out of 10 are still able to articulate their vision.
In the long term, perhaps we can measure how local satisfaction and crime rates have changed.
What this validation does not prove
Even with positive results, it will not be possible to isolate whether the effect comes from the protocol or from the relationship with the facilitator. This is expected at this stage. The goal now is to determine if the approach makes sense, not to quantify the size of the effect.
What the protocol produces
At the end, in one session or over several weeks, the teenager has four physical pieces and a map. The facilitator has a signal: does this charcoal have a temperature?
The next phase, the system of representing cognitive processes with a crew to stimulate critical thinking and seek narrowing down, begins when the map has at least three pieces answered.
and later a co-captain system where one person multiplies and teaches the map to others, with an adult observing and providing feedback.
Conclusion
Co-captains - One Pace starts from a simple premise: vulnerable minors are not lost due to a lack of values. They are lost because multiple legitimate internal processes compete for the same resource without an arbitration protocol. Giving this system a map, even an incomplete, even a provisional one, may be enough to give the ship direction.
What the protocol doesn't do: it doesn't solve structural problems, it doesn't replace therapy, it doesn't guarantee results. What it does: it offers a first act of self-definition in a context where rarely does anyone build with them based on who they want to be.
Validation will reveal whether the direction makes sense. If so, the next phase, the co-captain system, where teenagers who have completed the map help others build theirs, begins to take shape.
What's missing? Probably a lot of things I haven't seen yet. That's exactly what I'd like to discuss.
References
Education:
Christensen, K. M., Hagler, M. A., Stams, G.-J., Raposa, E. B., Burton, S., & Rhodes, J. E. (2020). Non-specific versus targeted approaches to youth mentoring: A follow-up meta-analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 49(5), 959–972.
DuBois, D. L., Portillo, N., Rhodes, J. E., Silverthorn, N., & Valentine, J. C. (2011). How Effective Are Mentoring Programs for Youth? A Systematic Assessment of the Evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 12(2), 57–91.
Meland, E. A., & Brion-Meisels, G. (2023). Integrity over fidelity: transformational lessons from youth participatory action research to nurture SEL with adolescents. Frontiers in Psychology.
Social and Emotional Learning Interventions for Preadolescents and Adolescents: Assessing the Evidence Base. (2024). Psychiatric Services.
Productivity:
Allen, D. (2015).The art of getting things done: the GTD method – Getting Things Done: strategies to increase productivity and reduce stress.Rio de Janeiro: Sextante Publishing House.
Culadasa (J. Yates), Immergut, M., & Graves, J. (2015). The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater MindfulnessNew York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. (No localized Brazilian translation available.)
Dehaene, S. (2024).This is how we think: how the brain works to make us aware of the world.. São Paulo: Editora Contexto. (Original edition:Consciousness and the Brain, 2014.)
Doerr, J. (2019). Measure what matters: how Google, Bono Vox, and the Gates Foundation shook up the world with OKRs.São Paulo: Alta Books.
Minsky, M. (1989).The Society of the MindRio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves. (Original edition:The Society of Mind, 1986.)
Schwartz, R. C. (2021). No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems ModelLouisville, CO: Sounds True. (No localized Brazilian Portuguese translation available.)
Low-cost methodology project for initiating an internalization network for values.
SUMMARY
This text aims to present the Co-captains project and its protocol for identifying blind spots.
We are in a specific context: minors in Brazil, from the JACOMINESP association, in a vulnerable situation. Not all of them, but those with the minimum conditions to engage with questions about their own future and who are potential multipliers of the protocol. The problem for these minors seems to be a lack of alignment between their mental processes. So, what is the best way to align them at the lowest cost?
The proposal makes three bets:
Validation will determine if the bets are correct and can help us gather more evidence to support investments in education.
Introduction
They are not starving; they have access to relatively inexpensive nutrition provided by the government, and they have a roof over their heads. Therefore, my hypothesis is that the main obstacle for minors is not a lack of values, but the absence of internalized direction and a protocol for arbitration among their legitimate internal processes competing for the same scarce resource: attention.
The result is not immoral: it's disorientation. Therefore, we first propose reinforcing a guiding principle, an internal point of reference.
Examples of what occurs in the cognitive processes of minors:
Competition
two processes:
Both claim priority. The strongest impulse wins, not always the most morally and ethically driven one internally.
Lack of coordination
Nobody fights.
But they also don't cooperate.
Example:
Energy is dispersed. Any path and direction are accepted, regardless of internal ethics or morals.
Alignment
The mental processes are cooperating.
