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Manuel Lozano
"I invite you to believe"
It was winter, I was 8 or 9 years old,
it was very cold.
We were hoisting the flag
at the school I attended,
and suddenly, I saw that 2 or 3 rows
to my right, there was a first grade boy
that was just wearing socks and no shoes.
I could not understand
that the rest of my classmates
and the school teachers
could keep reciting the prayer to the flag
as if nothing happened, while there was a boy
without any shoes, and it was really cold.
The school day finished,
I went back home,
and I told this to my mom with concern,
and so we started checking the closet,
and calling my classmates' moms
to see what we could find
to give to this little first-grader
that had no shoes.
And I insist, it was very cold.
The next day I went to school loaded with donations
and big was my surprise when,
while crossing the wide hallway of my school in Chascomús,
the first grade teacher stops me and says to me:
"You were so wrong Manuel."
The boy had actually hurt his foot, and that's why he was wearing no shoes.
Despite a failed beginning, it was the first image of reality that hurt me and I said:
"I think I can do something from my place, to change it."
Since then I started working as a volunteer in Chascomús, my hometown.
In soup kitchens and residential homes, until I came to study to Buenos Aires
when I was 18 and then I entered Red Solidaria [TR: 'Solidarity Network']
This network is a volunteer project, we're a group of people trying to
be a bridge or a bond between those who have a problem
and those who can fix it.
To give an example,
we're called by people that can't get a medicine
and can't stop his cancer treatment,
a grandpa who needs a prosthesis and can't get it.
A soup kitchen that ran out of food,
a rural school that lost a roof in a storm,
and we guide and work manually on each of these stories,
trying to give, within our possibilities, some kind of answer.
Beyond assistance, we also try to generate
long-term projects,
such as the university center we're trying to create in La Puna,
that is starting in March 2012, if everything goes well.
So that Coyas who are my age, or younger,
who live in the middle of the mountain, also have the chance to study
a university career as I could do here in Buenos Aires.
This has to do with justice, that is why I studied Law.
And it was within Red Solidaria where I lived a lot of experiences
and I met a lot of people that confirmed to me that we can believe.
That there are actually lots of reasons to believe.
And it's some of those experiences I'd like to share with you today.
In 2009 I used to go out down the streets at night with two friends
to give food to homeless people.
But every time we did this, that was once a week, during the winter
I came home at 1:00 or 2:00 AM, and couldn't get to sleep.
And I stayed tossing and turning in bed all the time.
So last year, thinking about those sleepless nights,
I called these two friends and said:
"Let's do it every day".
It was insane, we were just three people, but we started calling friends,
co-workers, classmates.
And so, people started to join.
This year we were 1500 volunteers,
and we did it in Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Rosario.
We're able to say it was 140 nights and more than 70.000 soups given.
10 tons of cookies, more than 3000 blankets, 200 ID cards processed,
by which many even discovered their own age, they didn't know.
But anyway, although they sound strong, figures always seem cold to me.
Because the important thing to me goes far beyond numbers.
There are stories that happened in these cold-night walks.
Because these walks, that started with a very clear goal,
(preventing avoidable deaths of people because of the cold)
ended up, in many cases, being actual projects of social inclusion.
It was hard, complex, beautiful, painful, but full of shared hugs,
handshakes, stories they told us because we visited them every day...
We were nearly the only people they had daily contact with.
And that created, inevitably, a bond of trust and affection,
that allowed us to work in depth on many other issues.
Like the case of Sergio, that started asking us for help because
he had been an addict for years, and wanted to be hospitalized.
But every time we got a place for him to be admitted,
he got afraid and disappeared.
One day he accepted, he was admitted, and he has been there for 14 months.
We celebrated every of his achievements and suffered also every trip.
He was discharged not long ago, and we found him a job. He started a new life.
But it's a difficult time because what happened with every person
we get out of the streets, specially with those who had been there for long,
is that at the beginning they say: "I want to kill myself".
And you don't understand why, now that they've started a new, better life.
Why do they want to kill themselves?
Because starting a new life also involves taking responsibility for all the story
they've been carrying on their backs.
On the streets you find stories of *** abuse, beating, abandonment.
And doubtlessly, if you sum up all these factors,
they are what lead these people to live on the streets.
But despite this, thanks to this bond of affection, you can work little by little
on inclusion, so they can get out and live the kind of life we do.
Like the case of María and Josefina,
that were found by two volunteers under the highway, 13 and 15 years old.
As they began to trust, they started telling the volunteers
that they were waiting for his mom, who had gone to the doctor,
but this had happened two months before.
We were a bit distrustful and prejudiced,
and we thought they had been abandoned.
However, when we took the girls to the hospital,
where their mom had supposedly gone, we were told she got there,
but with a very advanced AIDS, and passed away days later.
She would never come back.
The volunteers had to take care of these two girls, and they are now in a home.
They went back to school, and little by little they are retaking their life.
There's also the story of Segundo, who has been clean for 5 months now,
but with no need for treatment.
And some professionals tell me: "It can't be",
but it is...
Do you know why? Because for him, the incentive of knowing that every night
he saw us was enough to know he wouldn't do drugs that day.
And then one, two, three days passed, and we helped him to reestablish
bonds with his family, he found a job and he is now stable at work.
I passed by to say hello, and they told me he didn't work there.
I went back home disappointed thinking "he lied to me".
Three hours later the owner of the bar he's working at called me:
"Manuel, I have to apologize to you because, I know he's getting out
from drugs and I thought, for your looks, that you were the dealer,
I didn't want to let you in, I apologize".
Prejudices going around.
Today Segundo rented a room, he lives in a guesthouse
and he's learning to read and write, which
has been his dream since he was a child.
He is making a new life and doing very well.
