Mauricio Alonso KK Unite 2

Transcript

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Hi, Mauricio. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. We're back here again. Thanks for having me Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. give me a little bit of background about your school who you studied under and, background on your jiu jitsu. All right. So I'm a black belt, fifth degree, and a black belt under Master Rian Gracie, late Master Rian Gracie in Brazil, and I have my school here in Newark, in the Bay Area at Alonso Academy. Nice. I've been there for 15 years, 16 years in Newark. That's great. Yeah, it's a long time. We have our special needs program. That's why we're here today. We're here to advertise about our special needs kids program at the gym. So we have Need to Believe Foundation. That is our non-profit organization that works towards these kids since 2018. So we've been attending between 70 to 100 kids in two locations now. Oh, wow. One of the locations is at my academy, at Alonso Academy, and we have another Need to Believe program at Ralph a Gracie Academy in San Francisco. Oh, nice. So we are trying to expand our program for many gyms as we want. So I have my academy Right. But I'm a founder of Need to Believe Foundation, so it's a program designed to kids with special needs. We do group classes for these kids. Sometimes I have, 15, 20 kids at the mats. That's awesome. And we have a lot of volunteers involved with this program. It's a great community that we built during this year, you know? So what brought you into thinking, "Hey, I wanna get involved with special needs children what gave you the passion to do this? I always have a sympathy and a care for kids with special needs and people with special needs. And I had a experience that was transforming in a moment of my life. So at that time I was living in Curitiba. I was living at the gym. That was around 2007, I believe, 2008. I just got divorced and it was like a, I think one of the toughest time of my life. I was not making any money. I was living at the gym, teaching some classes, working as a bouncer in some, nightclubs. It was Sunday. Sunday afternoon. Was a beautiful sunny day in Curitiba, and I was in front of the gym, like complaining about life. "Man, what is happening to me?" Frustrated with the things that was happening. And I was like, "Why this happen?" You know, complaining about life in general- Right with myself. And sometimes we just have no idea how blessed we really are- Exactly just to be- Alive and breathing, you know? Yes. And then at that moment, I looked to the side and on, on the corner on the block, there was a hospital for kids with special needs. Wow. And at that moment that I was, like, very disappointed with life and, cursing life, and you know that moments in life that you are frustrated and- Yeah so putting it out by yourself. And I looked to the side and there was this lady coming with this kid in a wheelchair, and this kid was all tied up in the wheelchair because for what I understand today about, special needs, I think he had cerebral palsy and he had some spots where he cannot Control, right? Yes. So he had to be tied on his wheelchair. And this lady, and I could see that it was a very humble lady with, humble, origins You know, not a rich person. And she was walking this kid, and she look at me and smile and said, "Hey, good morning, son." And I was looking at that. I feel, "Man, thank you, ma'am. Have a great day." And that touch my heart in a way that feel, man, I'm here with 27 year old, healthy as hell, complaining about life, and this lady came with a such a great energy around me. Mm-hmm And with such a Gracie and a few words and with her eyes and her smile, she describe of me what is the meaning of life. absolutely. on that moment. and that day I said, "When I had a chance, I wanna work with these kids." That is great. And then I moved to America in 2018. I was teaching at the gym and I have Marina, my student. And I say, "Hey, Marina. I'm going to work," and this and that. She say, "What do you do?" "I work with kids with special needs." She say, "Really?" She said, "Yes." I feel like, man, I really, I always wanna work with these kids. She looked at me like, "Really?" I feel like, "Yes." She said, "Well, let's do a test then." I feel like, "Okay, how can we do?" "Oh, I have one kid that I work with- Mm-hmm and I'm gonna bring you here to the gym one day, and you can try to work with him and see what you can get out of it." I feel like, "Let's do it." And I never had any experience on teaching kids with special needs, but I just have the love and the desire to do a lot. And that's all it takes. and then this mom show up with the kid and Marina. And the kid was around 13 years old. And he have a certain good level of autism. And then I start to work with this kid in a mats, and I know that in a a half an hour that I was with him, he was laughing, rolling, playing around with me, and his mom was crying. Aw. Just to see the normalcy, I went to her, "Hey, Mom, how, what is happening?" Marina was like shocked and said, "What happened?" I said, "Marina work with my kid for three years." Mm-hmm. "I never see him do that to her." That is amazing. I never saw that pro semine. Yeah. I never saw my son do that to anybody in my life. you're giving them the opportunity to give it a try. Yeah. Marina always, she said, we're gonna work with their capabilities." they always gonna have some capabilities. And that's what we focus on, not on the disabilities. We focus on the capabilities of these kids. On the disabilities is everybody else focus. We focus on the capabilities, what