My journey in philanthropy started
after the 2004 tsunami.
I was blessed to survive,
the biggest natural disaster of our lifetimes.
My partner passed away, I was very lucky
to survive and to still be here today
with broken pelvis in four places
and lots of internal bleeding
and other challenges,
but I consider myself still
extremely lucky.
I've seen there has been gap
where children
or families were forgotten after natural disasters,
so the tsunami just really opened my
eyes to what is happening.
Disaster after disaster.
When first responders were leaving,
the communities
and the children were getting forgotten.
And I've learned,
after, that many times after natural
disasters it takes four years
or even six years for children to go to
safe school.
And to me it was unacceptable that
when children went
through such a terrifying
experience,
losing their loved ones, seeing things which children shouldn't see,
death,
suffering.
At a very young age that they have to
wait for four or six years to go back
to school, and what school really means is
going back to normalcy.
A sense of normalcy.
They can start healing when they go to
school.
And the sooner children can go back to a
sense of normalcy and healing at
school, sooner they can start healing
from the trauma.
What the media are not
focusing enough on is the
long term need.
And we have to change the way
how we respond to natural disasters,
from thinking short term
to long term because it takes
many years.
Puerto Rico is definitely a place
which keeps me awake at night.
Out of all the disasters that's the number one
concern.
I truly don't know how
they're going to recover.
It makes me really worried.
And we are committed to stay,
but we need
support not just from volunteers.
We have enough volunteers in Puerto Rico
but we need financial support as well
so we can keep helping rebuilding
those homes.
My life a purpose is to uplift humanity
in whatever way I can.
And that's,
that's definitely something which
makes me happy.
But again,
it's, it's something that
I cannot do alone.
And that's the beauty that
one person can do a lot,
but together we can do things
much faster
and better.
So again each
of us are a very
important part of a puzzle.
Everybody brings different core
strengths too.
And when we come together we can create a more beautiful
picture of the puzzle
of the world.
And that's that's the beauty of
coming together.