For the new year to come...

Im working on a draft of the first 4 chapters of my Thesis. This video stirs in me, both satisfaction of being in Bahia and frustration of having to spend so much time in front of the computer...

Happy New Year!

The Brazilian forest code

It is not over yet, the brazilian forest laws is still to pass or not to pass. It is said to be the most rigorous forest law in the world that is now changing, but how much and towards what end is the question still.

The final vote in the Chamber of Deputies has been postponed until March 2012, closer to the World Summit in Rio in June and more time for spreading the word...

So for those new to the problem:

Brazilian Senate and Chamber of Deputies (looks like a majority still) wants to drive through a revised forest law that would:

• Provide amnesty for areas illegally deforested before July 2008, including riversides and springs, and reduce the obligation to reforest.
• Alter the definition of a hilltop, making many areas more vulnerable.
• Make it possible to obtain amnesty and exemption from reforestation simply through a declaration that the deforestation took place before 2008, with no requirement for objective proofs like satellite monitoring.
• Make it possible, in cases where some form of restoration is still required, to use non-native species for 50% of the area, which could fuel the planting of oil palm or eucalyptus monocultures and negatively impact biodiversity.
• Allow illegal deforestation to be compensated for through restoration in places other than where the deforestation took place, condemning whole regions to become 'monoculture deserts' especially in the Brazilian south and south-east.
• Allow highly polluting activities like shrimp farming in coastal areas that are fundamental to mangrove swamp ecology. 

Although President Dilma promised in here election campaign that she would not allow any new waves of deforestation in the Amazon the process of making changes to the forest law has been accelerating during the last year and the changes passed through the senate just some weeks ago.

Unfortunately, the vote in the Chamber of Deputies was postponed not because of the fact that those in have need to gain ground, on the contrary. Some green amendments were added to the new code but not even the slightest changes in favor of nature was accepted by the powerful interests with their roots in cattle and agriculture that make up a majority of the members of the Chamber.

Without Dilma keeping her promise, using her Veto, and without massive campaigning against the changes in the new Forest Code until March, we will probably soon be seeing new and encreased waves of deforestation in the Amazon...

Two workshops completed and some victories to be celebrated

Finally we got to do the first workshop with the community leaders and organizations present in Calabar. As usual when organizing an event it is the preparations that take you out, and we really worked hard in order to mobilize participants, have the right equipment and methodology. We arrived early, ate lunch, rigged our equipment and organized the placement of chairs… Fifteen minutes to start, we could only wait for the participants to arrive. State officials arrived, technicians from the communication boards came ready to take pictures and slowly the chairs became occupied – although not by the public we had hoped for. The community of Calabar, all the people we had invited, talked to both personally and on the phone did not show up in time. When half an hour had already passed, only three representatives from the community had arrived and we (maybe only me) started to get a bit anxious!

However, when the workshop finally started a man called Paulo that we had invited cited two poems, perfectly setting the mood for the tasks waiting. Our Director, Luiz Ferraro, held an initial speech and then we opened up for presentations. In the end about seven or eight different institutions/organizations where represented (The basket ball teem, the women association, the community library, the food cooperative, a theater organization etc).

Our objective for the day where to plant in the people participating a seed of inspiration towards different ways to bring the community together in educative, cultural and recreational activities and how this can be done in a collective and participatory manner. We brought to them some examples from other communities in Salvador where written material had been use to collect and share experiences as well as a video that was made to tell the history and heritage of the inhabitants in Bairro da Paz (The Peace Neighborhood). We asked them to reflect over the challenges and potentials inherited in the way the neighborhood works and what differences and similarities they felt existed between Calabar and Bairro da Paz. This way a discussion concerning issues such as stigmatization, history and culture as well as ideas on what kind of activities would suit the neighborhood of Calabar, the re-opening of a community newspaper etc. started.

Another one of our goals for the day was to initiate a mapping of local socioeconomic experiences, which is to be continued in the following meetings. We invited all participants to give us the answers to the following questions and put them up on the wall together as they gave us a more detailed presentation. This exercise was a important for us, the mapping process as for the organizations that participated because it generated that a lot of interesting connections where made between the participants when they realized how much they had in common and how they could collaborate in order to gain capacity in their community activities.

Finally, we invited the participants to continue the work by forming a group with the aim of promoting Environmental Education and social activities in in order to evolve the potentials existent in the community. They gave themselves the name Vozes do Calabar, (The Voices of Calabar) and when leaving the workshop we had already set a new date for the next meeting.

We left with the feeling of having helped to form a small, but strong group of community members with the potential of creating a continuing work with environmental education in the neighborhood. It will be very interesting to continue working with them! 

