The first question I asked myself and I ask you too is:
What is poverty?
Maybe some of you imagine that poverty has to do with this,
and with living in a neighborhood like this.
And in fact, since I was a kid I believed that poverty,
or they made me understand that poverty had to do with this.
I am the fifth of six children:
Yomi, Mariela, Marcela, Mauricio, me, and Oscar.
We were born in San Juan. We came to Buenos Aires for the moon and the stars.
My father had been promised a job, a home, a car, success.
This is the only picture I have of my parents together.
Because Buenos Aires kills my father.
He ends up dying within a few years of being here.
And there it began an eternal struggle
to live with dignity
and to improve our quality of life.
We seized a plot with my brothers in the middle of a settlement.
We were poor,
people who were living in a usurped land.
We sometimes even didn't have anything to eat for dinner.
However, despite all this,
despite having lived through discrimination,
and my whole family being pointed out for many years,
there was something I always loved and I always liked.
I love music, I'm a musician.
And I really discovered music through a woman who when I listened to her
it was amazing for me.
I looked at her and she was like an angel.
I knew all her songs, all her lyrics, all her choreographies.
I learned all her songs, I had all her cassettes.
There were cassettes at that time.
And for me she was a star, an angel.
This woman was Gladys, la Bomba Tucumana.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
I dreamed with Gladys.
Once I told my mom: "Mom, I want to be Gladys."
(Laughter)
And she said: "Oh son, don't you like Antonio Ríos or Alcides?"
No, I wanted to be Gladys.
And my mom told me: "Well, but how about La Nueva Luna?"
No, I dreamed of being an artist like her one day.
I always dreamed with her.
I always dreamed of learning to play her songs.
A great friend from childhood, Edgardo,
his mother, Olga, worked in the neighborhood developing projects
so that people like me, who lived in these neighborhoods,
could study.
They had a project in Crear Vale La Pena Foundation,
in which they worked with art in the context of poverty.
My friend told me one day:
"Daniel, why don't you stop pestering around with music
and sign up in the community cultural center?,"
where they gave free keyboard and piano lessons.
I said: "No, me taking piano lessons?
Ridiculous. I have to go out and give a meaning to my life."
And he said to me: "But go, sign up for the piano class."
And I signed up for piano lessons.
Saturdays at 9 am.
I said, "Oh, how nice!"
In this Foundation there was a teacher, a concert pianist,
Liliana Alpern, who gave once a week
a couple of hours of free lessons
to people who could not pay for the class.
I went to her piano class when I was nine.
And I saw Lili, my piano teacher, in high heels, with a silk shawl,
glasses, green eyes, blond hair.
And I looked at her and she looked at me.
She said: "What is your name?"
"Daniel." "What are you doing here?"
There was an upright piano beside her.
I said, "I want to play that."
And she says: "What do you want to play?"
(Laughter)
And I said: "Gladys, la Bomba Tucumana."
(Laughter)
And she said: "Who is that woman?"
"What? Aren't you a music teacher?"
"Yes, I certainly am, but I don't know all the musicians.
But if you bring a tape with her music, I'll listen to it and I teach you."
"Really?" I said. "Yes."
I go to my house, grab the cassette, I bring it back and Lili began:
"B B B B B, C D, C D E, E F G, B C".
(Laughter)
And I said, wow!
She began to teach me and I felt I was John Lennon playing "Imagine."
(Applause)
So awesome.
Lili said: "Look Daniel, you can learn this and much more,
if you want to."
"Really, Miss?"
"Yes. You can learn everything you want to learn."
And the next Saturday I brought La Nueva Luna, Los Charros, Gilda.
I learned to play a band called Los Palmeras, I dreamed with Los Palmeras.
And she taught me all the music I wanted to learn.
Pretty soon, I had learned everything I wanted.
And Lili said, "And now, what do you want to learn?"
I said, "That's it, I've learned to play what I wanted to learn."
And she says: "Look, Daniel, with these same chords
there is a guy named Beethoven.
Do you know who Beethoven is?"
I told her: "Yes, a dog from a movie."
(Laughter)
"No, dear, Beethoven is not a dog.
Beethoven is a musician who plays 'Für Elise'".
And she showed me "Für Elise".
When I heard "Für Elise" I fell in love.
And I said, "Lili, can I play that?"
And Lili said, "You can play that and much more, Daniel.
Everything you want to play."
And there I learned at age nine to break with the first poverty.
That is the poverty of culture.
I just thought that music was...
(Applause)
I thought that music was what I heard in my neighborhood,
but I didn't know other kind of music existed.
So I learned to be not only a musician, but at age 14,
Lili puts me another challenge,
with a partner who we played the piano together, Marcela Tula,
the two attended her class.
"Now you, after five years of taking free classes at the cultural center,
must begin to teach others."
And I said, "No, me, Lili? I can't teach others".
"Yes, you can teach others."
"But Lili, I have nothing to give."
She said: "To give, you don't need to have something in your pocket.
All you have to do is to be willing to help others."
Then I started teaching in my neighborhood.
With Marcela, we both learned how to teach.
We gave classes to young people, the very beginners in the neighborhood.
I went from being the kid who hung in the street corner to mess up,
to be "the neighborhood's Professor".
I would pass by and people would say: "Professor, Professor".
Then I'd pass by like four times!
I'd go to the grocers and they would say:
"How are you, Professor? Take a candy". And I'd grab about five.
