Emanuelle Dutra

Emanuelle Dutra, also known as Manu, is an Athlete Leader from Brazil and a member of the Special Olympics Brazil National Athlete Leadership Council advocating for the rights of People with Disabilities. She started in Special Olympics (SO) in 2013 competing in Football and participating in various competitions at local, national, and international levels. Her two first experiences representing her country were at SO World Games in Los Angeles in 2015, winning the bronze medal; and at the SO Unified Cup in Chicago in 2018, earning the silver medal and the recognition of the most unified team among all the female teams. Both opportunities were part of the Unified Sports program where athletes with and without Intellectual and Developmental Disability compete together on the same team.

As leader of Special Olympics Movement, she participated as a panelist at the 12 th Session of the United Nations Conference of States Parties to the CRPD in New York in 2019. The same year she was elected to advocate as Sargent Shriver Global Messengers to represent 300 thousands of athletes from 20 countries in the Latin America region. She was the first ever Brazilian Athlete in this role, where Manu contributed with speeches and presentations, facilitating trainings, motivating, and empowering everyone involved in Special Olympics everywhere.

In 2022, Manu was part of the committee to create the Unified Cup Trophy, where she also represented SO giving a speech at the Opening Ceremony. In June 2023, she gave a speech at the Olympia Stadion to 50,000 audience in the stadium and more 500,000 through the ESPN live broadcast worldwide at the SO World Games in Berlin. By the end of last year, her work in advocating for the rights of People with Disabilities was recognized and rewarded by the Rio de Janeiro municipality government with the Medal of Merit Pedro Ernesto.

Manu believes that someday we will not need to talk about inclusion anymore because we will be living it in practice.