This last Friday, 18th of March 2022, I was at the Sociedad Filarmónica of Bilbao participating, this time as an active listener and learning everything I can, at the new TEDxUDeusto.
If you don’t know what TEDx is, keep reading because I’ll tell you.
Today I’m going in a different direction than normal. I want to express my total rejection of the barbarism that a “man” has decided to carry out for the sole fact of… What? Honestly, I find no reason but unfounded excuses to end the lives of people, men and women, children, and thousands of young people who have barely begun to live and who have to be unjustly separated from their parents. That’s it if they don’t die before reaching a “safe” place but without their “belongings”, their life, their history, their friends, their home, their city, their town, and their —already broken— dreams.
I’m writing this post with teary eyes and a broken heart due to a situation none of us would like to experience.
Three years ago, in March of 2019, thanks to the MoPED: Modernization of Pedagogical Higher Education by Innovative Teaching Instruments project, and invited by my colleague and teacher of the University of Deusto, Olga Dziabenko, I had the pleasure of travelling to Ukraine to contribute on the training of more than 50 teachers of Higher Education, in my case, related to teacherpreneurs. I discovered the kindness of its people, as well as their traditions and history (and I took a piece of it with me). But honestly, something that caught my eye was that, even though they are not “privileged” in a material level, as I might be, they were people like me, passionate and willing to work and improve, dreaming of going forward and progressing on the education sector, and so thankful and expressing their recognition towards me that they made me feel very valuable.
Today I want to give them back that love, appreciation and acknowledgement to all of them, and, specially, be at their disposal to anything I might be able to offer.
This post goes for them and for Olga Dziabenko, for giving me the opportunity of living firsthand with their Ukrainian colleagues. Thank you, Olga.
Translated by María Ubierna Quintanilla and supervised by Arantza Arruti.
A few months ago, I told you that during the pandemic I got a gift difficult to forget. Then, I took the opportunity to present to you an initiative which I didn’t find hard to label as one of the E.P. The post I wrote was about Desafío + (Desafío más).
I hope you keep reading to see the invitation I’m making you because…
Have you ever “fallen in love” with a garment and when you come back for it, it’s gone? Well, that has happened to me many times and I must admit that I usually think that I’m sure it “happens” because something “better” is waiting for me. But when that happens to me with the same brand on more than one occasion, then I say to myself, okay, Arantza, this can’t keep happening, buy it NOW. Well, that happened to me with the brand that I bring you today, which has three entrepreneurial women behind it who are very close to me, more than I thought.
Here they are.
I must admit that feeling loved by Desafío + (Desafío Más or Challenge Plus) has been one of the most “beautiful” moments and one of the things that have given me more on a personal and professional level during this weird and painful year of 2020.
I’m going to tell you why, so, if you want, you only have to keep reading.