The action happens almost automatically.
A state similar to flow. It aligns the child's personal desires with those of the group, which tends to cooperate and think about what is best for everyone.
Literature review
For the construction of a protocol, an algorithm with fewer errors, low cost, and higher benefit. We consider the entire spectrum of system construction: From philosophy to mathematics and engineering.
To further unify the existing evidence on education and personal development into a clear and testable algorithm, we began by searching from the most general to the most specific.Analyses of educational interventions related to Effective Altruism. This search led us to a process of specific materials and proposals for personal productivity.
1. Where to begin: filtering before any comparison.[
When someone decides to invest in education, the temptation is to compare every possible type: schools, curricula, technology, tutoring, scholarships. This is unfeasible. The literature on Effective Altruism proposes a shortcut: instead of comparing everything, use two filters before anything else.
First filter: cost per measurable result.A meta-analysis by J-PAL, the economics lab of MIT and Harvard, compiled 96 randomized evaluations of tutoring programs and found a mean effect of 0.37 standard deviations: the equivalent of a student advancing from the 50th to almost the 66th percentile. It's not that tutoring seems to work, it's that it works when measured with the same rigor as a clinical trial. The same J-PAL shows skepticism about interventions without this level of evidence: increasing teachers' salaries without changing the method, distributing tablets, or building schools without pedagogical change show much smaller or inconsistent effects. Note: the review focused on high-income countries, which limits direct extrapolation to Latin America, but establishes the mechanism.
Second filter: long-term satisfaction and flourishing.Well-being research shows that what best predicts life satisfaction is not absolute income, but three things: autonomy (feeling that you have chosen your own path), close relationships, and a sense of purpose. An intervention designed to develop clarity of personal direction and meaningful connection targets these three points, even before touching on academic performance.
These two filters together already eliminate most options. What remains is: low-cost interventions, with a replicable protocol, focused on close relationships and personal guidance. This is exactly where structured 1-on-1 mentoring thrives.
2. What doesn't work, and why everyone still believes it does.
Before showing what works, it's worth understanding where the field went wrong. Not for the pleasure of pointing out flaws, but because error is instructive. The main competitor to 1-on-1 interventions in the minds of directors, politicians, and funders is what is called Social-Emotional Learning (SEL): programs that teach children and adolescents to recognize emotions, resolve conflicts, and develop empathy.
Why does everyone believe that SEL works?
Imagine you're a school principal and a consultant comes in with a program called Social-Emotional Learning. The name is convincing: who could be against teaching children to deal with emotions? The material is beautiful, the teachers receive training, and three months later you administer a questionnaire, and the children say they feel more able to recognize what they are feeling. You believe it worked.
The problem lies in what was measured.
The wrong ruler
When you teach a child emotional vocabulary and then ask, "Can you identify your emotions better now?", the answer will almost always be yes. You've trained them to answer exactly that. It's like teaching someone to memorize the rules of chess and then testing if they know the rules—of course they'll do well. The real test is different: two years later, did this child fight less? Did they make less impulsive decisions? Did they finish school? When researchers measured these outcomes, the ones that really matter, the picture changed completely.
What the numbers show
A 2024 review examined 17 SEL studies with adolescents, looking for which program had sufficient evidence to be recommended. To picture what "sufficient evidence" means: think of a four-step ladder. On the first step, there is only initial evidence. On the second, moderate evidence, the minimum for a doctor to consider prescribing a medication. On the third and fourth, high and very high confidence. None of the 17 programs reached the second step. None.
A 2023 review went further and found something even more disconcerting: some programs had a slightly negative effect. Not just useless, potentially harmful. Imagine going to the gym three times a week and coming back slightly weaker than before.
Why the mechanism was wrong from the start.
David Yeager identified something more fundamental: the premise of SEL may be flawed. SEL assumes that adolescents have a skill deficit, that they misbehave because they don't know how to name emotions or resolve conflicts. The evidence points to a different diagnosis: adolescents misbehave when they feel disrespected or invisible within the group.
The practical difference is enormous. If the problem is a lack of skills, you create a curriculum and teach them. If the problem is a lack of status and respect, no curriculum will solve it, because the teenager needs to be treated differently, not taught differently. It's the difference between giving someone a manual on how to make friends and simply treating them as someone whose opinions matter.
Why does this matter for One Pace?
It's not that social-emotional programs are bad. It's that they've become a field dominated by good intentions without rigorous protocols, and good intentions without protocols don't generate evidence. One Pace starts precisely from this diagnosis: instead of teaching emotional skills from the top down, it treats the adolescent's vision of their own future as something worthy of being heard. It's not a curriculum. It's a structured conversation.
