Ashoka
Portugal 🇵🇹
The year I turned 40, I decided to leave behind 14 years of Law, a profession that was already worn out and left me empty. Always in search of my fulfillment and alignment with a greater good, I found in spirituality the path to a new life. 9 years ago, on a morning in March, I went for a run by the sea and at the end, I entered a garden. I sat down to rest next to a tree, closed my eyes, and asked my guardian angels: "what did I come to do in the world?" and a very clear thought emerged: "contribute so that children grow up with values". This epiphany really took hold of me! Listening and taking seriously what the soul wanted to express was the seed from which the project that exists today was born! I started looking for a name for this mission and the next morning I woke up in the middle of a dream with the name Semear Valores (which means Sowing Values)! Currently, Semear Valores is a cooperative founded by me and two friends whose mission is to help parents and professionals educate happier children, to grow up with values, live their potential and enjoy life.
After this inspiration, I returned to college to do a post-graduate course in Positive Psychology and found the perfect model on which to base the mission of educating on values: the model of Virtues and Strengths of Character, by Peterson and Seligman (2004). After a lot of work, learning, support obtained, and a good dose of hope, courage and creativity, Semear Valores exists in the world and has already touched many children and adults through training, projects in schools and pedagogical resources that we have created to bring values to children in an engaging way. One of the most successful products is the children's story I wrote: "Yuki, the Robot with a Heart. The Superpowers of Friendship." With Yuki, I've already met more than 2000 children to whom I've taken this inspiring, captivating, and educational story!
Yuki awakens children to the importance of values such as empathy, kindness, forgiveness and humor, among others. This story has been a gift that allows me to be a changemaker as I feel it has been entrusted to me by a greater force to work for good on Earth. Whenever I tell it to a group of children, I feel that I am fulfilling myself and that a good seed is planted in their hearts!
The name I give to Yuki reading meetings, which take place in schools, is Yuki in Caravan! I have a large cardboard caravan that I take to schools when I read the story, as well as a large Yuki that the kids love to take pictures with! One of my dreams is to get a real caravan so I can travel the country and bring Yuki's story to many more children. There are many schools that do not have the financial capacity to pay the travel costs and, therefore, do not have the opportunity to host this reading and friendship meeting.
Semear Valores is today a dream come true and, despite having started with a very personal moment of inspiration and connection, it is the result of teamwork of three: Patrícia and Kalpna are the other two pillars of this happy triangle!