National Geographic Presents: IMPACT with Gal Gadot

"I want you to believe in the impossible.

To draw life. To form people.

And I'm so proud that now you can inspire others."

This beautiful quote comes from Tuany, who has given a

generation of young girls a place to feel safe,

to feel loved, and to know that they are more capable and

more powerful than the circumstances they were born into.

This is Tuany's Impact.

If we don't have a goal, if we don't have a dream

we won't get anywhere.

Our dreams are what protect us.

It's what keeps us going each day, and makes us believe

that things are going to get better.

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That's some shots.

You look worried.

Are those fireworks?

No, that's shots.

Where are they?

Over there.

It's right behind us.

Do you want to stop?

Hold on...

I just need to take a breath.

It feels like we're in a constant state of war.

There is the war between gangs and the police,

and another war between rival gangs.

We never know when things will go wrong.

Often times we have to stop our lessons

because of the confrontations.

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When I turned eighteen, I decided to stop dancing.

I told myself it's time to grow up.

I had to get serious.

But I decided to keep practicing.

And then the girls showed up to watch me rehearse.

So I started teaching them as well.

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Sing Kassia! Sing! Sing!

I know you're my fans, but...

.

Honestly, I didn't realize that it was a social project

until people started telling me it was.

For me, it was just something that happened organically.

I was rehearsing and the girls showed interest.

Come on. Can I see? In the right tempo.

When the project started it helped a lot of girls

whose families were destroyed by drug trafficking.

The girls had a space where they could express themselves

and feel positivity through dance.

It was their refuge and they dance because they enjoy it.

It's a way to take them from the terrible reality they live in.

I had brothers who died a long time ago.

They were gang members.

I miss them, I didn't have enough time with them.

Her brothers were involved in drug trafficking here in Morro do Adeus.

Karla lost two brothers in a very tragic way.

But she decided to choose something else,

she decided to do ballet and change her reality.

This ends up creating a cycle.

A young girl gets pregnant, then she abandons her son.

Then the son ends up on the street,

he learns what he shouldn't and becomes a criminal.

Then he gets another girl pregnant, and they have another child.

The boy is raised on the streets, and becomes another criminal.

And that's why today it's like this.

This is a project that has only improved this place.

Because this has always been a place that never had anything.

Now we can transform it through "Na Ponta dos Pés".

In the beginning, there were seven girls.

And then the number of girls started to grow.

It started with seven girls, two were my sisters, and one was my cousin.

Then in two months we reached fifty girls.

I never thought it would go this far.

Today the girls have a different mindset a different way of thinking.

They have the desire to grow.

On the court there were constant shootings. And we had nowhere to hide.

So our biggest dream was to have a dance studio.

The construction process was really magical.

Painful, tough, but magical.

I gathered all of the girls and their moms,

and we decided to create a task force.

That way we could buy materials and build the school.

I say it was magical because

most people in the community thought it was impossible

for women to get their hands dirty

and carry the amount of weight we did

to build our own safe, physical space.

The first material that arrived was a truck full of more than

seven thousand blocks of concrete.

We chose that because concrete blocks are safer than clay bricks.

All of the girls took part in this process.

When I heard about the studio, when I saw it, and

I helped load the supplies

I thought "Oh my God!"

I was part of that. I helped it grow.

It was something incredible!

Each block their names on them.

And inside the blocks we had them write their dreams.

Those are left in there. It's a way for us to say that they can

build their own dreams, their own goals.

And it's here materialized in this dream that became real.

Ah-ha! Yeah.

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Flex. Now relax your foot.

So, (speaking native language).