Sources for this section:
3. The right format: why 1-on-1 changes everything
The experiment that defined the field
In 1984, researcher Benjamin Bloom asked a question that seemed simple: what happens when an average student receives individual tutoring instead of group classes? The answer surprised the field of education so much that he called the result a "problem," not because it was bad, but because it was too good to ignore and too expensive to replicate.
The average student in a conventional class is, by definition, in the middle, outperforming half of their classmates and being surpassed by the other half. After individual tutoring, this same student began to outperform 98% of their classmates. Not because they became more intelligent, but because the teaching was calibrated precisely for them: each question answered the moment it arose, each gap filled before it became an obstacle, each step at the right pace.
To illustrate: line up 100 students, from worst to best performer. The student in the middle is in position 50. With individual tutoring, he moves to position 98, surpassing 48 classmates. The group remains the same; it's his context that has changed.
Bloom called this "the two-sigma problem," "sigma" being the technical unit of this scale. And the problem, for him, was: if it works this way, why don't we do it for everyone? The obvious answer is cost. Each student would need a dedicated tutor. Until now.
Important caveat:Bloom's study was conducted with small samples, in specific domains such as mathematics, and over short periods. It's not the final word; it's the starting point. The field has spent the following decades trying to understand why it works and how to replicate the effect with fewer resources.
What mentoring generally achieves
If pure individual tutoring is expensive, what happens with mentoring, a regular relationship between an adult and a young person, with support but without the precision of a tutor? DuBois and colleagues analyzed dozens of programs with high institutional investment in 2011: money, structure, mentor training.
The average effect was real, but modest. Going back to the line of 100 students: the middle student advanced 8 positions, from the 50th to the 58th percentile. This is not insignificant; it means that mentoring works. But it also shows that money and structure alone are not the missing ingredient.
An important note to avoid getting lost in the numbers: DuBois measured the average effect of all mixed mentoring, both generic and specific, together. It's like measuring the average effect of all headache remedies without separating aspirin from placebo. The next section shows what happens when you break down this number.
4. But not just any one-on-one: the focus shifts.
Doubling the effect without doubling the cost.
When Christensen and colleagues separated mentoring programs by type in 2020, they found something that DuBois' average numbers hid. Generic mentoring, where the mentor is basically an "older friend" without a defined agenda, had a g-effect of 0.11. Going back to the line of 100 students: the middle student advanced 4 positions, going from the 50th to the 54th percentile.
The mentoring program, with its specific and defined focus, had a g-value of 0.25, moving from the 50th to the 60th percentile. That's 10 positions, more than double.
To understand why this happens, imagine two doctors. The first says, "Tell me how you are," and listens attentively. The second says the same thing, and in the next session already has a plan with three concrete actions based on what he heard. They both care equally. They both listen equally well. What differs is that one has a map of where to go after listening. This map is what makes the effect more than double—not more empathy, more structure.
The cost of adding structure is minimal. What changes is the mentor's clarity on what to do with what they've heard.
The closest case to One Pace
In 2017, Sara Heller and colleagues published the results of a controlled experiment, the gold standard of research, equivalent to a clinical trial, with economically disadvantaged young people in Chicago. The population was almost identical to the one that One Pace aims to reach.
The results were significant: arrests fell between 28% and 35%, arrests for violent crime fell between 45% and 50%, and the high school graduation rate rose between 12% and 19%. The cost was approximately US$1,850 per participant per year, about R$9,000 at the exchange rate at the time.
What's striking isn't just the result, it's the mechanism. The program didn't work because it taught emotional intelligence. It didn't work because of generic mentoring support. What changed was the young people's ability to pause before reacting automatically in ambiguous situations.
Imagine a busy intersection with no traffic lights. Every car makes split-second decisions: who goes first, who brakes, who honks. Small misreading decisions lead to accidents. Installing a traffic light doesn't make drivers smarter or more empathetic. It only introduces a pause where before there was only reaction. It's this pause that the program created in the young people of Chicago.
Important caveat:The program was delivered in small groups of up to 15 people, not strictly one-on-one. The logic of the mechanism applies to One Pace, but the delivery method is different; it's worth monitoring whether the individual format amplifies, maintains, or reduces the effect.
5. The mechanism: what the protocol needs to contain
Knowing that mentoring with a specific focus works better than generic mentoring doesn't answer the most important question: focus on what, exactly? What differentiates a structured conversation from a simply friendly one? Research points to three ingredients that, together, define what the protocol needs to contain.
