WEBVTT

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So, I thought a lot about
the first word I'd say today,

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and I decided to say "Colombia."

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And the reason, I don't know
how many of you have visited Colombia,

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but Colombia is just north
of the border with Brazil.

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It's a beautiful country

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with extraordinary people,
like me and others -- (Laughter) --

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and it's populated
with incredible fauna, flora.

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It's got water; it's got everything
to be the perfect place.

NOTE Paragraph

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But we have a few problems.

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You may have heard of some of them.

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We have the oldest
standing guerrilla in the world.

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It's been around for over 50 years,

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which means that in my lifetime,

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I have never lived one day 
of peace in my country.

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This guerrilla -- and the main group
is the FARC guerrillas,

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Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia --

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they have financed their war
by kidnapping, by extortion,

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by getting into the drug trade,
by illegal mining.

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There has been terrorism.
There have been random bombs.

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So it's not good.
It's not really good.

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And if you look at the human cost
of this war over 50 years,

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we have had more than
5.7 million displaced population.

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It's one of the biggest displaced
populations in the world,

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and this conflict has cost
over 220,000 lives.

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So it's a little bit like
the Bolívar wars again.

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It's a lot of people who
have died unnecessarily.

NOTE Paragraph

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We are now in the middle of peace talks,

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and we've been trying to help
resolve this problem peacefully,

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and as part of that,

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we decided to try something
completely lateral and different:

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Christmas lights.

NOTE Paragraph

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So Christmas lights, and you're saying,

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what the hell is this guy
going to talk about?

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I am going to talk about gigantic trees

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that we put in nine strategic 
pathways in the jungle

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covered with Christmas lights.

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These trees helped us 
demobilize 331 guerrillas,

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roughly five percent
of the guerrilla force at the time.

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These trees were lit up at night,

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and they had a sign beside them

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that said, "If Christmas can come
to the jungle, you can come home.

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Demobilize.

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At Christmas, everything is possible."

NOTE Paragraph

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So how do we know these trees worked?

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Well, we got 331, which is okay,

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but we also know that
not a lot of guerrillas saw them,

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but we know that a lot of
guerrillas heard about them,

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and we know this

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because we are constantly talking
to demobilized guerrillas.

NOTE Paragraph

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So let me take you back
four years before the trees.

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Four years before the trees,
we were approached by the government

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to help them come up with
a communications strategy

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to get as many guerrillas
as we could out of the jungle.

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The government had a military strategy,

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it had a legal strategy,

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it had a political strategy, but it said,

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"We don't really have
a communications strategy,

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and it probably would be
a good thing to have,"

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so we decided to
immediately jump into this,

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because it is an opportunity
to affect the outcome of the conflict

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with the things that we do,
with the tools that we have.

NOTE Paragraph

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But we didn't know very much about it.

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We didn't understand in Colombia, 
if you live in the cities,

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you're very far away from where 
the war is actually happening,

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so you don't really understand it,

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and we asked the government 
to give us access

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to as many demobilized
guerrillas as possible.

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And we talked to about 60 of them

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before we felt we fully
understood the problem.

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We talked about -- they told us why 
they had joined the guerrillas,

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why the left the guerrillas,
what their dreams were,

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what their frustrations were,

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and from those conversations
came the underlying insight

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that has guided this whole campaign,

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which is that guerrillas are as much
prisoners of their organizations

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as the people they hold hostage.

NOTE Paragraph

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And at the beginning, we were
so touched by these stories,

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we were so amazed by these stories,

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that we thought that maybe 
the best way to talk to the guerrillas

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was to have them talk to themselves,

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so we recorded about a hundred
different stories during the first year,

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and we put them on
the radio and television

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so that the guerrillas in the jungle
could hear stories, their stories,

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or stories similar to theirs,

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and when they heard them,
they decided to go out.

NOTE Paragraph

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I want to tell you one of these stories.

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This person you see here 
is Giovanni Andres.

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Giovanni Andres is 25
when we took that picture.

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He had been seven years in the guerrilla,
and he had demobilized very recently.

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His story is the following:

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He was recruited when he was 17,

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and sometime later,
in his squadron, if you will,

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this beautiful girl was recruited,
and they fell in love.

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Their conversations were about
what their family was going to be like,

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what their kids' names would be,

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how their life would be
when they left the guerrilla.

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But it turns out

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that love is very strictly forbidden
in the lower ranks of the guerrilla,

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so their romance was discovered
and they were separated.

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He was sent very far away,
and she was left behind.

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She was very familiar with the territory,

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so one night, when she was on guard,

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she just left,

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and she went to the army, she demobilized,

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and she was one of the persons
that we had the fortune to talk to,

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and we were really touched by this story,

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so we made a radio spot,

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and it turns out, by chance,

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that far away, many, 
many kilometers north,

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he heard her on the radio,

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and when he heard her on the radio,
he said, "What am I doing here?

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She had the balls to get out.
I need to do the same thing."

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And he did.

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He walked for two days and two nights,

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and he risked his life and he got out,

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and the only thing
he wanted was to see her.

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The only thing that was
in his mind was to see her.

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The story was, they did meet.

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I know you're wondering if they did meet.

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They did meet.

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She had been recruited when she was 15,
and she left when she was 17,

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so there were a lot
of other complications,

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but they did eventually meet.

