Who knows the word garbage-can?

Today on my way to work I was walking behind two girls, maybe they were between 14 and 15 years old. One of them opened a can of Red Bull, snapped the opener off the bottle and threw it on the street. The small aluminum peace made a ding when it hit the asphalt.

This is in Sweden, in the city center, and the kids that, clearly, do not give a damn about the environment are cute, healthy little middleclass teens that shop sheep modern cloths made in Bangladesh from the big multinational companies that have their stores shattered across town.

Sweden is ranked to be one of the top counties on education and on environmental awareness today, but still kids here could very well be the fruit-selling canoe kids that I met on a boat in the Amazon a couple of years ago. When they had no more to sell they hang around upper deck for a while. My friend bought them soda and when they were finished they threw their empty cans in to the Amazon River like it was the most natural thing to do.

It felt like a mystery, that these kids, living in the world’s largest and most important ecosystem, could be so uninformed…but looking at the Swedish kids it might not be such a mystery after all. If not even these kids, with educated parents, money in their pockets and education of world class can grasp the importance of using a garbage can; we can come to the conclusion that Education for Sustainable Development faces huge challenges! 

How to go about finding a supervisor…

So, how do I plan a thing like this? There are many things that need to be set before the trip, more than I can count actually. I have created a special place in my stomach that constantly works to restrain the nervousness I have stored there.  

I’m trying not to be naïve so I started in Marsh (it can never be to early…) to get someone in Brazil to help me. I might be exaggerating a little bit but it felt like it took me a week to formulate the letter (hopefully, when all this is over, I’ll be feeling more secure writing letters in Portuguese…). You never know with the Portuguese language, if you should be very formal, never write “voce” but always “senhor” or “senhora”, or if it’s better to loosen up a bit – address the person with “voce” and use “senhor” only some times. I guess it depend on who you are writing to, but how can you know when you are writing to someone you don’t know in person?

I was thinking: in my position, standing in front of a task like this, really wanting it to work out and be as perfect as possible, you really need a experienced and helpful supervisor in field, one that rely knows your subject, that can give you advise and guidance… so I sent a dozen e-mails to a range of institutions working with education for sustainable development, to universities and directly to professors that I had found through articles on subjects close to mine etc. I got some few answers with people saying they could not help me but most of them did not answer at all.

When I was starting to give up I came across this government website, the secretariat of environmental development in Salvador and I took a chance and sent an e-mail to their info-address. A very polite woman answered and told me she was happy I had thought of turning to the secretariat for help and that she recommended I contacted the head of the secretariat who also was a professor and head of institute at one of the in-land public universities in Bahia.

This little game of patience and stubbornness gave me the best contact I could ever imagine! I came in contact with the most helpful man I have met in my professional and academic life. I have always known that Brazil is a very friendly country, and ever since I set my foot in Bahia for the first time, people have been happy to see me and happy to help me, show me around and be my friend, I just did not imagine that this would extend to the professional realm in this way.

As it now is, I have not only a very nice, experienced and helpful supervisor in field but also an Internship at the Directory of Environmental Education at the government of Bahia… Indeed, it seems too good true, but evidently its not…

In the middle of the beginning

This is the first post on this blog which will accompany me on my journey to Brazil and on the quest of realizing my master thesis project in Salvador, Bahia, during the first semester of 2012.

Although the completed thesis will be presented at Stockholm University sometime in the beginning of June 2012, the project has already begun! I have been working on my research proposal since March this year and in the end of May, after some reconsiderations and clarifications, it was awarded with a scholarship provided by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

Basically, what I am going to do is a comparison between public and private schools and their interaction and collaboration with local Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) when it comes to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Through interviews with secondary school teachers and students, NGO workers and participants of non formal local ESD projects I will try to answer some questions regarding the impact of collaboration between different educational settings and methods on the quality delivered. The comparison will not only be made between public and private schools but also between urban areas with different socio economic status. Hopefully this design can give some answers to how the relationship in terms of collaboration, joint projects, dialogue and mutual respect between local NGOs and public and private schools in the field of ESD in Salvador looks like and why? In addition to this, I also like to find answers to what benefits or disadvantages this relationship creates according to the deliverers and receivers?

It is a long way to go until I see the end of this adventure and I am well aware of the many challenges that lies ahead. This blog will be my project diary (although I will not update every day) where I will reason with myself and with my readers when I run in to obstacles, celebrate when I overcome fears and report from amazing places and people I will meet on the way!

I hope you will enjoy reading, comment and share!