A few years ago, when I wasn’t on a great moment of my life, one of my brothers in law gave me a book that, according to him, I was going to like because it was like the ones I usually like. He wasn’t wrong. In addition to giving me a gift, which I love, I must say that it was THE GIFT. A book full of STORIES, those where you want to be the protagonist. Well, the last thursday, the 26th of October, some of its protagonists came to Bilbao. They celebrated the 9th edition of the congress of the What Really Matters Foundation.
What Really Matters is a foundation with the goal to “to promote the development and the diffusion of universal human, ethic and moral values to the public fundamentally through the development of cultural activities”. Among those activities that they have been celebrating for 10 years now are the congresses. They have celebrated more than 85 since 2007 and more than 150.000 young people have participated ever since.
8 Spanish cities and other 6 countries are witnesses year after year of an event that reaches your heart and, what is more important, which has been able to pass important values such as solidarity, bravery, effort, overcoming, humbleness, generosity, discipline, positivism, tenacity, patience, courage, compromise, compassion, perseverance, optimism and a lot of gratitude to children, young people and society in general.
In addition to all of those and other ones, there’s a WORD that describes many of the protagonists of the stories that make the big family that is What Really Matters, including the team led by its founder and General Manager María Franco. That word is entrepreneurship, which I dare to add social. You only have to read a little bit about who is behind each story to discover the E.P. and the projects behind them.
What Really Matters derives from a dream turned to a project. According to María Franco, this project started with a question (What Really Matters?) and the journal of a North American man, Nicholas Forstmann, which got into her hands in a very delicate time of her life.
Nick’s message made María ask herself a question:
Why do you have to realize what really matters just when life hits you?
That was a key question and what made her life gave, in some way, a turn.
In that moment, María and her friends Carolina, Pilar and Fátima (4 women who keep fighting day after day for this project) asked themselves how could they do it so the message they had to give reached to the young people. Pilar had de answer:
This year, 10 years after their debut, María and her team celebrate very grateful all their “successes”, those that have been possible thanks to the unconditional support of the great protagonists of each and every project and initiative that have launched these years: the men and women with stories that make them worthy of being an example to society, because they have values to teach.
With María’s permission, I join the appreciation to everyone who made possible the projects of the What Really Matters foundation: schools, universities, businesses, volunteers, followers on social media, foundations who support them in each city and country they go to, members of their trust and commissions, family members and collaborators. Without it, the Foundation would have it more difficult to achieve their challenges.
Thank you, María, for your daily fight. I hope to have the pleasure to share a coffee with you sometime.
I leave you here the coordinates of the Foundation and I hope you can participate in the following congresses.
C/ Golondrina, 42
28023 Aravaca, Madrid.
Phone number: (+34) 91 640 51 53
E-mail: info@loquedeverdadimporta.org