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!