The grocer's daughter was my student.
And there I learned to knock down another poverty,
which is the poverty of dignity.
The poverty that is lost because, by living in the contexts we live,
we think that poverty only has to do with hunger,
and feeling cold at night, but no.
Poverty has little to do with economics.
It has to do with what you do to design your life project.
What you do to say who you are, regardless of the degree,
or the position you have in a company.
Who you are as a person.
And that is what I learned at age 14, to start teaching in my neighborhood.
When I was 17...
(Applause)
At age 17 I began to coordinate the community cultural center
with activities for young people.
It was not anymore just learning and teaching.
What we did with a group of young people was to form them and start thinking
about our community, how our neighborhood
could do activities to improve the quality of life,
not only of those who studied, but of our community.
We did events in neighborhoods, we celebrated Children's Day,
looking for the needs in our neighborhoods
and we began to improve, not only our lives,
but the lives of our neighbors.
At age 25 I leave this Foundation,
because I felt that in it
I had gone from student to teacher, coordinator, executive director,
I even prepared young people in political issues.
And I began to understand that I had to knock down another poverty.
Then I started working with a civil organization
called Inicia.
And what we did in Inicia was to work in a prison,
because the son of a friend of mine was there in the unit
and we went to visit him.
When I went to the prison the first thing I saw
were those drawings that you see behind the young men,
it was like an art gallery.
They were drawings where they had drawn everything they wanted.
I looked at Cristian with Olga and we said, "Hey, Cristian,
what do you do here in the unit?"
"Nothing".
"How's that, Cristian?"
"Nothing. On Monday nothing, nothing on Tuesday, nothing on Thursday."
"What if I proposed you a workshop where
you can think about the mistake you made, why you are here
and you can think of a project for when you leave prison?"
And Cristian replied: "Would you do that for me?"
"Of course."
Then we started a workshop where we talked about leadership,
so they could lead their life project.
We had a book: "The New Leaders,"
which belonged to this organization.
And it had chapters like: "Personal transformation,"
"The common good", "Ethics" or "Values."
Each chapter we read it with the inmates, the 48 who attended the workshop.
And not only that, we would create a comic
and each of them could put in the comic what they learned from that chapter.
But not only that,
we invited the authors of the book
and we reflected upon the workshop we were giving.
So that the prisoners could also think some way of a life project
once they were out of there.
And then I knocked down another poverty, the poverty of prejudice.
We think that people who are deprived of their liberty
not only deserve to be there,
but they don't have the ability, nor the dignity
to be able to change their future.
Yes, they can change their future.
All they need are opportunities.
And what I was providing there was an opportunity.
But not only with this I knocked down the poverty of prejudice.
Then I got to work on another project
with a colleague, an acquaintance from the gastronomic industry,
who had a restaurant chain in down San Isidro.
He said: "Dani, in front of my restaurants
is the settlement Martin and Omar and I don't know what to do,
because every time I pass by they tell me:
'Hey, mustache, got work for me?',
and I don't know what to do".
Then we created a program called Cocina para Integrar.
What did we do?
This man would teach the women from the settlement to be chefs,
so that they have preparation not only as people engaged in odd jobs,
but also in a trade in the gastronomic industry.
And then I broke another prejudice, I broke another poverty.
The poverty of thinking that people who are living
in contexts of vulnerability can only work doing odd jobs.
No, they are professionals who also can be formed in trades,
as that of being a chef.
On this path I met with another person who also helped me
knock down another of my poverties.
We met during a talk we gave together.
He had a company which developed products with design,
shoes with a different design.
He gives his talk, a young company which exported worldwide.
I give my talk and he says: "Dani, you have to work with me."
And I said, "Tomás, what do you want me to work on in your business?"
"You have to do in my company what you do in the neighborhoods.
You have to work in my neighborhood which is my business, my community,
with my employees."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to be the Human Resources manager."
And I said, "But, Tomás, I don't even know how to clear salaries."
He says, "I don't care, you will learn that,
what you know is to listen and to be with the people."
After working three years with him, he proposes me to be even more than that.
And today I am the Culture and Happiness manager.
In the private sector I work as --
(Applause)
Not only I work in the neighborhoods,
to improve people's quality of life,
but also companies start to think that all the people
working in a company can improve their quality of life.
They have to work happy and work on their company culture.
But this was not last.
The last big project that I have with three friends
is to build a social enterprise called Creer Hacer.
What is Creer Hacer?
It is a social enterprise
where we work with the private, public and social sectors.
We build a bridge for these three sectors so they can improve
the quality of life of any person.
We have lots of projects with this institution.
To strengthen the NGOs that want to be strengthened.
We have a project called Barrio Abierto,
replicating a model very similar to this,
but in the middle of a settlement, like La Cava.
In the middle of La Cava we will make an event called Cava Abierta.
Six speakers will come to share their story, very similar to mine,
and they can share with their neighbors that they decided to take a step forward,
they decided to improve their quality of life.
(Applause)
You may ask me today, what is your wealth?
My wealth has to do with this, to have formed a family,
with my wife, with my brothers, with my friends.
To be the parent of Lautaro and Catalina, which is two months old.
And I want to tell you this: any of you here
can be a Liliana Alpern.
Anyone of you can consecrate time once a week to someone else,
so that they change their lives.
(Applause)
Regardless of your economic poverty or your economic wealth,
don't make of your life a poor life.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
(Whistles)
(Applause)