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He strongly believes
that the younger generation has the potential to create sustainable solutions for social problems.
Passioned with non-profits and volunteering since the age of 15.
Hugo Menino Aguiar would like to invert the idea of accepting things as they are.
Hello!
Thank you TEDx for the invitation. It is a pleasure to be here.
And thank you all for being here, after all
you are the ones that make this event worthwhile.
When I was 15 I went inter-railing
and on one of my trips I met a Belgian couple.
I was sleeping, the couple got in and they took their seats.
I don't know if you noticed this already but there is a certain type of person that when they travel
by train, plane, or car, shares the food they have
with the people around, independently of knowing them or not.
I'm that type of guy. So I used the trick again.
I took my chocolates box and shared with the couple. This trick has an advantage,
we can understand if the person wants to talk or
wants me to shut up and sleep the whole way.
They definitely wanted to talk, and they talked a lot.
They explained to me that they were traveling around the world, that they had just retired,
they talked about their children, about work, and they were excited talking about their travels.
I remember, that my first comment was "Awesome!"
"The two of you, traveling,
"with all that energy, and excitement."
And the man, paused, as if he wanted me to understand that message better than all others,
and said:
"We are compensating for working our whole life in jobs we didn't like,
in order to buy things we didn't need, and
impress people we didn't like.
This message was not new, but after that moment I became more conscious about it.
The truth is, I heard this message, or something very similar,
way more times until today.
And I met people
with very similar experiences and feeling very similar things.
I believe there are so many other things to do in this world, beyond working!
As you can see, I'm also very good in embarrassing myself in public.
I’ve done volunteer work since I was 15 years old.
And I've been working on some social projects.
I don't understand why we, that have so much potential,
so much energy with so many skills, we don't use any of our time
to help, to inspire or to solve social problems.
And that worries me!
I'm not against earning money. It is important that there are companies that profit and that we earn money.
The thing that worries me is that we spend all our lives focused on this!
So, I've been doing volunteer work in the last 12 years
and I worked in social projects. I'm also member of a organization called Associação Fazer Avançar (AFA),
founded to train and mobilize the youth in order to help them become changemakers.
A organization that believes that youngsters can help changing this world for better.
That youngsters can be change makers, agents of social transformation, agents of change, you name it.
And in AFA we have trainings to develop skills
to be ready and able to solve problems, we identify social problems
around us to be more aware of the world, and other realities
and we try to create solutions for those problems.
It's in this "trying" of creating a solution that we grow as changemakers, that we develop and learn.
Along this experience I was lucky enough
to meet many people that make a difference in different ways.
And I think, all those different ways fit in two main dimensions.
Those two main dimensions
can help us understand how can we use a bit of our time
to make a difference, to help..
The first dimension is social entrepreneurship.
And social entrepreneurship is a process. Is the process of identifying a social problem, learn about it,
trying to create a solution, and creating a solution.
A sustainable, scalable and efficient solution that can solve the social problem.
The second dimension is what I named here as "the day-to-day small actions"
And those two main dimensions
are important to give us some ideas on how we can use a bit of our time to give, change, inspire or help.
From the first dimension, the process of "social entrepreneurship", I believe there are two possible results.
The first one is the social business.
A hybrid initiative that sells a product or a service,
pays its operation, has a professional team and on the other side it has a social area - the main reason of the project and to solve or help solving a social problem.
The business part exists only to make the project sustainable.
In here, we have an example, SPEAK.
It's a social business that solves the social-cultural exclusion.
The social area is an exchange of cultures and languages, where
people from different cultures and countries learn
and teach for free between them.
On top of these class experiences, there are events and a training program.
SPEAK SOCIAL integrates, and
values cultural diversity. In that experience,
participants know the "other", break prejudices, break stigmas,
and this way it solves the social problem.
In the other area of the project, the business part - SPEAK PRO. It’s a low-cost language school.
Its paid, and where some of the participants of SPEAK SOCIAL,
the ones that do the training program and are more capable of teaching,
can actually teach and be paid for that. Usually these teachers are immigrants belonging to communities in a situation of exclusion.
The other possible result of social entrepreneurship
are the social projects due to their nature, might not need
to sell a service or a product to achieve sustainability.
For example, because they don't have costs, or because the costs they have can be tackled by strategic partnerships.
For example, here in Portugal,
we have the project "Aconchego", recognized and awarded internationally.
It's a project that solves the problem of elderly isolation and the accommodation of university students with financial limitations.
And it works in a simple way.
The elderly person takes in a student free of charge and the student provides company for the elderly person.
This way we solve the problem, and on top of that also promotes intergenerational communication and happiness to both the student and the elderly person.
So, now the second main dimension: "the simple actions of our day-to-day life".
And here I mean all those things we can do every day.
Like doing volunteer work for a charity, like writing
a letter to someone that helped us or was important to us and they had no idea.
Explain why they were important to us and ackowledge them for it.
Laugh, or make others laugh. All those kind of things.
And these two are the two main dimensions. Hope they help you have some ideas on how to use your time.
I think, if we want to make a difference
independently of being in one dimension or the other, or in both...
There are five key things to know.
The first one is "to believe". And if you don't believe in yourself I won't believe in you either.
It’s important to believe that you’re capable of doing things and it’s important to define
what do you believe in, and the cause you believe in.
Specially if you work in a team. A team works together not because of the work itself but
because of what the team believes in.
For example, I believe that youngsters can make a difference and AFA believes that youngsters can make a difference.
I'm in AFA because we believe in the same thing.
The projects of AFA are important
but what creates loyalty, trust and inspires action
between all members of the team, is the fact that we all believe in the same thing.
The second key thing to know
is that "to fail is a school"
We don't change the world by criticizing.
We need action and we need to do stuff. People who do stuff
fail often. We need to get rid off this thing called "ego".
We need to be ready to fail, let ourselves fail and of course, learn with failures and be capable of sharing what we learn.
It is also very important that we never let ourselves feel that we are failures.
And the same applies for a team. We should let our team fail
but never, ever, let anyone on our team feel that they’re a failure.
The third thing is that sustainability is not a cliché.
Today, sustainability is a problem in the whole 3rd sector.
Today, you either make a difference in a sustainable way or you don't.
Forget subsidies.
The 4th key thing to know is that
whomever raises the trophy alone usually loses the next game.
There is always someone that helps us
or that makes the difference on our way to a victory or an achievement.
The 5th thing is that heroes are not on TV.
I believe all of us had some moments in our lives where we were heroes.
We do actions that matter, that change lives but
we believe it’s rude to call ourselves heroes for these.
Small actions can have great impact and
should be celebrated, and we should also celebrate the actions of people around us.
Help them create change.
We can always be heroes at different stages in our lives.
One final message,
I believe that we have the power to choose
who we want to be, how we want to be and when we want to be,
here and now.
If just one of us used a bit of their time
to help, inspire or solve social problems,
I'm sure the world would become a little bit better.
And I think that's an idea worth spreading. Thank you.