One Wild Life, Clare Mulvany

O chefe entregou-me, um dia destes, um livro "Toma! Acabei de o ler e acho que é a tua cara". A origem do livro? A autora, Clare Mulvani, decidiu largar a vida cómoda de Dublin por dois anos anos de viagens, como ela diz "a journey to discover people who change our World".

Como começou? Com um iman de frigorífico com a seguinte frase de Goethe

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genious, power and magic in it."

"the quote, living on my fridge, was a reminder of a dream I had. It was a dream that would not go away, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. (...) It was the type of dream that told me there is something better than this; that the world doesn't have to be the way it is. It told me that there were parts of myself yet to discover. It told mw that there are ideas that could shape me, places I could learn from, people who could teach me. (...) But it was an annoying dream. Because I was too busy. because I didn't have money. Because I was frightened of pushing myself. Because I didn't want to do it alone. Because I was scared of how it would change me. But the dream insisted."

Mas a rapariga lá foi e o livro é um resumo dos encontros com inúmeras pessoas que tentam minorar as injustiças que proliferam por esse mundo fora: começando pela Irlanda, África, Ásia e América do Norte. O que essas pessoas têm em comum? O mundo empresarial não as completa (hmmmm.... pensei eu quando acabei as primeiras histórias) e acreditam que é possível, não mudar o mundo, mas a comunidade em que vivem.

Só para citar alguns exemplos, Rugmark, organização que certifica os retalhistas de que, nos produtos que vendem, não foi utilizado trabalho infantil; First Book, que tem por objectivo oferecer às crianças provenientes de famílias de baixo rendimento acesso a livros - dado impressionante: nos EUA, nas famílias de rendimento mais baixo, existe um 1 por cada 300 crianças; Kiva, versão Americana da microfinance de Muhammad Yunus; Documentation Centre of Cambodia, que ajuda na pesquisa dos desaparecidos do Genocídio de Cambodja; Kailash Satyarthi, que resgata crianças forçadas a trabalhar [só um excerto "I would say that the biggest enemy for humankind is fear. (...) I always say that young people are not the future, they are the present. they should not keep on saying 'we are the future leaders, we are the future entrepreneurs'. No, they are the leaders of today. They have to initiate no. Children means now. Youth means now, not tomorrow. All young people have to believe in it and use it properly"]; International Hospital Kampala, que tem por objectivo elevar a qualidade do sistema de saúde no Uganda.

O que mais me impressiounou, talvez por considerar que o desporto, principalmente o de equipa, une as pessoas, cria espírito de interajuda foi o The Kampala Kids and the Kids League. A Trevor Dudley foi-lhe oferecido um projecto em Kampala quando começou a perceber que seria interessante criar uma espécie de Liga Júnior. E não posso deixar de transcrever:

"Season by season it grew. We got feedback from the kids and found that basketball and baseball were also popular, so we expanded the range of sports. (...) Ans, in the last few years, we introduced cricket to KKL. We were so proud when the International Cricket Council gave KKL the award for the best junior cricket programme in Africa in 2006. Over 14 000 boys and girls from over 180 schools, orphanages and street children's organizations have taken part in 55 different seasons of sports in Kampala, supported by over 2 000 volunteers and 160 different sponsors.

Sport is such a powerful means of not only getting kids to run and kick a ball, but of bringing people together and breaking down barriers. We just wanted to encourage them to play sport, but the social changes that have occurred are unbelievable. (...) You might have an ambassador's child or a minister child playing on the same team as a child who slept on the night before. And, in a matter of hours, they're all friends.

(...)

the standard of play is not high in KKL as we follow a philosophy of allowing all kids to play regardless of skill, which means even children with disability get a chance to play. However, we observed that some kids were really talented and they lamented that they had nowhere to go. There were no sports youth structures in Uganda at the time to encourage and support talent. So we gave soem talented under 13 kids additional training and support and found a very good coach. In 2002, we decided to see how good they were and we carefully prepared a team and took the kids to a tournament in Denmark. They won!

They then moved on to Sweden to play in the biggest youth tournament in the world - the Gothia Cup. This was mammoth. Over 200 teams competing in our category alone! We thought if we could finish in the top 16 we would make Ugandans proud. But we had underestimated the power of our team. our captain and goalie, Benjamin Ochan, asked me as we stood in the middle of the magnificent Ullevi Stadium of Gothenbourg, in front of 45 000 people for the opening ceremony 'Mr Trevor, how do we get to play footballin this stadium?' I had to tell him the sad news that only the finla would be played there. Benjamin then said 'it's OK, Mr Trevor, we will win all the games and we will be back here next week'. He had planned it all and went off to tell his team. One week later we stood once again in Ullevi Stadium as true to his word, KKL had won all their seven games and had stormed the final to play the might FC Copenhagen. Seventy minutes later KKL were Gothia world youth champions after a nerve-wracking penalty shoot-out. They came back as heroes! Not only had they won, but they had won well, becoming known as 'the team that plays football with a smile on its face'."

Cada vez mais, chego à conclusão que em Portugal somos educados com muito medo: fazer o curso, numa ciência que dê trabalho senão... , não trocar o certo pelo incerto senão... . Como diz o outro "o medo de existir". Há outro caminho que cada vez mais começa a fazer sentido para mim - acho que o chefe não contemplou as consequências de me ter mostrado o livro ;-)