Ronaldo Monteiro - transformed his life from serial kidnapper to a phenomenal DreamMaker

I started this blog to share real life stories of people who triumph over tremendous obstacles - people I call DreamMakers. My intention for “And The Good News is…” is to inspire hope and to demonstrate that we all have the capacity to change our reality. 


Ronaldo is the Founder of IEE and The Center for Social and Cultural Integration (CISC), two grassroots organizations that partner with CDI in helping people in underserved communities to transform their lives. Ronaldo’s programs have been so successful that he was awarded an Ashoka Fellow. For those of you who are not aware of Ashoka. They are “the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs—men and women with system changing solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems.”  Their vision on their website reads,  “Ashoka envisions an Everyone A Changemaker™ world. A world that responds quickly and effectively to social challenges, and where each individual has the freedom, confidence and societal support to address any social problem and drive change.” 


Ronaldo’s story is compelling, inspiring and instructional. In his own words -


             “The first time I actually met Ronaldo, 
               my real self, I was in prison.”

I am 50 years old, I have four children and two grandchildren and my life is marked by the fact that I spent a quarter of my life in prison. When I was 14 years old I got involved with drugs and I was heavily into the nightlife. From there I got into crime including drug trafficking as well as extortion and kidnapping. Then, in the 70’s and 80’s, I was one of the top people in Brazils military intelligence. I was skilled in strategic thinking and technology. But I also had a darker side and after the military, I chose the dark side. I ended up being one of the biggest cocaine traffickers in Brazil. I was responsible for supplying three of the largest states of Brazil with drugs. In the 80’s and 90’s, I moved on to kidnapping. The first huge wave of kidnapping in São Paulo was my done by my team and myself. Prior to us, kidnapping was done only for political reasons. We effectively invented kidnapping for the extortion of money in Brazil. I became internationally renowned for my expertise in kidnapping. I made contact with cartels around the world. I was a criminal entrepreneur. I was a genius at planning strategies and tactics and creating innovative criminal activities. Consequently, when I got caught and sent to prison, the facility I was sent to was constantly on high security alert. Because of my background in military intelligence and my criminal expertise, I was closely watched so I would not escape.

The first time I actually met Ronaldo, my real self, I was in prison. I had a divine experience. Before this experience I always only saw me, cared only about me, Ronaldo.  It was not about Ronaldo, the husband or Ronaldo, the father – it was all about me. That divine experience taught me to see other people and that you can only be loved by loving others. During this time my wife had stopped visiting me so I began to start visiting with the families of other prisoners and I learned a great deal from those families. I also started meeting with three religious counselors: a Catholic, a Protestant and a spiritual counselor. After some time I gained the trust of the director of the prison, and he began to give me more freedom. I began to organize sporting activities; I also began to organize spiritual groups.  Soon the Director of the prison gave me the freedom to organize activities with the children of the prisoners; organizing football teams, theater, music and other recreational activities. Then I started to work with my fellow prisoners. I developed and taught vocational skills to prepare them for jobs when they got out of prison. Now I not only had earned the trust of the administrators, I gained the trust and my fellow prisoners.

In1994 I began to bring work and jobs into the prison. The World Cup was going on and there was a contest in Brazil for the most decorated neighborhood in Brazil. I saw an opportunity for the prisoners to work and contribute, so we started producing Brazilian flags. We started making the flags in our cells and it grew into a large-scale operation. Soon we were shipping our flags all over Brazil

What I wanted to do most was to teach the prisoners skills they could use when they got out of prison and in 1998, I got my opportunity. The director of education asked me if I would like to meet with Rodrigo to explore creating a technology education program inside the prison. We met, and Rodrigo, the Director of education and I accepted the challenge to start the first technology training program in a prison in Brazil - together we created the first CDI Center in a prison. I taught 20 of the prisoners to became educators and they began teaching their families technology. That changed the relationship between the prisoners and their families because their families not only saw them learning technology but some of them were actually teaching technology. Imagine the new found respect they had for their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers.

This was a time when Brazil passed a law to start putting technology labs in public schools. The prison school was an official public school, so the teachers were required to teach technology. Consequently, the 20 prisoners who I had taught to be teachers started teaching the school educators how to use the computers. Soon the guards wanted to learn and the prisoners started teaching the prison guards technology; imagine the paradigm shift.

The program was so successful we decided it was time to move beyond the prison walls. So we established two new CDI community centers outside of the prison; (CISC - Center for Social and Cultural Integration) and another one inside the football stadium called Maracanã. I was still locked up so I ran these CDI centers from inside of the prison.


            “Of the 225 ex-prisoners that entered the program, 
            189 completed the program, only 1 returned to prison; 
            an astounding recidivism rate.”

I not only wanted to help the prisoners get the skills to gain employment, I also wanted them to create new jobs by starting micro-enterprises. So I created an incubator for microenterprise.  Of the 225 ex-prisoners in the incubator, 50% already have companies of their own up and running. Of the 225 ex-prisoners that entered the program, 189 completed the program and only 1 returned to prison - an astounding recidivism rate.

We are sponsored by PetroBras, the largest oil company in Brazil. We have also have been recognized by President Lula.  We have been interviewed on all the high traffic media channels. Due to our amazing results, in 2008 I became the first serial kidnapper to become an Ashoka fellow. We are now trying to expand this program into 10 states around Brazil.

Values: On a deeply personal level, I value transparency, fidelity and divine spirit: Transparency - because lack of transparency is lack of truth. Life is full of half-truths and half-lies, so to gain true credibility, to gain real trust, you need to have transparency.  Fidelity - because for many years of my life I was a traitor. Divine Spirit - is what I value most and it is very hard to define.

I had a divine experience that I cannot rationally explain today. When I was released from prison, they allowed me to still run the CDI center inside of the prison. One day I came into the prison to give a seminar for over 900 prisoners. The incentive for them to come to the seminar was the promise of extra rations of food at the end of the course. The food did not come that day, or the next day and thirty days went by and I had not delivered on my promise. The prisoners were very angry and they had made plans to kill me.  The day they were going to execute the plan, they lined up on the staircase prepared to kill me. I knew about the plan so as I walked down the staircase, I kept my head down. Amazingly, no one bothered me; not one person even looked my way. I suddenly realized they could not see me. I walked out of the prison and they only saw me only after I was outside of the prison gates. I believe the divine spirit made me invisible to them. I believe in the transformative power of the divine spirit.

Vision:
By the 2016 Olympics we, the community of Rio, are working together. We are prepared to meet the demands of the Olympics and everyone is working to make the Olympics a success. The adult population is very professional and we have 2,000 young people ready to compete in the Olympics.

My Message: 

To cynics - life can change.

To the Hopeless - Life can change.

To the Young People - Be the life you wish. So many young people think that life happens to them, they believe what they do does not matter. They need to be the life they wish.

My Greatest Lesson - The greatest lesson I have learned from life is to see and seize opportunities”

When DreamMakers are faced with obstacles they figure out how to turn them into opportunities. I believe it is about attitude, imagination and will – attributes we all have the capacity to develop. 

May all your beautiful hopes and dreams come true!

Michele

Transformation Catalyst

www.dreammakers.org