Ingredient 1: Connection with the future self
Hal Hershfield and colleagues conducted a simple experiment in 2013: they showed young adults images of themselves aged in a virtual mirror, a photorealistic version of what they would look like decades later. Then they measured how much each person had saved for retirement. Those who saw themselves older saved significantly more money.
The mechanism isn't obvious, but it's powerful. When the future self seems like a stranger, someone distant, abstract, difficult to imagine, decisions about its well-being are made as if they were decisions about a complete unknown. You sacrifice less for the well-being of a stranger than for your own. When the future self becomes concrete and closer, this psychological distance diminishes, and the decisions change.
Van Gelder applied this logic to adolescents and risky behavior. Young people who wrote letters to their future selves reduced delinquent behaviors compared to the control group. Not because they received instruction on what not to do, but because the letter created a link between who they are today and who they will be. This link changes the calculation of decisions that seemed to have no consequence.
The letter to your future self is not a creative exercise. It's Hershfield's mirror in text format, and that's why it's a promising candidate as the starting point of the protocol, before any other conversation, provided it's validated.
Ingredient 2: the pause before the automatic reaction
The Chicago program we analyzed in the previous section, which reduced incarcerations by almost half, didn't work by teaching emotional skills. It worked by creating something much simpler: a moment of pause between stimulus and reaction.
In environments of high social pressure, many ambiguous situations are automatically interpreted as a threat. Someone looks at you in a certain way, it's a threat. Someone walks past you without asking permission, it's a threat. The reaction comes before the thought, and automatic reactions in complex social contexts generate consequences that accumulate over time.
The protocol doesn't teach young people to feel differently. It teaches them to notice that there is a moment between stimulus and response, and that this moment can be inhabited. It's the difference between the intersection without traffic lights that we saw before and the intersection with traffic lights: it doesn't change who the drivers are, it only inserts a pause where before there was only reaction.
Ingredient 3: Treat the young person's vision as a starting point, not as a problem to be fixed.
Yeager identified that programs that directly teach skills have weak evidence, but programs that make the adolescent feel respected and have status within the process work. The difference lies not in the content taught, but in the facilitator's attitude.
A mentor who arrives with the answer, "you should think about doing X," is repeating a classroom structure that has already failed. A mentor who arrives with a genuine question, "where do you see yourself in ten years?", and treats the answer as a legitimate starting point, not as a dream to be moderated, is doing something structurally different.
The protocol doesn't prescribe destiny. It maps what already exists in the young person's mind and helps to make it clearer and more real. Authority over one's own life remains with the one who lives it.
What the protocol should not promise
The Happier Lives Institute showed that even well-established interventions, such as therapy and income transfers, have difficulty demonstrating a lasting effect on subjective happiness. This doesn't invalidate the interventions, but it serves as a warning: measuring what you didn't cause creates weak evidence.
One Pace should measure what it promises: clarity of personal direction, ability to imagine the future self, reduction of harmful automatic decisions. If these effects appear, others—well-being, performance, relationships—may follow. But promising happiness as a direct result is a gamble that the available evidence does not support.
Sources for this section:
6. Who can be a mentor: the non-professional model
One of the most important practical questions: does a mentor need to be a psychologist, therapist, or specialist? The evidence says no, and that this is not a limitation of the model, it's part of what makes it work.
Who has done this on a large scale?
StrongMindsThe organization has implemented group therapy delivered by former clients and trained community agents, not clinical psychologists, in several countries, including Brazil. The model is recommended by the World Health Organization for low-resource settings, and the results have been published in international medical journals.
Friendship Bench(Zimbabwe) went further: cognitive-behavioral therapy delivered individually by completely lay health workers, including community grandparents with no clinical training, trained in just a few weeks. The format is strictly one-on-one, the results were robust, and the model has been replicated in other countries.
What do these models have in common, and why does it matter?
In both cases, the person delivering the intervention doesn't have technical credentials. There's something else: they went through the process. That conveys something that no manual can transmit.
Imagine learning to swim by reading a book versus learning from someone who nearly drowned and learned. The book describes the movements with technical precision. But the person who nearly drowned knows the exact moment panic sets in, what happens to their breathing, what it's like when the water starts to make sense. This lived knowledge is not inferior to technical knowledge; it's different, and for certain processes, it's more transferable.
What StrongMinds and Friendship Bench have demonstrated is that, for interventions based on reflection and relationship, not on surgery or clinical diagnosis, the lived experience of the facilitator can be as effective as, or even more effective than, academic training, provided there is a clear protocol and sufficient supervision.
