Why I chose to help EVP in Brazil

Recently, Liferay Brazil decided to start the Employee Volunteer Plan (EVP) in its office. As you have learned, its a project to sponsor employee participation in social causes for which he or she can receive either a pecuniary grant to support a nonprofit or be given some work hours to work for humanitarian causes. All you have to do is choose who you'll help, describe why your help is relevant and submit your request.

When the invitation for me to help EVP was made, I was hesitant. Some events made me think that I was not able to take such responsability. But I was encouraged. And I started to believe again that I can help make something good happen by moving the few dozens of people that composes our staff and their network. Now nothing is more strong inside me than hope, maybe curiosity.

During the first online meeting with the project directors in the USA, they asked me why I have accepted to help EVP. I didn't know by the time how to tell them. Maybe because of my not so eloquent spoken English. But I know what I could have been with no study and support. I remembered a brief speech I made some months ago for a small but avid audience in one of the poorest neighborhoods of my home city, Jaboatão dos Guararapes. I told them my destiny could have been totally different, if I were drowned by the flow of poverty, but people believed me. And a dream is becoming true with several little goals being fulfilled throughout that journey.

I told Dennis and Charles I applied because I knew a little what are the needs this project aims to supply (because I've already be in it) and I have been involved in volunteerism for a while. I know what is to be in the streets, sleep in the streets, beg for money. I know what a huge difference it makes when someone dedicates some time to you. It made a huge difference for me.

When I talk to kids and I let them speak, I see myself in them. I see my dreams once I had. I see that they have the strength to change their destinies, but they need that their horizons be expanded for beyond the mud, the sewage and the violence that makes their quotidian landscape.

And I think that we work so hard. We make things that works well. That make people's lives easier. But, one day, your technology may be obsolete. Your work will fade in time. Nevertheless, when you change a life your work is perennial. It will multiply itself among other lives that will be touched by your example. That is what EVP shall foment. A work that we can bring with us and, at the same time, we can leave it to grow like a living seed.

And you. What have you been sowing?