Quim Camargo
Integrare, Associate
Anti Racism Project, Team Lead
Quim Camargo is a 17 years old student who grew up in Brazil. Passionate, since a kid, about mathematics and music, the blend between rationality and sensibility opened his eyes to the social problems of the world.
Around 10 years old, Quim was playing soccer at a local soccer school. Those people he played and competed with had always made him feel part of that group, they were his friends. One occasion, though, blurred some of his beliefs. The coach was giving a speech about an internal championship that would occur that summer, and some of his words changed Quim’s perspective in a way he wouldn’t see the world in the same way he did before: “There is a tax to pay, I know that it is expensive and most of you will not afford to pay it…”. He heard the value, and the only thing he could think of was the abyss between him and those other kids. Surely he could pay that tax, but his friends - who he shared so grateful moments with, who he felt equally to - couldn’t. Suddenly, he wasn’t the same as the other people. He had something that they hadn’t, not because he earned it, but because, structurally, society has divided them that way.
On his way home that day, he started questioning all the things that he mistakenly took for granted. From the soccer school to his house, he saw homeless people sleeping by the side of the road, poor people begging for money, and people digging through the trash. He also saw the Favelas; the same ones he saw when he was going to school that day, but now they were not the same, because he was not the same either. On his way to that school, he believed that this is the way society is, on his way back he started asking: “How can I change this?”
In the school environment, Quim has one main activity that enlightens his social worries: the “Anti Racism Project”. This project is based on a project that Quim’s school started, which aims at the entry of indigenous and black people into the school campus. Quim talked to his friends about this project, but people didn’t know that it existed. So, the “Anti Racism Project” came to spread the project the school was creating and, mainly, to promote the debate about Anti Racism at school between students.
Outside of school, in order to make a real world impact, Quim is working side by side with a non-profit organization called Integrare. This organization aims to bring closer together companies with a great market representation and small minority suppliers. The program offers a direct contact between the parties and the supplier’s preparation to attend to the big companies' demands. On one project, for example, Quim was able to revise and provide improvements to Integrare’s website, so that it would be easier to use and more efficient to collect the data.
The experience of living abroad and studying at a great university, Quim believes that it could expand his horizons as a person. His main goal at the university and his career beyond is to try to understand the world economically and socially to be able to make an impact on it. In particular, he would like to pursue economics in order to develop problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and global awareness through an economic lens, enabling him to provide strategies and solutions for poverty.