The risk that needs to be managed.
A layperson-based model with a protocol has a known weakness: quality can degrade as the training deviates from the original approach. Those who trained those who trained those who trained may deliver something quite different from the initial plan. StrongMinds addresses this with highly structured materials and recurring supervision. Friendship Bench addresses it with regular meetings between facilitators. One Pace needs to have an answer for this before scaling, not after.
The transition from mentee to mentor needs to be designed in the protocol.
What the evidence from these models shows most clearly is that the transition from receiver to giver cannot be left to chance. When it's spontaneous, the conversion rate is low. When it's designed within the arc of the process, "the next step is for you to help someone as you were helped," it becomes part of the identity that the process builds. In AA, the 12th step is literally carrying the message to others. In the Friendship Bench, completing the process includes an invitation to facilitate the next cycle. One Pace relies on the same logic with the co-captain: it's not an optional bonus, it's part of what it means to have completed the process.
And a precise understanding of what that relationship is, and what it isn't. The co-captain doesn't occupy a permanent position of authority over the other's boat. It's someone who crossed a similar bridge, at a time when the sea was a little calmer, and can show where the loose plank was. When the sea changes, and it changes, the person who knows best about navigating that specific storm might be you. The bridge creates mutual recognition, not eternal debt.
Sources for this section:
7. What is One Pace betting on?
For whom is this bet made?
Effective Altruism was largely developed by people with significant financial surpluses in the Northern Hemisphere asking how to make the most impact with those surpluses. The answer made sense in that context: donate where every dollar goes the furthest, which is often interventions in very low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
This model presupposes a financial surplus. For a Latin American middle class that does not have this surplus, the question changes: what can someone without much money but with time, experience, and clarity offer that generates real impact, including for themselves?
One Pace is an answer to that question. It doesn't ask for money that doesn't exist. It asks for what can exist: one hour a week with someone who is still finding their way, from someone who has already crossed a similar path.
What the review indicates
The literature gathered here does not prove that One Pace works. It indicates that its direction is not contradicted by existing evidence, and that the design avoids the most documented pitfalls in the field.
Specifically, the evidence shows that:
One-on-one teaching outperforms group teaching in a magnitude that no other educational variable has replicated (Bloom, 1984). Focused mentoring has more than twice the effect of generic mentoring (Christensen et al., 2020). Social-emotional skills programs without a rigorous protocol do not generate robust evidence; some are even slightly detrimental (Psychiatric Services, 2024; Meland & Brion-Meisels, 2023). The mechanism that works is not teaching skills, but creating a connection with the future self and pausing before the automatic reaction (Hershfield, 2013; van Gelder, 2015; Heller et al., 2017). Interventions delivered by lay peers with a clear protocol work on a large scale (StrongMinds, Friendship Bench). And the transition from receiver to giver needs to be designed into the process, not left to chance.
Why is this model particularly well-suited to the Latin American context?
Interventions that depend on continuous external funding grow linearly with available resources; each additional person to be helped requires more outside funding. The One Pace model, if the chain is maintained, grows differently: each person who completes the process has the capacity to start another cycle. The marginal cost per person falls as the network grows.
This isn't free; the co-captain's time has real value. But it's a resource that can exist locally, without depending on external donations, favorable exchange rates, or the decision of a distant funder. For contexts where the scarce resource is money but not time and accumulated experience, this is the structural difference that matters.
The Bolsa Família program illustrates both the potential and the limitations of this type of distinction. Through compulsory redistribution via taxes, a mechanism that starts from those who have and goes to those who don't, without either party choosing the relationship, the program reduced extreme poverty in Brazil by between 33% and 50%. But its effect on real learning is small, and its impact on personal development has never been measured because that was never the objective.
One Pace doesn't compete for that space. It tackles what no income transfer program touches: not what's missing from the table, but what's missing from the question "where am I going?". And it does this without requiring anyone to force others to contribute; each cycle begins with those who want to give back what they've received.
In Brazil, initiatives like Sonhar Acordado, an NGO present in 13 cities with over 5,000 young volunteers working with vulnerable teenagers, already demonstrate that the peer volunteering model has acceptance and scale.
One Pace doesn't start from scratch in terms of social infrastructure. The difference lies in the protocol: fewer top-down values, more direction built from what the young person already possesses, and with sufficient structure to generate replicable evidence.
What the review does not demonstrate
That the specific five-question protocol works. That the rate of conversion of minds to co-captain will be sufficient to sustain the current. That the effect lasts beyond the short term. Only empirical validation can answer these questions.
