A glue in my life. I was always thrilled to spend school´s vacation with my grandparents in their small farm in the countryside of Sao Paulo, Brazil. They were japanese immigrants and as soon as they got in Brazil, they were sent to a remote and rural area of Sao Paulo state. The couple were just carrying hope and a powerful feeling that they could do a lot in an unknown territory. After couple of years exploring lands, moving city to city with their 9 children, finally they found a place to stay and started to cultivate grapes. I had spent joyful time under grandpa´s grape vineyard, looking around how he could gather a group of people - from different Brazilian regions with their singular cultures - and the magic of working together without knowing much of Portuguese. Sometimes everyone was kind of lost in translation…but he always told me that respect and empathy for each single person were key to find a good way to develop things together. One day, my grandpa was packing tons of grapes for sale and we had no glue to stick the product tag in the boxes. We were far away from downtown, had tight schedule to deliver the order. Then he looked around to see what kind of available assets he had and a simple solution came up: heating flour with water and voilà…we had a super glue and the work was done on time. By the end of the day, he asked me: ‘what did you learn today?’, I said: ‘making glue…?’, he answered me back with: ‘yes, but ‘making glue’ means value the assets you have to make things happen, when someone from this community (the place I live) needs help, we (assets) meet each other to find a way (glue) to overcome any challenge together. So think about it´. Since then, ‘making glue’ has turned a pilar in my life from my daily ordinary activities -save rain water for house cleaning, for inst - to my current job in Changemakers, coincidence or synchronicity…I have also found a valuable community where I can connect innovators on the ground with online community members to collaborate with each other; exchange ideas of best practices and call people for action; take learnings from each made connection to keep sowing the seed of changemaking to everyone.
Need a ‘glue’ in your life? Join me at www.changemakers.com and let´s meet valuable assets to make things happen!
It´s bit controversial but I feel fondness by two places: I´m truly connected with Sao Paulo city, is cosmopolitan, despite stressfull I still find a beauty and opportunities to carve in it; I also feel a fondness for any rural area I go, visiting innovators´ project or just sitting under a grape vineyard.
I want to see more empathy and respect around and with the globe, respect among people, people respecting the nature, we need to make the world a cool place to enjoy life! Specific wish? I wish I could see Sao Paulo with less car and pollution.
Elenice is Bachelor in Public Management from FGV Business School and Specialization in Social Sector Management at Faculdade Saúde Pública – USP. She has started working in social sector with a Community Social Investment project focused on 8 cities in Sao Paulo state, Brazil. The projects aimed to develop an organization with a social investment structure and capacity building for local private and social leaders. Elenice had worked for Ashoka for nearly 8 years and had gained experience in finance, projects evaluation, new program design besides had spent the last 3,5 years at Ashoka´s Changemakers as a Comunity Manager in which she had focused her experience on innovation mapping and social investment framework; online and offiline community engagement. Currently she is part of Zigla consultants body in Latin America and is Brazil representative for the consultancy, and Global Masters of Arts Program student at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.
