Education Brazil Project #17660

Young EcoLeaders of the Brazilian Rainforest

by Iracambi

Project Report | Feb 9, 2021
Miracles in the rainforest

By Yasmin (translated by Binka) | Education Coordinator

Together for a miracle

Dear donors,

Greetings from a very rainy rainforest and we hope that you’re all looking after yourselves? I think we all richly deserve a virtual cappuccino or glass of wine from time to time, right? Not to mention something for which to be grateful.

And, talking about gratitude, read on, dear donors!

From our end we have two exciting news items, for which we are profoundly grateful. Let’s start with the miracle.

It showed upon one of those days when we were grappling with muddy roads, balky vehicles, fallen trees, sporadic power outages and internet on the blink. Yes, there are days like that. Even in this beautiful part of the world, there are days when we wonder, just for a minute, whether rainforests are overrated!

And then – the miracle. A substantial donation to the project. Thank you, thank you, wonderful donor – you know who you are. And believe me, you totally transformed our week!

The second news item for which we are grateful is that we are on track to start our second environmental leadership course before the end of the month. Our goal is to inspire and educate students to learn about the effects of climate change and mobilize their communities to take action. We have a terrific team lined up to teach the course, and we’ll send you a preliminary report in our next letter.

Oh, and, there is one more thing. Our program has been selected as one of 300 global finalists in sustainability and innovation for an award in connection with best practices in fulfilling the criteria of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We’ll let you know more about this when we know ourselves.

So even on a relentlessly rainy day we have lots for which to be grateful. And what’s top of the list? The love and support we receive from you, our donors and partners across the world. Thank you all, you are the best!

Much love and we’ll talk soon,

Yasmin and the Iracambi team

Learning together before COVID19

Learning to love nature

Links:

Permalink

Jan 26, 2021
Environmental Leaders 2021!

By Yasmin (translated by Binka) | Online education course Coordinator

Environmental leaders online

Dear donors,

How are you doing, now that 2021 is safely launched? We hope you are looking after yourselves, and looking forward to a better year - even if things continue to be tough right now.

It's exhausting, isn't it? But it really does look like better times are coming if we can just hang in there.

And one of the things that helps us hang in there is making plans for a better tomorrow. So we've been busy structuring our next online course for Environmental Leaders. One of the many things that covid19 taught us was to be creative about adapting our programs, so after the success of our first online course, we've come up with the blueprint for the next one, which we plan to hold in February.

After listening to the feedback from our first cohort, we're making a few adaptations to our course delivery. We're going to experiment with uploading two pre-recorded classes every week, which students can watch in their own time. We'll then have one "live" class with plenty of time for discussion in breakout groups. We'll also have other activities and resources available in the google classroom, along with assignments to be turned in to the course coordinator at the end of every week.

Here's the course content we'll be covering. We'll start with an introduction to non-profit Iracambi: who we are, what we do and why? We'll then move into the concept of environmental leadership, what it is and how we can do it. Next come the modules on climate change, covid 19 and the connections between the two. This raises the whole question of environmental degradation and then the good news: environmental restoration. The last modules deal with how to get involved in activism at local, regional and international levels. Then we'll look into a real-life case study: Mining and the Environment and see what lessons we can learn from it.

We're so excited about the next course, and we are deeply grateful to you, our wonderful donors, who make it all possible! We’ll keep you posted as things progress, and if any of you has any tips or suggestions on running online courses, we’d love to hear from you! (You can find us on the Iracambi Facebook page or contact us at cursos@iracambi.com.)

In the meantime, please look after yourselves. We’ll talk soon!

With much rainforest love,

Yasmin and the Iracambi Educators

Iracambi classroom pre covid

Iracambi classroom in the time of covid

We'll see you soon, EcoLeaders!

Links:

NY Times article on education opportunities being lost in Brazil

Permalink

Jan 12, 2021
Welcome 2021 and may it be good to us all!

By Yasmin (translation by Binka) | Online Education Coordinator

Environmental Leader Sheila getting to work

Dear donors,

Well, we all made it through 2020 and here are our best wishes to all of you for 2021 - may it bring us hope, health and happiness! And before we go any further, we want to send you all a great big thank you for your support over the year, and for your magnificent response to our cri de coeur at year end! Thanks to each one of you we are able to cover our estimated budget for 2021, and we’d never have made it without you!

And now for our education plans for 2021. Last year was difficult for all of us, and I can’t tell you how much we missed having the schoolkids on site, and watching their excitement as they made new discoveries and learned to feel more at home in the forest environment.

But, like everyone, we pivoted, and, as you may remember, we set up an online course for environmental leaders, which turned out to be a great success. One of the students, Sheila, was so excited by what she had learned on the course that she took a four-hour bus journey to Iracambi to help out with the tree planting! She also came up with some terrific ideas for future courses, and we’re finalizing our content for the next one - which we plan to run next month. (January is traditionally holiday time in Brazil, and most people aren’t mentally prepared to study before February!)

Education is so important to us that it’s a part of everything that we do at Iracambi: from hosting young people like Sheila who want to play their part in restoring the rainforest, to the conversations we have with farm families on planting days, to discussions at community meetings and councils, and of course to our program for volunteers and researchers which we’re really hoping to resume over the next few months.

So we can’t wait to see what 2021 has in store for us all, and our dearest wish is to be able to get the schoolkids back here before too long. We're determined not to let them miss out because of covid19!

Please take care of yourselves, better times are a-coming!

With much rainforest love from Yasmin and the Iracambi team

Come back EcoLeaders, we miss you!

See you back here soon, EcoLeaders!

Links:

EcoLeaders page on our site

Permalink

‹ 1 ... 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 ... 36 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.