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I don't know if they're together now,
but I can find out. (Laughter)

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But what I can tell you is that
our radio strategy was working.

NOTE Paragraph

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The problem is that it was working
in the lower ranks of the guerrilla.

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It was not working with the commanders,

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the people that are
more difficult to replace,

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because you can easily recruit
but you can't get the older commanders.

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So we thought, well,
we'll use the same strategy.

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We'll have commanders
talking to commanders.

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And we even went as far
as asking ex-commanders of the guerrilla

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to fly on helicopters with microphones

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telling the people that
used to fight with them,

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"There is a better life out there,"

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"I'm doing good,"
"This is not worth it," etc.

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But, as you can all imagine,
it was very easy to counteract,

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because what was
the guerrilla going to say?

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"Yeah, right, if he doesn't do that,
he's going to get killed."

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So it was easy, so we were
suddenly left with nothing,

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because the guerrilla
were spreading the word

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that all of those things are done

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because if they don't do it, 
they're in danger.

NOTE Paragraph

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And somebody, some
brilliant person in our team,

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came back and said,
"You know what I noticed?

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I noticed that around Christmastime,

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there have been peaks of demobilization

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since this war has started."

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And that was incredible,

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because that led us to think 
that we needed to talk to the human being

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and not to the soldier.

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We needed to step away from talking

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from government to army,
from army to army,

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and we needed to talk
about the universal values,

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and we needed to talk about humanity.

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And that was when
the Christmas tree happened.

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This picture that I have here,

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you see this is the planning
of the Christmas trees,

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and that man you see there
with the three stars,

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he's Captain Juan Manuel Valdez.

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Captain Valdez was the first 
high-ranking official

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to give us the helicopters 
and the support we needed

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to put these Christmas trees up,

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and he said in that meeting
something that I will never forget.

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He said, "I want to do this
because being generous makes me stronger,

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makes my men feel stronger."

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And I get very emotional
when I remember him

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because he was killed later in combat
and we really miss him,

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but I wanted you all to see him,
because he was really, really important.

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He gave us all the support
to put up the first Christmas trees.

NOTE Paragraph

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What happened later is that
the guerrillas who came out

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during the Christmas tree 
operation and all of that

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said, "That's really good,
Christmas trees are really cool,

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but you know what?
We really don't walk anymore.

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We use rivers."

NOTE Paragraph

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So rivers are the highways of the jungle,

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and this is something we learned,

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and most of the recruiting was being done
in and around the river villages.

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So we went to these river villages,

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and we asked the people,

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and probably some of them were
direct acquaintances of the guerrillas.

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We asked them, "Can you send
guerrillas a message?"

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We collected over 6,000 messages.

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Some of them were notes saying, get out.

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Some of them were toys.
Some of them were candy.

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Even people took off their jewelry,
their little crosses and religious things,

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and put them in these floating balls
that we sent down the rivers

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so that they could be picked up at night.

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And we sent thousands
of these down the rivers,

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and then picked them up
later if they weren't.

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But lots of them were picked up.

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This generated, on average,
a demobilization every six hours,

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so this was incredible and it was about:
Come home at Christmas.

NOTE Paragraph

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Then came the peace process,

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and when the peace process started,

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the whole mindset
of the guerrilla changed.

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And it changed because

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it makes you think, "Well,
if there's a peace process,

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this is probably going to be over.

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At some point I'm going to get out."

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And their fears completely changed,

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and their fears were not about,
"Am I going to get killed?"

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Their fears were, "Am I
going to be rejected?

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When I get out of this,
am I going to be rejected?"

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So the past Christmas, 
what we did was we asked --

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we found 27 mothers of guerrillas,

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and we asked them to give us 
pictures of their children,

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when they only could recognize themselves,
so as not to put their lives in danger,

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and we asked them to give
the most motherly message you can get,

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which is, "Before you were a guerrilla,
you were my child,

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so come home, I'm waiting for you."

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You can see the pictures here.
I'll show you a couple.

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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And these pictures were placed
in many different places,

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and a lot of them came back,

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and it was really, really beautiful.

NOTE Paragraph

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And then we decided to work with society.

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So we did mothers around Christmastime.

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Now let's talk about
the rest of the people.

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And you may be aware of this or not,
but there was a World Cup this year,

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and Colombia played really well,
and it was a unifying moment for Colombia.

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And what we did was tell the guerrillas,

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"Come, get out of the jungle.
We're saving a place for you."

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So this was television, this was 
all different types of media saying,

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"We are saving a place for you."

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The soldier here in the commercial says,

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"I'm saving a place for you
right here in this helicopter

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so that you can get out of this jungle
and go enjoy the World Cup."

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Ex-football players, radio announcers,

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everybody was saving
a place for the guerrilla.

NOTE Paragraph

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So since we started this work
a little over eight years ago,

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17,000 guerrillas have demobilized.

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I do not -- (Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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I don't want to say in any way
that it only has to do with what we do,

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but what I do know is that our work
and the work that we do

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may have helped a lot of them
start thinking about demobilization,

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and it may have helped a lot of them
take the final decision.

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If that is true, advertising is still
one of the most powerful tools of change

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that we have available.

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And I speak not only my behalf,

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but on behalf of all
the colleagues I see here

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who work in advertising,

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and of all the team that has
worked with me to do this,

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that if you want to change the world,

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or if you want to achieve 
peace, please call us.

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We'd love to help.

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)