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

Dear donors, partners and wonderful friends, 

We hope that all is good your end, and we want to send you a big thankyou for your amazing support, and tell you what is new down here.

As promised, here´s an update on more exciting initiatives arising from our recently concluded online course for environmental leaders.

The first group was looking at safely managing fire – an important topic at this time of year as the onset of the rains is approaching. In many parts of Brazil this is called the burning season, and here at Iracambi we are always alert for wildfires. In rural areas like ours, local farmers set fire to clear the weeds for the next planting season, and in the cities people set fire to vacant lots to burn trash and keep them clean. But at the end of the dry season it´s easy for fires to get out of control, and we all need to be especially vigilant.

The students were focusing on fires on vacant lots in the cities, which cause pollution and can easily burn out of control. So their idea was to transform these vacant lots - often the destination for trash and worse - into attractive community spaces where people can come together to plant a community garden. Their strategy started with mobilizing the local community, continued with cleanups and creating composting centers and moved to establishing gardens to grow and later market or donate fresh fruit and vegetables. Trash to treasure once again! 

The second group also plan to grow plants - but this time in the context of the impact of mining on soils and waters.  Mining is always a hot topic in this state of Minas Gerais whose very name means General Mines! You may possibly remember hearing about some major disasters that took place a few years back when large earth dams built to contain mining tailings burst and cause huge destruction and loss of life.

The main challenge defined by this group was contamination of soils and water during mining operations, and one of the solutions they propose is phytoremediation – growing certain plants that absorb contamination.

When we started these courses, we honestly had no idea where they would lead us, but there's no doubt that there's great demand for creating opportunities for people to work together to tackle some of the most pressing problems facing their communities!

Thank you, dear donors, for you magnificent support. Together we´re doing our part! 

with love and appreciation, 

Yasmin and the Iracambi team 

Hello dear donors!

And we hope you are doing well, wherever you are in the world. We want to send you an update on our program, which comes with a big vote of thanks for your support! 

As we mentioned in our last letter, we've been working on our fourth online course for environmental leaders, and last week we held the final session, during which each group presents the project they have been working on. We are really happy to see how the groups are increasingly coming up with creative and practical solutions to environmental problems. Not only coming up with ideas, but putting them to work. So in this letter we'd like to showcase the first two projects, and we'll tell you about the others in our next letter, OK? 

Interestingly the first two groups to present were all-female, and they were also tackling the same subject – proper disposal of garbage. Group 1 adopted the idea of working with city authorities to set up Recycling Areas in their respective cities, and including the subject in the school curriculum. Since group members live in different cities, they plan to hold one another accountable and report back to one another on their progress.

They'll all adopt the same methodology and will start by generating publicity through social media, first about the problem, and then about the cleanup days they plan to hold once a month. Now in Brazil it seems that almost every day is a special day in commemoration of a particular profession or a historical day, or something connected with the environment. So one of the days they have chosen is October 23rd which is Zero Trash Day (in case you didn´t know.) They'll be celebrating the day by performing a group cleanup, followed by a discussion emphasizing the five Rs  – Rethink, Refuse, (for example the use of plastic bags) Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Through regular cleanup days they're hoping to generate a new way of thinking about trash, underlining the positive effects of living in a clean and healthy environment, mobilizing community support to beautify the city, and valuing the work of the trash pickers who perform such a valuable public service.

Group 2 named their project Trash that isn't really Trash, and their approach is to publicize the issue through holding movie sessions in schools and public squares. They'll show environmentally themed films, followed by group discussions where they'll question whether trash is really trash or whether it can be reused, recycled, or upcycled. Each movie session will be followed by a group cleanup and an announcement of the next movie showing, to stimulate interest in continuing the program. As well as working with the schools, they plan to hold movie nights in the city squares, encouraging moviegoers to adopt their local square, and inviting the children to adopt a tree and visit it regularly. 

We're delighted at the way our courses are working out, and want to send you a big thank you for your donations that help us keep the program running. In our next letter we'll report back on the other groups, and we've also got some cool ideas for future programs, that we'd love to share with you! 

So, in the meantime, please look after yourselves, and we´ll talk soon, 

with love and appreciation from Yasmin and the Iracambi Educators  

Dear donor friends,

First of all, we hope you are doing well and taking care of yourselves?

And second, we want to send you a big vote of thanks for your support of our program. We are coming towards the end of our fourth online course for environmental leaders, and each one is proving to be more exciting than the last!

Our objective is to work with people across the country who are committed to making a difference in their communities, focusing on what we can do about the climate crisis. Educating, inspiring, encouraging and creating community to bring about sustainable change – individually, collectively and nationally.  One step at a time.  

This week we've been discussing ways of creating a dialogue with our neighbors and fellow citizens, and in particular how we can communicate with people whose views are radically different from our own – no easy task in a world where it seems that societies everywhere are increasingly polarized! Setting an example, listening deeply, using social media to create positive news instead of fake news, raising awareness without preaching, focusing on including people and finding points in common. Once we can communicate, then we can act.   

In our discussion groups we start by collectively defining a particular issue that we feel that we can tackle, figuring out why it is important here and now, and coming together to work out what we can do about it. We examine the end result we hope to achieve and the scope of the project, we work out an approximate timeline, we consider the actors and partners we hope to attract, and, last but not least, we list the resources we are going to need in order to bring our project to life.

Our groups have been working together for several weeks, and ideas are now turning into action plans. So rather than telling you a little bit about each of our five groups, we’d like to profile just one.

This group is focusing on water management, which is an increasingly hot topic everywhere in the world, with water-rich Brazil being no exception. In fact, some parts of the country are facing a severe drought which affects not only domestic consumption but also industry, agriculture and energy, (almost all of Brazil’s electricity is generated through hydropower.)

And the water group is thinking long term. Their plan is to create a network of people who understand the issue and are prepared to take action. They´ll start by offering a series of simple, fun activities in which everyone can participate, giving short informative talks to schools, church groups, and neighborhood associations, encouraging people to work together and come up with their own solutions.  

Leveraging their networks – friends and family, work colleagues, members of their church group or fellow sports fans, little by little they´ll create a community. And then they´ll approach potential partners: local business, schools, local government, emphasizing volunteering and pooling resources. The key to success, they reckon, is helping people become aware of the challenges while encouraging them to come up with their own ideas and solutions.

Makes sense, right?  But it does go against the grain of the sort of hierarchical education that is still sadly so common in Brazil. Stay tuned and in our next letter we´ll let you know how the project takes shape. We can’t wait to see! 

In the meantime, thank you again for your amazing support to our project. We couldn't do what we do without you! 

With love and appreciation from the Iracambi Educators 

PS If you want to take a peek at the recording of our last class, we're including it in the link below. Headsup- it´s in Portuguese!  

Links:

• Introduction to Iracambi course material (in Portuguese)
• Environmental Leaders discussion (in Portuguese)