Jaume Sanllorente: "Being an only child has helped me learn how to be alone."
At school he tended to hang out with the most oppressed groups and today he is the founder and director of the NGO 'Smiles of Bombay'
Jaume Sanllorente (Barcelona, 1976) is a journalist and writer. He is the founder and director of Sonrisas de Bombay, an NGO that focuses on the peaceful fight against human trafficking and respect for human rights.
He grew up in Plaza Tetuán, Barcelona, but went to school in Sarrià. "In Santa Isabel, where my mother was a teacher. This has advantages and disadvantages," he admits. "It deprived you of a bit of freedom and privacy since everyone knows who your mother is. Sometimes it's really good to be the one who's the best." son of, but others, not so much," he explains.
Sanllorente was a very good student, but he was always chatting. "I found out everything," he recalls. He was already a journalist. "Since I was a child, I've pursued the truth. For example, I was in the first year and if something happened in the fifth year, the fifth-grade teacher would ask for me to be taken out of class because she said: "Sanllorente surely knows what happened." I witnessed everything, but I protected my classmates, therefore, I wasn't "an informer," he recalls.
He was a humanities student. "I had a knack for writing essays, explaining oral topics, and I did theater," he explains. He created a group called the 5 Minute Company, which was called that because all the characters died after five minutes. Math wasn't his strong suit. "They gave me a private tutor at home, and I would say to her, 'You count, I'll draw.' My mother would watch and get desperate because she said I was making fun of the poor teacher," he adds.
As a child, when people asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said he wanted to be a theater actor, until, at the age of three, a neighbor told him: "If you're a theater actor, you'll always be poor." "From then on, I decided I was going to be a journalist," he concludes.
A small family
After school, he did a lot of extracurricular activities. "I did judo, I also danced with a flock, I sang in a heart-shaped band on the weekends, and what I did for a long time was swimming, which has helped me a lot," he says. At home, he performed plays. "I used to put up sheets and the audience was my mother and grandmother, because parents were much less present back then. I remember my mother being very present, and my father, not so much," he explains.
He is an only child. "There are times in life when I've missed having siblings. I asked for a sibling in my letter to the Three Wise Men, but I think they felt sorry for me in the end, and they brought me a dog," he says. He also sees the positive side. "Being an only child has helped me a lot to learn to be on my own; this has helped me a lot after I moved to India," says the founder of the NGO Sonrisas de Bombay.
His father was the import and export manager for a chemical company. I ask him where his altruistic side comes from. "It was awakened in me on that trip to India, and I've always had a sense of justice," he explains. At school, despite being the son of a teacher, he wasn't popular, but he wasn't one of the most popular either. marginalized. "I got along with everyone, and the teachers would write in my grades: 'He/She tends to hang out with more oppressed groups.'"
She studied journalism. "My mother died in my first year of journalism and I had a kind of crisis, like, 'I'm changing majors,' but I continued and I'm very happy to have studied journalism. Although I still think that you learn journalism much more by doing it than by studying it. I think it's a degree that could be completed in fewer years," she confesses.
When she finished her degree, she went on a gap year to London. "I did everything, I even gave flyers on Oxford Street dressed as a giant chicken or something like that," he says. Upon his return, he began working as a journalist until 2005, when he traveled to India, came across an orphanage that was about to close, and left everything to settle there and found the NGO. I think I've done more journalism with La Bomba than I have with the NGO. Press in a media outlet. In the end, I've written many investigative topics and I continue to communicate a reality," concludes Sanllorente.