What about Calabar

Calabar is one of Salvadors oldest Favelas (Chanty Towns), created by Quilombos – fugitive slaves more than hundred years ago. In the 1960 the neighborhood started to grow significantly due to the industrialization. Today Calabar is home to more than twenty thousand people. Half a year ago Calabar had the reputation of being one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Salvador, with high levels of homicide and a sophisticated drug mafia controlling the area. A teacher I talked to the other week told me that before the program Pacto pela Vida she entered and left the school where she work each day with fear of being shot by a stray bullet

They call it “occupation” – the installation of the new Community Police Base in the center of Calabar. The police went in, with loaded arms while the population had been told to stay inside. Not long after the installation of the base the coordination invited the civil society to a public hearing. Residents of Calabar had for long been without proper access to healthcare, public services, adequate education, basic infrastructure, sanitary solutions etc. All information about basic needs and wishes where gathered at the hearing and reported to the secretaries. During the half a year that has passed since the opening of the base many things has changed and many of the demands from the community have been met.

The homicide rate has gone down to zero and almost hundred percent of the houses now has basic sanitation, water and electricity. Security has been restored; people can feel safe on the streets. Still, drug trafficking has not been totally distinguished but operates instead much more incognito than before. Education has been reinforced, but there still exists problems in funding, infrastructure and materials. Many houses are built in slopes in Calabar and for each rain season the fear increases of having a massive slippage in the area, as have been experienced in so many other areas in Brazil during the last couple of years. Residents still awaits reinforcement of the slopes as well as a comprehensive solution to the question of what to do with the garbage. Garbage in large quantities by the road is a common view and a real problem in this city – I had actually planned to write something separately on that later on.

However, this is Calabar, a neighborhood that I am getting to know, little by little. Hopefully I can update on our activities there soon. 

So what do I get to do all day?

It is hard to get the time to update this blog. The internship is in on its second month and I have found some thing’s to do, even tough I sometimes get frustrated by the fact that I’m not fully a member of the workforce in the sense that I can contribute all the way.

However, I am currently involved in two interrelated projects. I’m accompanying and helping out, in any way I can, my two colleagues Zanna and Silvani. The department of Environmental Education works to reinforce and implement Environmental Education in the society, especially towards public administration, private and public organizations and in every day life. Right now, one of the things I am helping out with is to implement EE in a state led community project in the center of Salvador in the neighborhood Calabar. The project is called Pacto pela Vida (Pact For Life) and it extends over several social issues, mostly security, health and basic infrastructure, but also education and culture. With time it will expand to other areas of the city as well. We are, according to the Brazilian Agenda 21, trying to elaborate a continuing project of EE in collaboration with the civil community. In the same time we are preparing for the department, and the state environmental secretary as a whole, to take over the responsibility from the federal ministry, of what is called the Salas Verdes (Green Rooms) that exists in Bahia. The green rooms are pedagogical projects administered by NGOs, municipality or other institutions. They can be described as mini libraries on environmental and sustainability issues, open for the public. The idea is to create places fore discussion and information that can serve as educative instruments and contribute to lifelong learning with sustainable development in focus.

These days I have been helping out by e-mailing invitations and making calls of confirmation to all kinds of institutions. It works out well, but sometimes it is hard… and I diffidently can’t fool anyone. Quite often I get the question – You’re not form here, are you? – just before I’m to end a call with someone. In comparison to Sweden, there are few foreigners/immigrants in this country, so may not be so strange that people react. 


I will have to get used to it!

Rain turns this place around

It does'nt  stop raining! Incredible and annoying. Yes, I like rain but not every day and especially not in the morning when you have to go to work. It is almost impossible to go out in this weather. The rain turns the read dirt road out side to a clay river... In the news it says that it will rain, today, the amount of ten days (!) it is also reported that several houses built in slopes already has been destroyed because of the heavy rain causing slippage.

Midd-week update - It is raining in Salvador

I love the rain in this country – I love it because it feels a little bit like home. You need to stay in side; everything becomes a little bit cozier. Of course, it tis not fun to be out in the street when it arrives, but siting inside hearing the dripping on the thin roof is soothing!

I have started to adapt. Since the internship started I feel more secure at home, at my street and in my neighborhood. In contrast to the new impressions and feelings of being an alien in a foreign planet (which, I guess, is natural the first week at an internship, in a governmental institution, in a foreign country, with a foreign language) I now feel I know my street and the people that live here better. This is my home, my safe haven – and I’m so happy I feel that way!

First day as public servant in Brazil

I live near the place where I will do my internship. It is at most three kilometers. However, since the infrastructure in terms of collective transportation in this city is somewhat offset in the political agenda, I need to take the bus a little more than half way there. So I walk, through our area, in the suburb of Salvador, to the nearest bigger bus station. From there I could keep on going and I would soon arrive at my destination, although I find It easier to take the bus since it is so warm and I don’t want to arrive soaking at work – especially not the first day. The bus costs 2.50 real, about 10 kr or 1 euro. 