These were the real main characters, we were just secondary, and they
decided to change and above all, they believed in themselves.
That's why I repeat, there are a lot of reasons to believe.
I'm usually asked about the concept of solidarity.
And the truth is that I have none, but anyway the real concept
I learned it from these walks and I'll tell you why.
Many of you may have listened that in the worst times,
or in the most extremes situations people take the worst out of themselves.
I don't know if this is an exception, or this saying is wrong.
Because, sometimes it's 0ºC and you're freezing even with heavy clothes on,
and you give them a blanket and they say:
"Thank you, I'm fine, but take a look two blocks from here, there's a guy worse than me."
And they have absolutely nothing!
However they don't lose that concept of community,
that concept of thinking about the other,
of keeping the chin up and knowing we're not alone.
That's the real concept of solidarity to me.
And in this of wanting to change reality; I'm 27 years old, I think my generation
has much to do with it, we have the possibility and also the obligation.
And talking about youth there was another experience, another story,
I wanted to share with you.
In 2005 we organized, with the network, a Youth Congress,
young people from all over the country would attend to tell us
What did they feel? What did they want? We wanted them to express themselves.
I met a woman there, Maripier, 53, that came with concern and said to me:
"I want to do something with the youth of Charata, Chaco, a 40-thousand-inhabitants city,
because kids finish highschool and they're all the time sitting
on the streets, drinking beer.
I opened, --she was the president of a affiliate soccer club-- I opened that club so kids
could go, at least so they're not on the streets, but not even my children go."
So we proposed her to put together a group and bring them to Buenos Aires,
at least with the only excuse of getting to know the city, and they came.
They stayed 3 days, the congress ended and we went sightseeing.
And there I started knowing each of these 23 teenagers.
It was actually astonishing, because these 23 stories were not easy.
There were stories of abandonment, stories related to some mental disability,
not severe but slight indeed, because of the malnutrition suffered.
Addiction problems, school dropout.
Many of them just had lunch, because they had nothing for dinner.
And when the event finished and they had to go back, Maripier and I thought
"What do we do now?"
And I don't know why, because actually we don't, we decided to innovate.
And instead of putting them as "beneficiaries" --that is a word I don't like--,
we put them to work with us, and they started replicating
what we did here in Buenos Aires, in their hometown.
Adapting it to the local context, and with the exception that if we did
a food collection, they would take a part for themselves with just notifying us,
because they literally had nothing to eat.
They created the first Red Solidaria Joven [TR: 'Young Solidarity Network'] in our country.
They were the first network that had to weart t-shirts, not because they wanted to,
but because to the people they were 'outcasts'.
Then they needed an identification so the people in the town
could start to recognize and trust them.
And little by little doors started to open to them,
and they started to move forward and work more.
Three years ago Maripier called me, a bit worried and told me:
"The kids have a project in hands that is insane, but I don't know how to say no."
They had realized that in Charata if a woman was beaten up,
she had nowhere to go, so she would go to the police
and she had to go back to sleep with the ***.
If a kid was beaten or abused, he had no place to go either.
And until a court made a decision, he had to stay
at the town jail.
And sometimes he could even be next to the cell
of the one who had abused or victimized him.
So they, who in some cases lived in humble houses,
had proposed themselves to build a shelter to protect all those people.
You've just listened to the stories of these 23 kids,
it was nearly impossible...
Nevertheless, they started knocking, wearing their t-shirts, the doors of their neighbors,
asking for building materials.
In October 2009 I traveled to Charata for the opening of their shelter.
If you look at it from the outside it's just a house like any other,
but when you go in you realize it's a special place.
Specially because of the floor. You don't see two tiles the same,
because one neighbor gave them reds, another greens ones, so there's a collage
of different shapes and colors.
The stairs and the upstairs, as they didn't have money,
they used old barbecue grills, and asked those
who knew how to weld to make the stair rail and all the blacksmith they needed.
They also had to furnish the place, and a closing Casino gave them
all the slot machines' structures. They disassembled them and with the limber
they made beds, tables, chairs, and little by little they turned their dream,
that even to us seemed crazy, into reality.
And in this of working for others, maybe even without knowing it,
they started working for themselves.
And today we see them completely different.
Nelson, for instance, when he came to the congress 6 years ago,
used to sell waste bags on the street, and supported his family doing that.
He is now finishing highschool at a night school, and no longer sells bags,
but works in a wholesaler.
Marina, that came with a very complicated story, finished highschool.
She rented a room with four friends, where they share the three beds they have,
to be able to study, and this year she'll become a Special Education Teacher.
And she cannot wait to return to Charata to, in the same place they built,
help a lot of children with special abilities she came to know in her town.
And some time ago Ivan, who is now 22,
wrote me a letter that said:
"Hadn't I met the network in 2005, with total honesty,
I don't know where I would be today.
I met the network in the moment when my friends started drinking,
getting drunk, using drugs and even were beginning to steal,
because there was no other option in my neighborhood..."
Today, Ivan lives in Resistencia, in a guesthouse, and he's finishing 2º year of Engineering
and, against all odds, his average marks are above 8.
They actually fill me with hope. They are making the future,
they teach me lots of things, and I think they also believed in others.
They believed in themselves, and that's why they could change their own lives.
Today, these 23 kids did a survey work in their town.
And they detected that other 160 children, of ages between 6 and 11, were at risk,
or living stories similar to those they had lived when they were 6.
And they're working with these 160 kids now, to repeat the history.
They demonstrate to me that there's no need for big structures.
You don't have to be a millionaire, or have great experience.
With love, despite it sounds a cliche, we can, it is possible...
This is what I wanted to share with you.
Each of us today can break history,
can modify the reality he lives in.
Each of us can change the world.
That's why today I want to invite you to believe.
Thank you.