Diogo Vasconcelos 1
If not for his premature and tragic death last July, Diogo Vasconcelos would be 44 years old today.
Diogo was much more than the first chairman of Dialogue Café. He was our driving force. He believed that we are what we share and dialogue and collaboration are the most important tools in a world where the challenges we face are increasingly urgent and increasingly global.
His passion for Social Innovation and his dedication to make dialogue CafĂ© reach its maximum potential were a reflection of the way he saw the world – full of opportunities, interesting people, amazing projects and ideas. He saw dialogue CafĂ© as a platform to bring all this together in conversation, a place free of prejudice or preconceptions, where people learn from each other and find new solutions for old problems, together.
Many people that worked and supported Dialogue CafĂ© over the last few years were touched in many different ways by Diogo’s intelligence, his optimism, his uncompromising belief in the human spirit, his wit and kindness and most of all by is generosity and warm smile.
Diogo was the only person I met that was completely untouched by cynicism. He saw the world with a unique sense of wonder and opportunity where everything was possible and everybody had something good to offer. He had a unique capacity to keep looking at things like it was the first time.
Fantastic, amazing, the best, stunning, great, were words that he used in almost every sentence and about almost everything. And this was not out of exaggeration but out of a desire that we all saw things and people the way he did.
Most of us spend our lives wanting to be liked. Diogo spent his life wanting people to like each other.
Most of us believe that when we share, we loose something. Diogo believed that when we share we end up with more and better that we had originally.
Dialogue CafĂ© was Diogo’s dream. And we are working every day to honor his memory and make sure it becomes what Diogo believed it could be. It’s just harder without his guidance, his enthusiasm and his wisdom.
Sara Piteira