One Pace doesn't need to be revolutionary. It needs to beat a historically low baseline—programs without evidence that consume resources and good intentions—with a fraction of the investment, in a format that is locally sustainable and grows with those who have already gone through it.
Alignment and personal development
I analyzed several productivity and mapping proposals I found here on LessWrong, and each one had interesting points that I could incorporate. I would like to briefly present each idea, the central issue that defines it, and then a proposal to unify them a bit more.
Minsky, in "The Society of Mind," asks: How is the mind constructed? → How does a society of simple agents form hierarchies and teams? What is missing? He doesn't explain where this society is heading, nor how it organizes itself for external purposes.
Dehaene, in "This is How We Think" (Brazilian translation of Consciousness and the Brain), asks: How do internal agents compete to become conscious? → Through a global brain workspace: a mechanism that distributes, at once, only one mental content to all regions simultaneously, making it conscious. What's missing? It's a static amphitheater: it describes the competition, but doesn't say where it should lead.
Schwartz, creator of the Internal Family System model (also known by its English acronym, IFS), asks: How do the internal parts heal themselves? → Each part is treated as an agent with its own intentions; healing comes from listening to these parts and allowing the Self, the most stable and compassionate part of the person, to take the lead. What's missing? It's a therapeutic model, not a planner. It doesn't connect to day-to-day goals or concrete tasks.
Culadasa, in "The Enlightened Mind," asks: How to train sustained attention? → Through progressive stages of introspection and control of distractions. What's missing? You train the instrument, the attention, the rudder, the helm, but you don't connect it to a map of external objectives.
Kaj Sotala, in "A Mechanistic Model of Meditation," asks: How does introspection detect conflicts between subsystems? → A sensory channel that improves with practice, revealing competition between internal agents. What is missing? There is no protocol to translate this detection into organized actions to achieve goals.
Classic productivity methods, such as David Allen's "Getting Things Done" and John Doerr's "Objectives and Key Results," ask: How to organize goals and tasks? → Through hierarchies of objectives and concrete actions. What's missing? It doesn't model the internal agents that block execution. It's like having a map without knowing the state of the ship and crew.
Source
What is useful about it?
What's missing?
How does One Pace solve this?
Minsky, Society of the Mind
Mind as a society of simple agents
External direction; where is this society going?
Add "ship" with route, mission, and vision as a shared destination.
Dehaene / GNW
Competition for consciousness via the global workspace.
Direction and allocation criteria
Give the amphitheater a mission-based filter hierarchy.
Schwartz / IFS
Internal parts with their own intentions; healing through listening.
It doesn't connect to daily tasks or specific goals.
Agents mapped and listened to within a mission hierarchy.
Enlightened Mind
Sustained attention through progressive introspection.
It does not connect the instrument (attention) to a map of objectives.
Microtasks linked to a long-term vision as an external anchor.
Mechanical model of the mind
Introspection as a sensory channel that detects conflicts between subsystems.
No protocol to translate detection into organized action.
Question algorithm that transforms detection into micro-action.
Classic productivity
Hierarchies of objectives and concrete actions
It does not model the internal agents that block execution.
Internal agents are treated as variables that the protocol maps before planning.
“One Pace,” what is the question? How do we translate an abstract purpose into a temporary coalition of attention that produces concrete actions?
→ Considering the competition, the division by agents (IFS) and the ways to align them, the workspace (amphitheater) and giving it direction (ship), the system would detect at what level of the ship or territory there is discoordination or mutiny at the helm and organize them so that the mental agents cooperate towards the objective.
What is missing?...
Metaphor
Considering the references, for mentoring, agent systems, the alignment of a guiding principle, the protocol proposed here has a central metaphor: the mind as a ship with a crew navigating the violent sea of uncertainty, "One Pace" at a time.
What would be the cheapest and most functional step that could promote more values and less crime?
This is the treasure we seek in this project, theOne Pace.
To operationalize the metaphor:
The One Pace doesn't try to silence the crew. It tries to give the captain a map before asking him to take the helm.
Therefore, we first propose a protocol to, firstly, map the route, and secondly, identify which crew member is pushing and in which direction. Here we will focus on a proposal to first map the route in a playful way.
Resources needed - Phase 1
The map
Each piece is a printed or custom-made card with a question. The participant can answer it in writing, by drawing, cutting out images from magazines, or dictating it to the facilitator. If they cannot answer at the moment, they take the card home. There is no deadline or mandatory order.
