Resolving Initial Challenges
Many months of preparation for our Project for Peace finally culminated in our individual arrivals in what Brazilians refer to as the “Marvelous City.” We chose Rio de Janeiro as a meeting point, as it was much cheaper to fly to than Brasilia and, aesthetically speaking, not the worst of places to start a journey. We made brief visits to Copacabana, Ipanema, the statue of Christ the Redeemer, and a classic soccer derby between Flamengo and Vasco. We then traveled eighteen hours by bus to the nation´s futuristic capital, Brasilia, designed in the 1950s as a “modern utopia.”
We were all anxious to spend the next two months working with the Criamar orphanage, which is located in Ceilândia, a city on the outskirts of Brasilia. Initially, the four of us were supposed to live with host families associated with the American School of Brasilia (EAB). However, as July is a winter holiday in Brazil, many of the families were still abroad and our housing guarantee seemed to crumble at the last minute. Even the alternative options of renting a cheap apartment in the area or staying with Emily Dobson, a teacher at EAB and an important volunteer at Criamar did not seem possible. We spent our first night in Brasilia with the family of Megha Banerjee, a friend Claire had known from the Minsk International School she attended. Megha had been the one to put us in contact with Criamar originally. We enjoyed the warmth and hospitality of the Banerjee family before we resolved our housing dilemma. After a good bit of stress it was suddenly arranged that all four of us would stay at the home of Dirson Teixeira Faria and Maria Angelica Silva Faria, the directors of Criamar. This was a very generous and unexpected gesture, and we soon found ourselves immersed in Brazilian family life.
In our proposed project, we planned to create an interactive learning center and computer lab, work with UNICEF to execute a training program for the Criamar staff and volunteers, and improve the existing recreation program. In each area, we found challenges and new opportunities to create change.
We were met with a sudden complication when preparing for the UNICEF training at the orphanage. Throughout the summer, we had been in contact with Angela Maricondi, a UNICEF representative from Sao Paulo who was prepared to come to Criamar to give presentations on child development and fortifying family structure. Criamar is currently home to forty children with ages ranging from three months to eighteen years. There are five “social moms” and one “social dad” who are collectively responsible for the safety and wellbeing of between forty and sixty children. Such a responsibility includes breaking up and preventing fist fights between teenagers, changing dirty diapers, and everything in between. The UNICEF program was designed to provide training to these caregivers.
Shortly before arriving in Brasilia, we found out that Ms. Maricondi was not able to do the training pro bono because she was now working as a freelance consultant doing family trainings. We also discovered that the staff of Criamar might not be ready for the training. The social moms were not yet properly informed and measures had not been taken to look after the children while they would be in training. The insufficient preparation was partly due to a lack of clear communication. Thus, two days before Ms. Maricondi was scheduled to start her instruction at the orphanage, we had to temporarily cancel her social training. Immediately upon our arrival we saw that we had avoided a fiasco, as most Criamar staff were still unaware of any scheduled UNICEF program.
After experiencing the atmosphere at Criamar in person, a flood of ideas of how we could better achieve our goals was passed between the four of us. We were keen on getting input from the directors and the staff in order to better understand the situation and needs of the orphanage. We had been warned that occasional volunteers from abroad tended to mistakenly bypass the orphanage staff in executing their ideas. Dirson and Angelica gave us some suggestions with regard to our proposal, and we made changes while keeping in mind the immediate needs of Criamar and the feasibility of each option. Finally, we were able to discuss our ideas and proposal with the people who know the needs of the orphanage children best: the social moms and dad. They seemed genuinely excited about our ideas and provided a few very interesting suggestions of their own. For example, they suggested that it would be very beneficial to construct a sandbox for the younger children to play in instead of gnarled concrete.
After getting a feel for Criamar and restructuring our ideas, we arranged for Ms. Maricondi, who was in Brasilia for other work, to still visit Criamar to discuss a possible social training in more detail with the directors. It was good to finally have all involved people in the same room and on the same page. Unfortunately, we found out that Ms. Maricondi´s training would apply mostly to caring for children under the age of six, whereas the social moms already succeeded at doing that and a social worker had already volunteered to provide similar training for free. The urgency was to find a better way to deal with the teenagers, who lacked a sense of responsibility and discipline. Nevertheless, Ms. Maricondi still promised us a set of UNICEF “Familia Brasileira Fortalecida” Kits with information on childcare and child development, that she had reserved for us at the Ministry of Health. In the absence of an age-appropriate training we were left with the task of coming up with new ideas to create a sense of responsibility, discipline, and order among the adolescents of Criamar.
August 8th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
It is incredible and inspiring to read about the work you are doing in Brazil. As a staff member at Lewis & Clark (I work in Institutional Advancement), it is wonderful to read the details about the amazing things our students do. Good luck to you all as you adjust and go forth with your plans! This blog is great and I look forward to reading more.