Horizons - distant, but inspirational.

I believe in the understanding among people(s) and in the human capability for empathy, for putting oneself in the place of others and caring for what happens beyond our individual interests. I believe we all have, at least potentially, the ability to overcome disagreements through dialogue, to see the differences between individuals not as a reason for isolation and hate but as a reason to enrichment and complementarity. More than anything, I believe in the potential we have to promote justice, in all its possible meanings.

My vision, thus, consist of all of this put together. It is where I want to go, what I want to achieve joining forces with others, it is my ultimate goal in life. Throughout my experiences, however, I have faced many situations in which I seriously doubted that those beliefs could ever be realistic. Living in a country in which social injustice is so present that it becomes banal, in which the suffering of most part of the population is a routine and in which stigmatization and oppression of minorities is, in practice, often dealt with as a tolerable thing, I have wondered many times whether it was really possible to change anything at all.

Brazil has been seen many times before as the 'country of the future'. It is unfortunate that for many this future, and the benefits and welfare expected with it, has never arrived. Social problems such as poverty, lack of access to education and health and urban violence persist in the Brazilian reality as historically rooted issues that can only be solved with a long-term commitment. According to the Zangari Institute, in the last 3 years, more than 140 thousand people were killed in my country. Besides, one woman is beaten each 15 seconds in Brazil and 10 are murdered each day, which shows a dramatic dimension of gender-based violence.

Although some important measures to tackle such issues have been taken in the last years by the government, many of the launched policies don't go beyond the surface of problems. And most of the problems, in their turn, are structurally embedded in the national culture, history and mentality. This awareness has brought to me in some moments the sensation that if it was so, there was nothing we could do and it could maybe be better to simply accept things as they were and keep our lives busy with something more profitable.

I could not be more mistaken. Even though these thoughts crossed my mind many times, I have got rid of them, when I became convinced that more than aiming at these goals in absolute terms, it was much more important to focus on the journey that leads to them. Yes, it was sometimes discouraging to think that even if though I was dedicating my time and energy to teach around 30 children from poor communities, there were still thousands of children without access to education. But instead of facing it this way, I decided to shift my focus to how I could make a difference in the lives of these children, the ones around me. It is not because I am uncapable of doing everything that I will refuse to do what I can effectively do. I am here to do everything I can. If that is not enough, at least it is something. I started facing my vision as a horizon: no matter how distant or unreachable it was, I knew which direction to go to get there.

It is with my personal vision in mind that I want to be a Voices of Our Future Correspondent. Taking part in the program will help me achieve my vision by giving me the opportunity to speak up for the ones who don't have a voice and, whenever possible, to actually give them a voice. I want to use this space as a platform to denouce violations on the righs of women that often go unnoticed and to expose and share globally possible solutions that have been used in my country. The whole purpose of World Pulse and Citizen Journalism really ressonates with my goals, beliefs and with what I feel compelled to do to help solving my community's problems.