Not just a mood board for inspiration, not a plan of goals, but a personal navigation map, built in pieces, at each person's own pace.
The initial map has five pieces:
0. Personal satisfaction scale: "Has your teacher ever given you a grade in Portuguese? What grade would you give yourself for life satisfaction (perhaps with illustrative emojis, to have a reference point for long-term measurement)?"
The map serves two functions simultaneously: it's a tool for reflection for the adolescent and an entry filter for the association. Those who can answer, even partially, demonstrate a minimum capacity to engage with questions about their own future; this is a dry coal that can be caught, because we want to create a chain reaction of good.
The map is not definitive. It can be updated, remade from scratch. What matters is not that it is permanent, but that it exists. That the teenager has named, even if provisionally, who they want to be and where they want to go.
What makes the map different from an entry form is what it represents to the person who creates it. It's the only place where the teenager pastes what they love, writes what they want to be, draws what they imagine for themselves, and can hang it on the wall. Not as a task, but as an achievement. Each completed piece is a rare little figure: something they managed to name about themselves, which was previously scattered in noise. The act of collecting, of completing, of seeing the puzzle taking shape tends to be motivating. The map is the first act of being a fan of oneself.
Proposal ofprotocol
The facilitator does not conduct an interview. They lead a navigational conversation; the goal is to help the participant name their vision of themselves and their own treasure, not to evaluate them. The tone is one of genuine curiosity, not screening.
The sequence has five moments, each corresponding to a piece of the map:
0. Personal satisfaction scale:"Has your teacher ever given you a grade in Portuguese? What grade would you give yourself for life satisfaction (perhaps with illustrative emojis, to give us a long-term benchmark)."
1. Engagement: a story like this:
"I need to get to know you, because we have a goal here, we want to save the world, and you? So, to get to know you, we have to see your treasure map. Do you know Captain Luffy? Leaving aside all the arguments that I don't know how they work in real life. Luffy doesn't have a complete map of where the treasure is. He has clues that the treasure exists and he knows who he wants to be when he gets there, and that's the beginning of everything so he doesn't get lost. Luffy didn't grow up in an easy environment, he didn't have a mother, everyone said he couldn't be what he wanted to be, he had problems. Nobody believed in him at the beginning. What he had was a clear answer to the most difficult question: who do you want to be? With that, even losing support, even without knowing the exact path, he continues sailing. The crew follows him not because he has a plan. They follow him because he doesn't negotiate that answer with anyone. 'I want to be the king of the pirates!'"
Things to watch out for: Skepticism is acceptable. Indifference can be a sign.
2. Vision, long term
"Luffy wants to be the king of the captains. Imagine you as an adult. Who are you? What have you achieved? The map doesn't say that having things is bad. It's the opposite: when you know who you want to be, it becomes easier to see what you really need to get there. With that, what serves your path becomes visible."
If it stalls: don't insist. Leave a moment of silence. If nothing comes out, offer the card."Take this question with you. Think about it calmly. Bring it when you have it."
3. Mission
“You can’t take everything on board, the world has scarce resources and we’re constantly destroying them, so we have to think carefully about what I really need to be who I want to be. Luffy wants the One Piece, a legendary treasure; he knows he wants it because he knows who he wants to be. The treasure has meaning because identity came first. Without it, anything seems important and nothing seems enough. For example, if I want to be a pirate, what good is a car that doesn’t work in water? It’s better to have a good ship, right?” Luffy needs the treasure, but first he needed to find a ship.
3. Bridge, medium term
"And what about a year from now? What would be different? What do you need to become who you want to be? Luffy needed friends, and you?"
Function: It connects the long-term horizon to the present. If the vision from step 2 was vague, the bridge often helps to make it concrete.
4. Goal, next cycle
"And what about your next vacation? What will have changed? What do you need for your next vacation to become who you want to be? Luffy started looking into how to get a boat, and you?"
What to look for: Is the goal their own, or is it what the teenager thinks the facilitator wants to hear? If it seems performative:"And what would you really like?"
5. Micro-action, immediate
"What's the smallest thing you can do? Sometimes to have a ship, you need to get the first plank of wood. What do you need, no matter how small, to become who you want to be?"
This is the most revealing moment: it tests whether the teenager can translate vision into concrete action.
Special cases
Stuck on a question:Offer the card, think it over, there's no rush, come back later if you want. The question should never seem like a barrier.
Vague or very short answer:Accept without pressure. A single word is already a piece of the puzzle. The map starts incomplete, and that's okay.
Strong emotion appears:Pause. Offers support. The map awaits.
