Young EcoLeaders of the Brazilian Rainforest

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

Links:

• EcoLeaders page on our site

Hey there, lovely donors!

I bet you’re as ready to say goodbye to 2020 as we are down here in the rainforest?

It was a weird year for our education program. But it taught us a lot. We learned that millions of kids in the developing world who miss school for an extended period of time may never go back. So when our local schools reopen at some point in 2021 we need to redouble our efforts to help the children to catch up.  

On the positive side we were able to run a highly successful online course for environmental leaders, which we plan to continue in 2021, in addition to in-person schooling when that resumes. 

And before we go any further, we want to share another item of good news. Thanks to you all, and despite the challenges of 2020, we have almost made our 2021 budget, and if you’re able to help us nail it, we’ll be forever grateful!

And here is a tip from the taxman.

If you are a US tax payer, this year the IRS is allowing you to make non itemized tax deductible donations of up to $300 to non-profits before midnight on 12/31! You can, of course, also make larger, itemized donations.

UK tax payers can also qualify for tax relief – don’t forget to check the GiftAid box on the donation page!

Europeans, Australians, Canadians, Asians, Africans and South Americans, we’re sorry to say, don’t appear to get any tax relief. Just a warm feeling from knowing you’ve done your part to educate the next generation who are going to inherit this beautiful planet.

And as we look back  at 2020. the first thing to say is that we are totally humbled by your generosity. Although we never completely despaired, there were times in the year when we seriously wondered how we were going to make it through.

Like you, we learned to live with uncertainty. We learned to pivot and adapt. We learned to rely on one another. And the most important thing we discovered?

That we’re all in this together, and that together we’ll make it through. We’re going to help those kids catch up on their schooling, because we're in the business of raising a new generation of environmental leaders, right? 

Goodbye, 2020. Goodbye, dear donors. Stay safe, and we’ll see you in 2021. May it bring us all new hope, new life, and renewed courage.

With much love from the whole Iracambi community.

Links:

• Iracambi's website
• Save the Children video on children who miss schooling
• A lost generation of kids?