Young EcoLeaders of the Brazilian Rainforest

Dear donors and friends of the EcoLeaders, 

We hope you are doing well and we have lots to tell you! 

When we look back over the past year, all we can say is: Who would have thought it? When covid hit us fourteen months ago, we had no idea how much it would teach us.

We´d been running environmental education programs for twenty years. Cohorts of schoolchildren, almost of all of whom were first generation students, had their first introduction to rainforest science at Iracambi. And some, like Rafael (to whom we introduced you a few weeks ago,) went on to study science at university – an opportunity largely unavailable to their parents.

We were proud of our education program. Proud of the fact that we were offering environmental education before it was introduced into the school curriculum. Proud of the hundreds of young adults whose faces lit up when they saw us - "Oh yes, we remember Iracambi!"  It was all going so well. 

And then – covid. And that was the end of our program.

We experimented with sending science lessons to the schools to distribute along with other school materials. But none of that was really successful. We considered online courses for the children. But most of them didn´t have internet access and none of them had access to a computer.

Six months into the pandemic, we switched, reluctantly, to online courses for youth. And we figured out the most useful thing we could do would be to find those potential activists and leaders that we knew were out there somewhere. We wanted to create a course that encouraged students to stop and think. To define environmental problems, to come up with solutions, and to put them to work in their communities.

Six months later we are on our third course, we´ve graduated sixty Environmental Leaders, and our program is buzzing. The students have learned a lot. And so have we! We´ve replaced our online classes with pre-recorded material - as interesting and varied as we can find. And this means we can focus on our students when we meet.  

Here´s a taste of the first module in the course we are running right now. We start with a short video on how to access the platform and what to expect in the course. There follows an overview of Iracambi as an example of a civil society organization: a little of the backstory, a description of our programs, and why we do what we do. There´s an e-book containing an overview of the course content, including lots of      complementary material to illustrate each topic. Interspersed among the material are four short videos on water, soils, forests and nature. We then present a menu of the sort of topics that environmental leaders may need to tackle - and we´re trying to move beyond changing the lightbulbs and recycling plastics, important as these are. Potential topics include natural resource management, sustainable communities and businesses, land rights, how we spend our money, what we eat, and more. The module concludes with a survey to gauge the students´ level of knowledge in relation to the subjects to be covered in the curriculum.

After studying the material in the first module comes the first “live” class, and it´s time for the students to introduce themselves and to get to work. Since the presentations are pre-recorded, our time together is spent working in groups, and reporting back. And Yasmin is always available to clarify any doubts, and facilitate discussion, reflections and actions. These live sessions are recorded and uploaded later. During the week the students interact on whatsapp - and they can´t access the next module without completing the previous one! .

So, dear donors, I hope we´ve managed to convey the excitement of what is happening in our course. And we´re brimming with ideas for our next moves. But we´ll ask you to wait for our next letter before we share them!

So, covid is teaching us a lot. And we want to send our best love and thanks to you, dear friends and donors, for your support in these challenging times.

Please look after yourselves, and we´ll talk soon! 

rainforest abraços from Yasmin and the Iracambi team