WEBVTT

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What place do you want
to have in the world?

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Have you ever asked yourself
this question?

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At some point in high school,
my history professor,

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who was also teaching on life project,
asked me this question,

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"What's the place you want 
to occupy in the world?"

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I didn't know the answer.

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I couldn't imagine that thinking about it

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could disclose such possibilities
of growth and future.

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I come from a very poor family,

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most of them coming from Rondônia,
where they worked in the fields.

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And, when I was around one,
they came to São Paulo.

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In spite of all the difficulties
my family faced everyday,

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they always insisted 
in giving me the best.

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and they've always given me
all the support I needed.

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I have to thank them for everything.

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Near my house,

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there was a school where I started 
my primary school classes.

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That school was considered
the worst school of my area.

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Most professors were not reliable,

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classes were canceled,
and there was general disinterest.

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Of course, I wasn't remotely motivated.

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When time came to go 
to the secondary school,

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A new school appeared,
next to the other one,

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a full-time school called Jardim Riviera.

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I've always liked studying,

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but most of my friends
were still in the old school.

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So I wondered: should I go or not?

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And then there was my mother,
who wanted me heaps to go,

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saying that I had to make a change.

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I changed school, 
and, consequently, my life changed.

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The new school was public too,
but it was far better.

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And, from the very beginning,
I felt welcome in the extreme.

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There I came across a project
called 'Protagonismo Juvenil',

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that is a project in which young students
with academic distinction

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have the opportunity
to influence other youth

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and those youth disseminate
what they've learnt in their own schools.

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During my secondary school years,

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I ended up being 
one of the main representatives

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of São Paulo State
in terms of juvenile protagonism.

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Now, that project woke my proactive side.

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And as in the school there were 
also elective courses,

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the possibility to choose what I wanted

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made me decide to attend a course
called Pre-Induction Science Program.

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Among the possible projects,

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working with plants was 
one of the most reachable.

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So, I walked to a park near my house

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and there I bumped into 
a huge tree called 'embaúba'

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that, according to conventional wisdom,
had catheterizing properties.

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The embaúba is an endemic tree of Brazil.

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Everybody knows it,
it's a plant that has many properties.

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Even people of my family knew it.

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Surfing the Internet,

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I saw that the hypothesis

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of the catheterizing property 
was coming true.

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But there was nothing scientific about it.

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How come? Such an important
tree and nothing scientific about it?

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It was exactly what I needed
to start my project.

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After the starting idea, I thought 
about the best way to use the plant.

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So I made tea, juice, balm, soap,
I even made recycled paper with it.

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I was running out of ideas.

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The tea had still an acceptable taste,
but, in big quantities,

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it has hallucinogenic potential.

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Don't try this at home!

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(Laughter)

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The juice had a horrible taste,
so no one would try it out.

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But, ladies, they say 
it's good for weight loss.

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The balm, I tested it,
gave results for sure,

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and I saw that there was a chance
of developing a wonderful project.

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Since I didn't have a laboratory
where to develop my research,

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I had to look for partnerships.

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I found partnerships 
with some universities,

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among them, UNIFESP;

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they helped me
to develop my project better.

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I did the specie identification,
the pharmacological properties mapping,

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I did a battery of tests.

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And, at last, I proved
embaúba was catheterizing.

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I won many prizes,
I also published a scientific article.

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Today, many students 
of that school do research,

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and my project is an example
for many of them.

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I am really proud of this.

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With all that encouragement
to do research,

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I lived the secondary school years
wishing to attend Pharmacy.

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I, who came from 
the worst school of my area,

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passed all the entrance exams I did.

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Did I choose Pharmacy? No.

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I stopped, meditated, and decided

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Engineering was something more related
to what I wanted for my future.

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Today I'm 18, I'm coursing my second year,

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and I want to graduate 
in Energy Engineering.

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Because I can't stand to know a country 
with a territorial extension like this,

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with such climatic diversities

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is still using thermoelectric energy,
in good weather periods.

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And at the same time, it has so little
matrix energetics diversification.

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Even now, I don't have the answer
for that initial question.

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But, thanks to my education, I discovered
that my strongest will is growing up

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and making life better
for the people around me.

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In my life, there have been 
two kinds of schools.

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But this has never demotivated
nor stopped me.

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So, today I want to serve as inspiration
for as many youth as possible,

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just like other people inspired me
during my entire life.

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I want youth to believe in their talent

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and in their hard work.

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I wish they looked for their dreams
and changed their lives and the world.

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People should never ever say 
that someone's dreams are rubbish.

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It would be a pity
if everyone believed this.

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You are as big as your dream.

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It doesn't matter where you came from,
where you were born.

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If you have a dream and move mountains
to achieve what you want,

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believe me, things will happen.

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Do you know Alice in Wonderland?

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Do you remember the cat?

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"Which way you ought to go
depends on where you want to get to."

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So, the question is this:
what's your dream?

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And what's the place
you want to have in the world?

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)