“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change, I am changing the things I cannot accept”, wrote Carlos Manrique in one of his Instagram post.
So he started his NGO “Sports for the world” and his project “HUMAN-0”.

“Angry with society, don’t you? Actually, we all create the society we live in.
So do something you, HUMAN!”

“I have meeting with myself everyday and still I can’t agree on anything, fuck it.”

Carlos is 27 years old, considers himself as a citizen of the world and spent the last year as a manager of a sports academy in Guangzhou, China.

“More than 1 year in China, I won’t be best friend with China, but for sure has been a great year.”

“I am here for 1 year and few months now. Last year traveling through Asia I stopped in China to see
if I had any possibilities to work here. Turns out that yes, so I came here to be the manager of a Sports Academy.
I live in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong. It has been a different year as Chinese culture is very different as almost everything, it is difficult to adapt the mindset to what is needed here in order to work.”

“How old is your soul?”

We were curios. How is China? The daily life, the food, the love and simply everything?

Carlos told us: “China is a different world , the culture is so different, they have grown amazingly in such a little time that many things still need to improve. China is a very capitalism country with fake communist values that lead to a difficult understanding of the society. Food is good, very different from the Chinese restaurant you would find in western countries, mainly rice with veggies and meat . They are more cold in terms of love but love is everywhere the same I guess. I would say it was a good experience living here for a year but not sure if would repeat it.”

“Learn to be yourself.”

We got to known about Carlos by finding his Instagram profile. He has great pictures with even greater thoughts. If you would like to check it by yourself, click here! We liked very much what we saw, so we decided to make an interview with him.
Carlos thinks the first step for success is to define what success means for you. So we were curious what success means for him.

“Success for me means to give my best to the community and enjoy the process of doing it.” – wrote Carlos in his first e-mail to us. – “I can’t measure success with economic value but I can measure it with inner peace.”

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”

“For many years I wanted to help animals and as a teenager I wanted to do something related with traveling but I did not know actually what!”, Carlos told us. “As a grown kid I decided to join my passions and try to make a living out of it.”

“Passion changes everything. “

“My passions are basketball, travel and let’s say try to make this world a better place, being that the main one lately. So for the last 4 years I‘ve combined it”, Carlos wrote us. “Now I am currently working as a sports manager in China , but just part time so I have time to work for my NGO and plan my projects , that means I put first life before money. I also live a simple life , so I basically have what I need.”

“Our life quality depends on the quality of the questions we ask to ourselves.”

“All palaces are temporary palaces. Build yours everyday!”

“My NGO sportfortheworld is my little baby , it is an organization where we do many things, but our goal is to connect people. Nowadays the world is so connected, in our daily actions we are connecting with many other cultures …our food , technology, we need to start thinking that we are all the same, not looking for differences, but common goals”, describes Carlos his NGO.

“The less things a toy can do, more things mind will do.”

“Mainly we organize sports volunteering where our goal is to help the mother earth. Let me explain, we do not want the volunteer to pay us money, we want him to plant a tree, to run a charity race … then when he reaches the amount of events done he can do the volunteering. We have an online academy where we offer sports course with a social touch for free. We also have projects around the world, now in Nepal we will have 2, Mudita and basketball for Kathmandu.”

“Sleep 4 hours and go to coach never felt that better!!!”

“We do all that with a very high level of transparency, I would say there is no NGO like us. We will put any accountable thing in our website, starting from money and our time doing duties, we have our bank account in a ethic bank, we allow people we do not know to join our organization meetings … If we want to change the world, first we need to change ourselves and people does not trust NGOs anymore, SFTW is here to change that.” If you would like to find out more about sportfortheworld, click here to check out their Facebook site!

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

Recently Carlos started his new project, called “HUMAN-0”.
“It is a project that comes from the need to know the world and myself more. I want to explore the world while doing social and personal projects such as volunteering in many countries, go to crowdfunding spaces in every country to see where the young entrepreneurship are going with their thoughts, interviewing experts in different fields to see what they think about the world we live in making an art gallery about my trip, not talking for 7 days, living with no money for 1 month. The idea is to share everything on social media and motivate, inspire people to do their thing!”

“Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.”