Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicole Galli and Fabiana Hernandez.
Nicole and Fabiana, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Abiana and I met during a Thanksgiving trip. One night we realized we both had the same dream, spread love, and happiness to the people that needed it the most. We didn’t know how we would do it, we just knew we wanted to do it. We decided to have a Christmas event at a shelter. Our objective was to give the kids of the shelter the opportunity to enjoy a different day from what they are used to and our volunteers had the responsibility to spread love and happiness.
Most of our volunteers for that event were kids; We had them play a soccer match and one of the volunteer kids (six years old Referee) had a small act of kindness that made us realize what the organization should focus on. He took off his soccer shoes and gifted them to one of the children who had played with no shoes the whole game. That is when we realized we wanted to create an organization where we could create awareness to our volunteers, providing tools of growth to become better human beings, leaders of tomorrow, living their life with a purpose.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There are many challenges. At the beginning we thought helping others was giving donations wherever it was needed. We thought giving food, clothes and even toys was the right way to help. After different projects we learned that to really help a person or even a community we needed to learn what their needs are. By learning the specific needs we could build a long term self-sustainable project, where the individual or the community would have the right tools to grow on their own and not depend on a recurrent donation.
Another big challenge is learning how to say “NO.” As a nonprofit it is very hard when an individual reaches out and for some reason we can’t support their project or situation, we try to do our best to support as many people as we can. The hardest thing for us is saying “NO.”
Please tell us about Sun.Risas.
Sun.Risas is a non-profit organization that creates opportunities for children through education, promoting personal growth and development to contribute in the progress of their communities and at the same time, our objective is to assure that our volunteers contribute to the betterment of others as part of their lives and carry it throughout their adulthood, to value what they have and to feel gratitude for helping others.
What we are most proud of as a company is the impact we are making around the world. What sets us apart from others are:
1. OUR VOLUNTEERS. Since the beginning, we decided that our main focus was to create awareness and consciousness in our volunteers.
2. UNDERSTANDING THE NEEDS TO SUPPORT SMARTLY. After understanding that every community has a different need we work based on those needs.
3. TEACH HOW TO FISH INSTEAD OF PROVIDING THE FISH. We learned that if we always contribute with material donations, the cycle would never stop, donations will always be needed. If we provide the right tools, such as knowledge/education we are providing new opportunities, generating a self-sustain community.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Nothing, every step we take is a lesson, we learn from every mistake and experience. We would repeat every single thing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sunrisas.org
- Email: nicole@sunrisas.org
- Instagram: @sun.risas
- Facebook: @sun.risas
- Twitter: @sun_risas
- Other: @nicolegallib (Instagram)
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