Young EcoLeaders of the Brazilian Rainforest

Dear wonderful donors, 

While politicians, leaders, and representatives of every nation and every sector of society are gathered in Glasgow for COP 26, we have been once again gathering our own groups of environmental leaders online to come together, define and seek solutions to pressing environmental problems in their own communities, and act on them.  And we´re happy to be able to bring you another report from the field, letting you know how we are putting your donations to work!

As you will know if you have been following our letters, we've been mobilizing people of all ages from across Brazil, to reflect on what it is to be an environmental leader, and to collaborate on acts of leadership large and small, reporting back, encouraging one another, and recruiting other potential leaders.

We've just finished our fifth course, and each time we learn something new. Our main takeaway is that there's a hunger among environmentalists for finding their tribe, rolling up sleeves, and getting to work. And in this past course there were two main themes that attracted the most attention and action.

The first is some variation on creating community gardens - often located on school grounds - and encouraging parents, children and community members to come together and get their hands into the dirt. There are a variety of activities in connection with this, ranging from collecting food waste from restaurants and coffee bars to make compost, to setting up composting centers, growing and sharing fresh vegetables with vulnerable communities, raising awareness of environmental issues, and investigating the potential of creating additional income streams for those who are interested.

In parallel, one of the other groups completed a mapping exercise of local smallholder farms, held meetings with the farm women, persuaded the local authorities to set up a famers´ market and also commit to buying vegetables for school meals from the local farmers´ group. 

Taken together, these activities are helping farm families to find new markets, providing healthy fresh food to schools  - often located in food "deserts" with little or no access to fresh vegetables, encouraging recycling and composting, and mobilizing neighborhood communities to work together and have fun.

One of the students, Italo, was so excited about his composting project that he couldn´t help talking about it. "I absolutely loved the course,"  he said, "and the best thing was to meet so many interesting people, and to give ourselves time and space to stop and reflect about what we could do together. I got so interested that I started looking into agroecology, and it´s opened up a whole new world for me. My group is figuring out how we can maybe set up neighborhood cooperatives, and the course may be over, but we´re not stopping!" 

So thank you so much, dear donors for your support, and, as we are moving towards the end of the school year, we just wanted to give you a headsup that over the next months we´ll be running a series of courses for people who work with young children on how to introduce them to science through the medium of the arts. And we´re hoping and hoping to be able to bring the local schoolchildren back into the forest when the next school year begins in February. So, we have a busy few months ahead. 

And we may not be at COP 26 but we're doing our bit for the environment!

with love and appreciation from Yasmin and the Iracambi team ,  

Good afternoon dear donors!

I hope you are all doing well, that communications are holding up and that you are in good spirits? 

Omigoodness, life in the rainforest is never dull. For a start the rains are upon us and that always upsets our internet. For some reason it takes a little time to settle into the new season, and, on top of everything else, there was that generalized failure of social media on Monday, just as we were about to start our fifth course for environmental leaders. Since we communicate with one another largely through Whatsapp, we did wonder how many students would actually make it onto the platform for our first class. Amazingly, two thirds of them managed it, and since we record all the material, the rest were able to catch up over the next day or so!

But we are nothing if not resilient, and are thrilled to welcome a new group of students from across the country, all of whom are burning to do something about the environmental problems that surround them. If anything, it seems that long periods of social isolation – along with the relative ease of communication (!) – have sharpened their desire to find like-minded souls and take a stand in favor of the environment.

The other exciting event took place just before the onset of the rains, and that was when we were able to host (virtually) four groups of third graders from Colorado, who were interested in learning all about the rainforest – which is always a popular subject. We didn’t, sadly, have any children our end, since our schools are only just reopening and we can’t yet bring any school groups to our forest campus. But we did have some staff members and Brazilian volunteers, ready and willing to field all manner of questions such as how many plant species are there in our forests (20,000), have we ever discovered any new species (yes, we have,) what are the largest animals to be found in our forests, (one is the woolly spider monkey who is about the same size as the third graders,) and then, of course, the conversation turned to prehistoric animals, with particular emphasis on the Giant Sloth!

We are so happy to have, on the one hand, our cohort of Brazilian students of all ages and from different backgrounds, with  their imaginative solutions to environmental challenges, and, on the other, to be in touch with curious young minds from the northern hemisphere. We can´t wait for the new school year to begin in February when we really, really hope to be able to host the local children once again in the living laboratory of the rainforest. We didn´t realize how much we miss them. 

And in the meantime, dear donors, we want to send you a special thank you for supporting us through this difficult time. It hasn´t been easy for any of us, and we can´t tell you how grateful we are that you continue to be there for us, as we reimagine ways of delivering environmental education. Thank you all!

 Please take care. Better times are around the corner. 

With love and appreciation from Yasmin and the Iracambi Educators