I arrived. I entered and I was greeted welcome by my boss who is also my supervisor in field for the master thesis to come. The office is a small landscape, only the boss has his own room and a secretary. There is a small kitchen where the cleaning women hang out, make coffee and serves the offices. There is no coffee room or place for people to go and take a break. If you bring lunch it can be warmed in the small kithchen but you have to eat it at you desk. This environment makes the office landscape a noisy place - people work, hang out, chat about how the weaken was, have informal job meetings over a cup of coffee at their desks - side by side - no rules. 

Every one is very nice, open and helpful - the rest is quite confusing, new and difficult - especially in therms of language and communication which normally is one of my strong points... I feel handicapped. It will be one of the biggest challenges for me, to learn how to cope with not benign able to use the written word or speech like I'm use to. 

We'll se how it goes

A perfect place to live

The paradox is total

A week has not jet passed since I landed in Salvador. 

I have spent most of the time worrying about how things will work out. 

I have been to the beach to fry my self in the sun. 

I have been trying to catch up with the pace of everyday life in this strange place. 

It is so easy to forget the problems while remembering the nice things. 

Salvador is a vivid town, welcoming, warm and easy going and at the same time hard, dangerous and suspicious. It’s the place where contrasts are visualized as a schoolbook example. I have learnt that in Brazil, in the statistics, they divide the population in to class A, B, C, D and E, A being upper class and E the lowest, depending upon income. I live in an area where C, D and E coexists. On my streets there are houses with garage and nice cars side by side with houses barely standing. Garbage, construction materials and stray dogs gives the red dirt road (that should have been asphalted many years ago if it had not been for corruption) a special atmosphere

Very simplified, I could describe many of my male nighbours way of interpreting life.  Ether you follow the road of Jesus, go to any one of the three churches schattered a log the street, and try to conform to the demands of God, not drink to much and bring home some moony to your wife and kids, or, you make a turn and take in on the road towards drug trafficking when you turn 17, with the prospects of being shot to death at 19 by your concurrents or the police. It is like choosing to become a high risk mountain climber. 

But, don't worry, drug trafficking and crime is not visible - no one brings crime home to their door - instead worried mothers and poking neighbors talk and attend funerals. People repouse when at home, going to church seeking redemption or turns the volume on their stereos to maximum and plays Pagode and Arrocha to the point that it feels like the house will scatter - all nights of the week. 

This is an environment which makes you fell big and very small at the same time.  It makes you smile so often, it makes you dance and a timid sewed like me can't resist opening up, becoming more outgoing... at the same time this environment makes you doubt the meaning of life, it makes you cry in certain moments.  

The paradox is total. 

On my way

Im leaving soon. It feels like it started already, so much energy goes to thinking about what will happen that I'm already exhausted. Always trying to think that nothing can be done until I arrive, nothing I imagine in my head should be considered before I have seen the reality in which I am going to work.

I have been to Brazil before. I have a place to live and people to help me in every day life. By experience I know what awaits me in terms of climate and culture. I already know my way around the area where I'm going to live. Still I worry about things like - taking the bus, go along the streets ignoring unwelcome stares and whistling...

I know that the first two weeks will be for adaptation, getting in to the rhythm. I just want  to plunge in to it now, get the hardest part owed with so that I can start enjoying it!

Loving the critics

When you want to do something that have potential, I guess you should have more than one person to advise you. That's one of the first lessons I have learnt during this master thesis work of mine.

People read and see different things because they have different experiences and If you settle with listening only to one, you might miss out on a lot of different angles and possibilities to improve your project.

It is nice to hear that you have done a good job, that your ideas and plans are good, but still the most satisfying your supervisor can say to you is; "Good job! It is very interesting, but have you thought of this?".

This leads us to my second insight in these last couple of months; don't settle with "good job" - go and find out what you haven't thought of. You need to drag advises, comments and constructive criticism out of your readers. Whether they are your friends or your supervisors, it doesn't matter.

I'm awfully self-critical when I write, but everybody that writes knows that at a certain point, you get blind to your own text and it is impossible to detect windows of improvement. Still, when you turn in a text for evaluation you know there are a lot of things that could be improved or done in a different manner and you would love it if your readers could make you aware of these things.

I have had supervisors, family and friends look at my research plan, I have had the MFS-board evaluating it and i have e-mailed it to other researchers and professionals for comments. I have received comments from many angles and I'm glad, because if not, I wouldn't have realized that I will need to change it.

O horrible thought... I will need to change it quite thoroughly. And now I need to get on with that!

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!