Discover the story of Community Leader Alan Duarte: a journey of losses, courage, overcoming and victory!

In 2012, Alan Duarte saw his brother murdered and this led him to a moment of reflection about the world, life, spiritual issues and other subjects. He decided to analyse some data on violence in Rio de Janeiro from a period when he was very young. At the time, he did not have the knowledge to research the maps of the violence or where to find generally published data from institutions that had studied the subject in the State of Rio de Janeiro.

Facing these difficulties, he decided to research the data on his own life. That’s when he realized that none of the men in his family had died of natural causes, they had all been murdered, involving 10 deaths by firearms. Further, he surveyed how many friends had being killed in the same way and found a number of 150 deaths. Going deeper into his research, he encountered more than 17 friends in prison, a further 15 friends on parole, and all of them with scars from gunshot wounds.

Life change

After the loss of his brother, Alan began to participate in a boxing project in complex da Maré, North Zone of Rio. He stayed in the project for 17 years and realized that his life had changed a lot in those years. He travelled to several countries with the project and visited all of the states of Brazil. In addition, he completed his studies and graduated, even though he was black, poor, and from the same reality, family and community as the people mentioned earlier, they did not have the same luck.  

But the distance between the two favelas was very great and, in mid-2014, Alan began to question why he had to invest more than 40 minutes to go from Complexo do Alemão to Complexo da Maré and why he couldn’t have that same opportunity in his neighborhood?

So Alan decided to create Abraço Campeão (Hug Champion), a project with the purpose and objective of bringing the same opportunities that he had to the community where he lives. An initiative that has changed and continues to change the lives of many children, youth and adults living in slums and peripheral territories.

in 2015, Alan Duarte says that when he traveled to London, he realized how incredible it was to travel to another country and to get to know other cultures. He was wearing a t-shirt from the newly created project and decided to take pictures of it in tourist spots in the city. At that moment, he decided that he would bring his, then students to those places.

In 2017, Alan Duarte made a documentary called “The Good Fight”, to tell his own story. This film participated in 57 festivals and was shown in 27 countries, including in, New York (USA), where it participated in the “Tribeca Film Festival”, winning the award for best documentary. He was present and had the opportunity to meet Robert De Niro and Whoopi Goldberg.

He leaves here a message for a South African, Canadian, naturalized American, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, and for the American, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.

“I think the world needs you and your consciences to end poverty and misery on the planet. I think it’s very important to channel energy to colonize Mars, but we need you here on planet Earth, because for now there is no alternative planet, it’s Earth that needs attention. If you really contribute to ending poverty, you will have the support of the world, and this is possible because there are natural resources on the planet for everyone. And that will end if the focus is directed elsewhere than here.” Finish Alan.

Asked how he managed to have the strength to move forward in such an adverse environment, he answers:

“the loss of my brother, the knowledge acquired in Complexo da Maré, the studies and the impact of the documentary were my fuel to get here, but not even everything was wonderful, the challenges were enormous”.

Alan Duarte is a graduate of the Social Leadership University of the NGO Gerando Falcões.

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Watch the award-winning documentary.