What the map does is exactly that: before any task, any goal, any plan, it helps answer this question. Who do you want to be? With an answer, even if incomplete, even if provisional, the ship has direction. And with direction, even the chaos of the sea becomes navigable information, not a meaningless threat.
Initial validation methods
The protocol validation has two phases. The initial goal is not to prove that One Pace works, but to identify the minimum signs that it is worthwhile to continue developing it.
Phase 1, Concept testing (2 to 4 weeks)
What to watch out for
How to measure
Engagement with the protocol
How many completed at least 3 pieces of the map?
Breaking point
Which question did they struggle with most often?
Quality of responses
Are they personal or performative? Vague or concrete?
Coal temperature
Can the facilitator identify at least one teenager who has the potential to multiply?
Minimum success rate: 2 out of 10 complete at least 3 pieces; facilitator clearly identifies at least 1 hot coal.
Phase 2, Behavior (2 months)
What to watch out for
How to measure
Identity retention
The teenager can still answer: who do you want to be?
Behavioral transfer
"Did you make any different decisions last week because you remembered your map?"
Concrete application
At least one case study of application in a real-world decision
Minimum success rate: 1 concrete application story; 2 out of 10 are still able to articulate their vision.
In the long term, perhaps we can measure how local satisfaction and crime rates have changed.
What this validation does not prove
Even with positive results, it will not be possible to isolate whether the effect comes from the protocol or from the relationship with the facilitator. This is expected at this stage. The goal now is to determine if the approach makes sense, not to quantify the size of the effect.
What the protocol produces
At the end, in one session or over several weeks, the teenager has four physical pieces and a map. The facilitator has a signal: does this charcoal have a temperature?
The next phase, the system of representing cognitive processes with a crew to stimulate critical thinking and seek narrowing down, begins when the map has at least three pieces answered.
and later a co-captain system where one person multiplies and teaches the map to others, with an adult observing and providing feedback.
Conclusion
Co-captains - One Pace starts from a simple premise: vulnerable minors are not lost due to a lack of values. They are lost because multiple legitimate internal processes compete for the same resource without an arbitration protocol. Giving this system a map, even an incomplete, even a provisional one, may be enough to give the ship direction.
What the protocol doesn't do: it doesn't solve structural problems, it doesn't replace therapy, it doesn't guarantee results. What it does: it offers a first act of self-definition in a context where rarely does anyone build with them based on who they want to be.
Validation will reveal whether the direction makes sense. If so, the next phase, the co-captain system, where teenagers who have completed the map help others build theirs, begins to take shape.
What's missing? Probably a lot of things I haven't seen yet. That's exactly what I'd like to discuss.
References
Education:
Christensen, K. M., Hagler, M. A., Stams, G.-J., Raposa, E. B., Burton, S., & Rhodes, J. E. (2020). Non-specific versus targeted approaches to youth mentoring: A follow-up meta-analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 49(5), 959–972.
DuBois, D. L., Portillo, N., Rhodes, J. E., Silverthorn, N., & Valentine, J. C. (2011). How Effective Are Mentoring Programs for Youth? A Systematic Assessment of the Evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 12(2), 57–91.
Meland, E. A., & Brion-Meisels, G. (2023). Integrity over fidelity: transformational lessons from youth participatory action research to nurture SEL with adolescents. Frontiers in Psychology.
Social and Emotional Learning Interventions for Preadolescents and Adolescents: Assessing the Evidence Base. (2024). Psychiatric Services.
Productivity:
Allen, D. (2015).The art of getting things done: the GTD method – Getting Things Done: strategies to increase productivity and reduce stress.Rio de Janeiro: Sextante Publishing House.
Culadasa (J. Yates), Immergut, M., & Graves, J. (2015). The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater MindfulnessNew York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. (No localized Brazilian translation available.)
Dehaene, S. (2024).This is how we think: how the brain works to make us aware of the world.. São Paulo: Editora Contexto. (Original edition:Consciousness and the Brain, 2014.)
Doerr, J. (2019). Measure what matters: how Google, Bono Vox, and the Gates Foundation shook up the world with OKRs.São Paulo: Alta Books.
Minsky, M. (1989).The Society of the MindRio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves. (Original edition:The Society of Mind, 1986.)
Schwartz, R. C. (2021). No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems ModelLouisville, CO: Sounds True. (No localized Brazilian Portuguese translation available.)
Sotala, K. (2019, November 6). A mechanistic model of meditation [Blog post].LessWrong. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WYmmC3W6ZNhEgAmWG/a-mechanistic-model-of-meditation
References