they can do, what they are in our reach to make them do. Yeah. and extract the best of them. And that start like that, and then, she said, "Hey, man, how could work that and have to be free for the families." It's my way to give back. Absolutely. So I do that, we do that with a lot of love, a lot of care, it's something that very fulfilling for us. I bet. We've been, we doing that for, since 2018, and it's been working really nice, and we are very happy to be able to help these kids and help these families- Yes and build a great and such a healthy and happy environment for these kids while they are with us. Yeah, absolutely. how many days a week, do you have these, special needs classes? We have once a week for now at Saturdays. at 9:00 AM. That gonna be two locations, right? They can go to Alonso Academy in Newark, California in the Bay Area, or they can go to San Francisco at Ralph a Gracie San Francisco at Howard Street. In the city. Yeah. So we, we have two, two locations for the Need to Believe program. In the Bay we are looking to expand it for more places. And we're gonna working on it this year, probably gonna have one more maybe with San Jose or another part on the area that we have a gym that wanna implement and have a Need to Believe program at their gym. That is amazing that you're doing for these kids. we We have kids that overcome some- Incredible, bridges, One of them, Nico, is one of my heroes. He's this kid, he's now 13 years old. he deals with a, many different types of situations, right? He have a condition He have a, basically he already have eight surgeries or nine surgeries on his brain. Oh, wow. And the doctors at Stanford... When he start to work with us, he couldn't walk. Mm-hmm. The doctors at Stanford, they said, "Oh, your kid never gonna walk again. Probably he gonna be almost in a vegetative state," and this and that. For me, no, man. That's no. Yeah. We have videos of his mom. when the beginning, when he started, only thing he could do was do a grip on the collar of the gi. That's what he was able to do. Hold the gi, sitting. Now this kid, he runs, he rolls, he trains, he do arm bars. So the doctors don't understand what happened. And many other examples that, that I have at the gym, that kids, they overcome many things through our program. and that's what we do. I think people limit their capabilities. Yes. And like you were saying, let's pull out what they can do and work with that, Yes. Yeah, sometimes you're gonna have a kid that gonna have with time you discover what they gonna do, and then they gonna do that a lot. Even as a group class that we do there's something unique You don't see anywhere in the world. a jiu jitsu class for 15, 20 kids at the same time with special needs. is something that even as a group class, we provide, a individual attention for each one of the kids. That they feel that. They feel the love and sometimes they won't be able to do exactly what you're asking for, then we adapt the situation, we adapt the movement for that specific kid, for that specific need that he has. So we gonna be able to extract the most of them in individual levels too, even as a group class. Oh, yeah. when you are working with these kids, and you see the happiness and the love for the sport, to me that would be absolutely rewarding. Yes. we have kids there that are sometimes they give their first step sometimes there on the mats. You know? Oh. And they start to crawl, they start to walk, and they- That's beautiful the parents sometimes come to us and say, "Man, I, I never imagined in my life that my kid could do this- that he's doing today." Grabbing each other kids so we break the barriers that people really think is almost impossible, and kids can interact between them without that struggle or that aggressiveness. Sometimes kids with special needs, it's hard to interact with each other. That's another magical thing that happen on the mats when they realize their kids are interact with the other kids in a nice way and doing the things that they never imagined they could do. Not only the physical part of the physical aspect, but the mental, the emotional, and the socialization- The social, aspect of the program is bringing amazing results for many kids, and we are super proud, and we wanna expand that as most as we can. do you have a website where you take donations, your foundation, I bet? Yes. only thing we have is donations, and we sell, gis that kids made. Like today, if you go to our booth, we have multiple colored gis- that our kids go there and do theirselves, We help them, and they do the gis. The tie-dye ones that I saw today. Yeah, the tie-dye ones. Yeah. is made by our kids, by the kids. Oh. You know? Yeah, so it's a lot of things that we try to work with these kids, and it's been working out Yeah, that- So the website is needtobelieffoundation.com. So on this website, we're gonna have all information about the program. If you live in the Bay Area and have a kid or know someone that have a kid with special needs, please bring them to us, or to San Francisco at Ralph Gracie Academy on Howard Street, or at Alonso Academy at Newark in the Bay. So we'll be happy to have you guys over, and, thank you very much- You're welcome hopefully I'll get to, visit your dojo and do the podcast over there. I'd love to interview you. Yes, that would be great, it's a long good story, believe. So thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate your attention your care, your love for the community here. You spend all day interviewing nice, interesting people. I'm glad to be one of them. Thank you. I appreciate it. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.