“Good night, is a great pleasure and an honor to be here tonight!”

As many of you know my brother Ayrton Senna is considered to be one of the greatest athletes of all time, a successful example of a man on and off the track by his immense determination and talent almost magical.

viviane-senna-Nobel-Prize

So once, during an interview one of the journalists asked Ayrton, you’re a successful man, tell us what is the secret, the key to success? He thought for a moment and replied opportunity. Opportunity not you create, but because someone has an open door!

In fact Ayrton was lucky to be born into a family that earned him the opportunities of development as basic health, food and especially education! However, he and I are absolutely exceptions in Brazil, which has always been and remains, despite recent improvements, one of the most unequal countries in the world. And the big challenge is to make exceptions in Brazil as Ayrton and I as a rule, in terms of access to real opportunities for development.

This is the mission of the Instituto Ayrton Senna: help build a country where people like Ayrton, I or you cease to be the exception to the rule today and turn happy tomorrow. This means a large scale challenge. So no point in making retail stocks, small-scale view of 200 children here, 500 there, a thousand or two thousand there, as this is not the scale of the challenges in countries like Brazil.

I realized that just after two years of existence the Institute became a center of knowledge production and application solutions on a large scale in education, which is the most powerful instrument to promote the development of people is whether countries .

With this strategic vision and commitment now reached the milestone of 15 million children and young people benefit from our educational solutions. Each year we support about 2 million students in public schools in our country. This equates to a total number of students greater than the total of elementary school students in Israel and Portugal combined.We work in around 1500 cities in Brazil, or cover one quarter of Brazil’s cities. Each year we empower more than 70,000 teachers and educators, more than the total of teachers across the network of elementary education in Chile.In 18 years were more than half a million teachers trained and well prepared to ensure all these children quality education – the social real passport in Brazil.

This is the case of Rosilene, a girl lived inside the Brazilian northeast, the city Araçoiaba. There, 70% of the population lives below the poverty line. The Human Development Index is between the Congo and Botswana. And in terms of school population is about 3 years of study only.

Rosilene’s family is no exception to the rule of the city. Migrated 40 years ago and even today there everyone, without exception, have been and are illiterate, great grandparents, grandparents, parents and all siblings. Rosilene was totally illiterate at age 10, even attending the 3rd series, it was more a candidate to repeat the fate of the family and the statistics of their city.

The opportunity to Rosilene and over 200,000 other children came in partnership with the Ayrton Senna Institute and the State of Pernambuco supported by several companies. The government has been implemented in conjunction with the Institute a set of educational solutions developed by the same girl and so illiterate at age 10 became the first literate person in the history of his family and now at age 17 came to a place unimaginable not long ago: she arrived at school.So she moved the poorest 20% of the population and has coincidentally between 3 and 4 years of study to the other end, 20% of the population that has more than 10 years of study.

Thus, Rosilene now has less than 1% chance to remain poor, because in Brazil less than 0.3% of the population with secondary education is poor.So in Rosilene breaks the chain of ignorance and poverty secular q accompanied his family generation after generation. Who made this veritable passport to social and other Rosilene 200 000 children in the State of Pernambuco? Teachers were trained and motivated, committed and supportive business and expertise and efficient developed over these 18 years to promote the entry, stay and especially children’s success in school and in life.

It is on behalf of educators and their millions of students that I am here today in a ceremony never before imagined for myself, but in which I take part with great joy and sense of responsibility even greater.Also represent entrepreneurs who take their social role. It is because of the partnership with these conscious and responsible business we can offer free educational solutions to our public schools.I represent a country that has a history of struggle, setbacks and triumphs and still has plenty of challenges.Finally I represent my family and my children who shared generously of their right to my time and attention all these years with so many other children.

My youngest daughter is here with me tonight.Be chosen by a jury as highly qualified as the winner of a prize as important as the BNP Paribas Prize for individual Philantrophy 2012, is an unexpected and valuable honor for me, for my country, to thousands of teachers and children to whom I represent in this hours. We’re very proud to receive this honor from a bank the size and relevance of BNP Paribas. I have the wonderful feeling of having today with new and dear friends! We are doing a lot and I’m happy for that. But our delay is large, the historic debt of Brazil to the Brazilians with very high.

We must run for at least a considerable portion of children who are currently Rosilene as silently playing a very important race, which is not F1, or against French, German or English. But a race where the enemies are ignorance, poverty, violence and lack of basic opportunities.

That, as I said my brother Ayrton can open a door, give them the true key to victory is called opportunity! The key human development opportunities so they can run and win this q is the most important of all races: the life!

Thank you!

Viviane Senna