Hi everyone!

Hi everyone! My name is Sebastian, I was born in Buenos Aires (Argentina) 32 years ago and I currently participate in an exciting project called waba.network. I’m very excited to be part of this awesome community where so many ideas are shared. After having learned so many things in this network I finally decided to write my first post.

During my childhood and teenage years I spent most of my time playing sports. I loved playing football and volleyball. Planned or unplanned (who knows…) I ended up in the race to become a professional player. Integrity, fellowship, professionalism, respect, all of them combined with enjoyment, are core values that I acquired during those unforgettable years.

Suddenly (although in hindsight it was quite predictable) my country went through the worst economic crisis in its history. That crisis showed me in a harsh way what happens when markets are left to act freely, which in practice means that the powerful are allowed to do anything, legitimate or not, in the pursuit of their own benefit. That crisis also taught me that the international organizations that supposedly work to build a better world are just instruments to make the rich even richer.

So I decided to study economics with the aim of gaining an understanding of the functioning of the world economic system. I thought that economics would provide me with tools to design alternative strategies in the quest for economic development. I was particularly interested in overcoming poverty, one of the most severe (if not the most) problems of my country. When I was finishing my undergraduate studies, just in the outbreak of the subprime crisis, I realised that mainstream economics has absolutely no connection to the real world. So I made my first incursion into heterodox economics. This is when I started to think of ideas that later on would, in combination with my partners’ contributions, give birth to the WABA.network.

While working as an economist, either at the government, international organizations or in the academic environment, I couldn’t find the way to make a direct impact on the society. That’s why, with some friends of university, I founded SomoS, a grassroots organization that intends to create spaces where individuals with high levels of exposure to social vulnerabilities are progressively empowered, allowing them to choose and seek for their own life plan. These spaces consist of workshops where the learning process is seen as a bidirectional flow - both the members of the community and the volunteers learn from each other in every step that is taken.

In parallel to my activities in SomoS I had the chance to travel around the world. Every trip enriched me as a human being. It’s amazing to experience the way in which every society carries a cultural background of hundreds of years. Having had the possibility to live in two very cosmopolitan cities like Amsterdam and Paris gave me the conviction that seemingly incompatible ways of life can perfectly coexist, and that there are no essential or substantial identities. Culture is a dynamic and collective construction. The more open we are to “the new” and to “the different” the better we’ll be us human beings and as a society.

Walks of life gave me the opportunity to meet Pablo Tutino, Matías Romeo, Marina Solanas and Fernando Buero, with whom we started working on the WABA.network project. What motivates me with WABA.network is the possibility to pick the best of each past experience that I went through, and enrich them with the talent and the commitment of my fellows. As the project blossomed, many new mates have jumped onto the boat. Future will tell what the next port is. There is no final destination.