Young EcoLeaders of the Brazilian Rainforest

Good morning, dear donors, and we hope you are doing well?

You may remember that, thanks to wonderful supporters like you, we have been able to branch out and create a new course focusing on educating through the arts. And we can't remember when we had so much fun!

In fact it's hard to imagine being able to generate so much energy online - more particularly in the face of all sorts of minor setbacks such as balky internet connections, uncooperative cameras, and all the small interruptions that turn up in the more than forty households across the country that join our virtual classroom space every week. 

In our last letter we were telling you about the first module of the course: earth. This time we want to showcase our second module: water. If we think of earth as representing something solid - our bodies, the roots of plants, the ground beneath our feet - water represents movement, flexibility, free flowing emotions. 

We open our classes by checking in with everyone and sharing any feedback. And then it's time to get up, warm up and start moving. When we are thinking of water, we imagine all the different ways in which water moves - gentle rain, heavy rain, drifting snow, water dripping off the leaves of trees, a slow moving stream, a rushing waterfall, the waves of the sea, a violent tsunami.....

And once we are all focused, it's time to play. In pairs, one person moves and the other mirrors those movements, after  which  roles are reversed.  A second game reminds us of the childhood game of passing the parcel. Students mime passing a small object (a pencil, a handkerchief, a notebook,) from one to the next, and when the moderator claps her hands, the person holding the object comes up with one letter of the alphabet. The object is passed to the next person whose task is to come up with six words beginning with the letter of the alphabet that has just been given. All those words should be connected with water, and the idea is to find the words in fifteen seconds. 

Story time, and we start telling a story about water, with each student adding one sentence to the story. As you can imagine, it's  always fun to see where the story goes. And then, we share another folk legend - this one telling the story of Iemanja, queen of the sea and the spirit of moonlight. 

As part of their homework, students are asked to create a picture connected with the theme of water. With no hangups or judgement, and no worrying about the fact that they can´t draw, simply finding the courage to put something on paper as we all did when we were children. 

And the results are extraordinary! Somehow, through the magic of the internet, we are able to draw together busy people from all corners of the country, and jointly rediscover our creativity,  our energy, and our love for teaching - especially about nature. And we're getting overwhelmingly positive comments from the students. 

So than you, dear donors, for making this possible! And for us this is an especially exciting moment in our journey because, in a sense, it closes the circle. We bring local schoolchildren out of the classroom into the forest to discover it for themselves. We offer internships and bring students and volunteers together from across the world to work on issues of conservation and sustainability. We provide a safe space for researchers to do their field studies. We run online courses for environmental leaders. And now we have the course for educators, who in turn will be able to educate more chilldren!

Who  knows where this will lead us next? We'll keep you informed and would love to hear your feedback and suggestions! 

with much love and appreciation from Yasmin, Raynan, and the Iracambi Educators. 

Good morning dear donors and we hope you are doing well?

And today we want to give you a taste of our new course: Environmental Education through the Arts. The first course is under way and we wanted you to be the first to hear about it!

You may remember that we’ve already run six courses for environmental leaders, and based on the feedback we received, we decided to set up a course for educators, presenting environmental education through the lens of the arts. The course structure is based on the four elements: earth, water, fire and air, and today we’re giving you a sneak peek at the first module – earth. And the first activities are based on storytelling and play acting.

From the beginning of human existence, storytelling has been a way of framing the world around us. Storytelling is above all an interactive experience, which uses language, gesture, narrative and imagination. Telling and listening to stories in the virtual space requires a new set of skills, which all of us are learning to acquire, and which, in the hands of a skilled facilitator, can transcend the barriers of space, creating a shared experience that generates its own energy. 

In our first meeting we did a series of exercises involving storytelling, gestures, listening and acting. We listened to the creation story of the Guarani people. We acted out the story of the chameleon walking through the forest and we mimicked the different life forms that he saw. As different stories were shared and acted, we compiled a list of words that came to mind, and this list formed the basis of words to be used in poems that students were asked to write during the course of the week. Other activities to be undertaken at home included making natural paints and dyes from soil and plants, and creating a collage out of natural ingredients.  

Throughout the week, students were active on the whatsapp group, and here are a few comments that we'd like to share with you. Fernanda: Vou divulgar muito este curso top. I’m gonna to tell everyone about this terrific course. 

Savio: I love the allegorical stories. 

Cris: The first class was wonderful. Congrats to everyone involved!  

We are so excited over the super positive feedback from our students, and we'll tell you more in our next letter. 

So many thanks to each of you for supporting us as we expand our horizons with new forms of delivering our education program. In the words of respected Brazilian theologian and educator Rubem Alves, "The miracle of education happens when we see a world we had never seen before."

Look after yourselves, and thank you, thank you!

with rainforest love from Yasmin, Raynan and the Iracambi team