Young EcoLeaders of the Brazilian Rainforest

Wonderful donors, how are you doing?

You may remember that in our last letters, we introduced you to the modules of our online course on education through art. As a matter of fact, last week we reached our last (but no least) class in this series, where we discussed Air.

Since the course structure is based on the four elements (Earth ,Water, Fire and Air), the last module followed the model of the previous ones.

With incredible performing skills, Raynan conducted the class, making our students think about Air - something that is a bit unusual for us to do. We were introduced to the idea that many people consider Air as divine breath that enables the existence of life in Planet Earth.

Air can also symbolize lightness, mobility and purification. And since we are in the forest, we can see it represented by the leaves of plants. It is also said that, in human beings, it represents the oxygenation and energizing of the bodies, in addition to our mental field and the ability to communicate.

With the help of Raynan, the students transformed the air between their hands in different objects such as a ball, a potato, a balloon, even a baby. And then they were introduced to the idea of saying the vowels in new and unexpected ways.

Afterwards, all our 40 students were making new sounds, and relaxing their bodies, letting them move with the sound that they were hearing, with their eyes closed. And the results (besides the weird poses) were a lot of stories being created only with the sounds and the students interpreting the stories.

During story time, Raynan presented the legend of the hummingbird, where there were two rival tribes living by a river and despite the war, two of the birds were in love: the boy belonged to the smaller tribe and the girl to the larger tribe.

After being discovered, the warriors separated the two of them by knocking out the boy and taking the girl back to her tribe. Because she was very young and beautiful, the elders decided to transform her into a flower as a punishment. And the boy, once he was rescued by his warriors, started searching desperately for his loved one.

He called the elders and announced that he would go to the other tribe in search of his love. They did not want him to take such a crazy step, and tried in every way to stop him. After seeing how determined he was, and how sad, they called the shamans to transform him into a hummingbird, so he could go from flower to flower, try to find his beloved.

Through this story, we can see that one should never give up on a goal, and, thanks to wonderful supporters like you, we’ve kept going through difficult times. Thank you, thank you. We couldn´t do it without you!

With lots of love from Yasmin, Raynan and their team - The Iracambi Educators