Young EcoLeaders of the Brazilian Rainforest

Dear donors and partners,

We hope you are doing well and staying healthy?

You´ll be happy to hear that we have just completed another course for environmental leaders online and once again it went really well!

As in previous courses, we put the material online for students to work on in their own time, keeping our joint sessions for group discussions. We created four groups with participants from eight states, and their brief was to identify environmental challenges at local, regional, national and global scale, and then to jointly develop a model project that could be applied to different areas.

Yesterday at the final session the presentations centered on waste disposal, (a big problem in Brazilian cities and one that has been intensified during lockdown,) proper management of water, and wildfires. Each group came up with creative solutions, from making and distributing illustrated leaflets in easily accessible language, to organizing public meetings and demonstrations, to working with local schools and church groups, to setting up campaigns on local media, to recruiting local businesses to join the cause, and lobbying local and state government – always offering suggestions and acting on them. 

The students were so happy with the results that we are now working on the idea of running a three-day workshop for the graduates of these three courses. In this way we hope to keep the momentum going, and later organize regional meetups and potentially visits to Iracambi.

We´re also planning to set up an educational portal on our site, to make available some of the material that we used during the course, and act as a hub for people to meet and work together. We´ll keep you posted!

Exciting stuff and here are some of the comments made by the students.

Talita, who brought her new baby to class, says, “I´m so happy that I invested my time in this course – along with my baby. I really enjoyed the course material and all the videos. The lessons were great and energized me to continue pursuing my real passion – agroecology.”

Maria says “I just want to thank Iracambi for this opportunity and especially Yasmin for the great good fortune I had in getting to know her. What I learned is priceless.  Big thanks to my group for the friendship, loving kindness and respect for each others´ ideas. I’ll keep each of you in my heart and wish you well!”

Noah left an audio message thanking Iracambi and Yasmin for creating a space where the students could meet in a spirit of respect, collaboration and friendship.

And Yasmin? Yasmin´s comment as she left the final class, “I leave with a heart full of hope and happiness. Thank you all!”

So once again, dear donors, thank you for your support. 

with much love from Yasmin and all the Environmental Leaders Online