‘IMPACT HOUR’ With Gabriela Lazzer Poit

Written By Sahithi Divi as told by Gabriela Lazzer Poit ( Gabi )

Gabi – Social Entrepreneur, Doula, House Management Volunteer, Social Worker

#impacthourbysahithi ( When asked about her moments of change, abstracts from the life stories of people she met during volunteering, courage and love and a lot more )

Gabi who is a Brazilian and Italian by nationality has grown up spending most of her life in Sao Paulo also currently resides there. She speaks Portuguese, English and Italian languages out of which she misses to speak english the most now. Gabi studied bachelors in business and choose to do her masters in social entrepreneurship from San Fransisco and later graduated from London. Inspired towards self discovery her journey continued in Italy and now finally back to Sao Paulo where she is enriching herself by emotionally empowering mothers before , during and after the pregnancy as a Doula.

In my conversation about self discovery she said, ” You will never find yourself completely until you die, as life transpires each day and so do we. Everything will happen as it was suppose to be. But even if not nice, self enlightenment is a great learning “. She discovers change in every moment that impacts her. Being open to change after-all diversifies our attitude.

Gabi experienced her sister’s pregnancy very closely during which she potentially saw and enraged on capacity draining times faced by a woman while creating an other human life. She explains how drastically it provocated her to use her voice and skill to emotionally vitalise a person during the most life absorbing ride of every woman’s story. She was affected by the vulnerability with which women come to hospitals and sometimes even have no clue about how to face the violence and child birth together. As a doula also promotes natural birth and creates awareness about mental wellness during pregnancy.

I know that she finds it hard to let go the missing feeling of people but always finds a way to do something better from that feeling. Her volunteering story is heartening to learn, especially her time in South Africa when she herself found it challenging to soak into an extremely different social structure. Humbled in the teachings she got from the life story of a 75 year old woman she met who was physically abused by four young boys the night before. She also narrates her memories from the twenty days of volunteering on boat to the remote Amazon villages deprived of basic healthcare or even emergency services.

Her research clearly defines that, as a volunteer one must use design thinking to understand the long term affects of short term social solutions.

She amplifies her life experience into words and says, ” Every woman must take the courage to give time to things that can help us grow as an individual, as it is very easy to loose ourself in the allocated time to us as a woman. Courage to speak up for the things that can define us as a person can make all the difference in the world, it did to me. ” she said.

Gabi’s association with India captivated with our friendship four years ago in San Fransisco at Hult International Business School. We have been through the simulation of social crisis together and learnt about impact innovation with resonating views from different geographies. After an immaculate year of learning we moved to our respective countries. During her visit to India she left her soul wandering here. Gabi is now building to scale her services as Doula , even use this skill to benefit India on a large capacity and bring natural birth back to India at one point.

Her story and work align with Sustainable Development Goal 3 of Healthcare centrally. Looking forward to transform our friendship into a collaboration which can impact the world.

Written by Sahithi Divi as told by Gabriela Poit ( source : http://www.impactscientist.com )