A Busy Week

This week was a busy one at Two Brothers.

Sunset at our building in Valão

We decided to build a garden on the roof-top terrace of our building. Even though the task of ordering, carrying and putting the bricks together with cement and mortar seems like a trivial task, it turned out to be slightly more challenging than we expected. Carrying the bricks and the 30-kg bags of soil up the three sets of narrow stairs to the roof was pretty tiring, but that was only the first bit of the challenge.

The volunteers perfecting their building skills:

Because we had zero experience with any building related activities, the work that we thought would take us an hour, lasted from noon until late at night. We were pretty sceptical about whether our garden structure was going to hold, but when we checked up on it after a few days, all the bricks were still holding together!

After a few days, however, we realised that the heavy structure might be a bit too much for our roof-top terrace to hold, especially when the soil gets wet, so we decided to change our plans a bit and create a hanging garden instead.

While one part of the volunteers was busy building the garden, Giselle was teaching on the floor bellow

On Monday we did a field trip to the cinema with our adult students 

We took them to the cinema to watch "the Maleficent". Even though some of the students were a bit sceptical about going to see a Disney movie, most of them enjoyed it in the end.

The volunteers with their adult students at the cinema

Our school will be open during the period of the World Cup and our English lessons will continue.

The World Cup Fever

There is less than a month to the World Cup, everyone here in Rio is talking about it, so I decided to have a short debate with my intermediate class about the issues surrounding the event. The purpose of the lesson was for the students to practice pronunciation and to enrich their vocabulary. 

I showed my students two videos that I found on the BBC webpage. One of them was about a football fan from São Paulo supporting the World Cup by wearing clothes and eating food only of Brazil's national colours. The other video showed the mass street protests that occurred last August and are at somewhat smaller scale happening now.

A very colourful football fan. For the video click here

Protests in São Paulo in August 2013. For the video click here

Everyone in my class was against the World Cup in Brazil and a lot of students pointed out that the money invested in the stadiums could have been spent much more wisely, which also is the opinion of general public in Brazil. 

The class solving the exercises on the board

Learning to Give Directions in English or How NOT to Get Lost in the Becos of Rocinha

Becos are something typical for Rocinha. They are small narrow streets usually full of stairs, which make it rather complicated to navigate your way around.  Because of this, I decided to teach my adults intermediate class how to give directions to a tourist lost in Rocinha. 

We started with a few simple phrases and then gradually added vocabulary until the students were able to direct the foreigner from the very bottom of Rocinha all the way to their favourite bar or restaurant.

Some of the basic phrases we learnt:

Cross the pasarela

   Go up the Via Apia

Take the third street on your right

When you get to the market turn left and go up the street past the banks

Take the beco on your right

Continue going up the stairs

 Go up the Estrada da Gavea

Turn right to a beco, go to the end...

 ... and the snack bar will be on your right

Breaking Down Misconceptions Through Art

"I truly believe that art can be a catalyst for change, altering the way people see themselves and the world around them, which is why I am so enthusiastic about community/participatory art and activism." - Beccy McCray

A few months ago I had been contacted by artist and creative producer, Beccy McCray. She expressed great interest in having a workshop at our organization and proposed an art/craft workshop. Her desired objective? To facilitate a positive difference by linking people together through creative means and also to have a good time! She was well-aware that many people have negative preconceived notions about favelas and favela residents (being violent and hubs for drug trafficking), and because of those misconceptions her other target was to use art to to tell truths about favela life and favela residents to dismantle those misconceptions.

On November 11th, we surprised our students (from both Will's class and Harriet's class) with Beccy's workshop. To begin, she had each student select a hand-made bracelet, from a bag that she had brought with her, for each student to keep.

After each student selected their bracelet, she explained that their bracelets had been made by participants in England. She gave out instructions for making the bracelets and then told the kids that they will make bracelets for other people in England.

Photos and a bit of information will be included with the bracelets, so that the recipient will know who made their bracelet and where they come from. More specifically, they will all be distributed around Hackney Wick, where the pre-made bracelets she gave to our kids originated from, thus connecting it to Rocinha.
I'm American and  I've  never traveled to London, let alone England so I don't know much about London burroughs. Beccy described Hackney Wick being similar to Rocinha. She states that, "Rocinha actually has a lot in common with Hackney - it too is a deprived area which borders the Olympic Park, but is also a crucible of culture."

Overall, the workshop was a hit. Not only did the kids thoroughly enjoy it, but us resident volunteers also enjoyed it very much as well. A huge thank you, Beccy, for coming out here to spend some time with us and sharing your creativity with us. We couldn't be more grateful! 

Monster Mash.

Halloween isn't very popular in Brazil, although its fanbase is currently growing in some of Brazil's bigger cities. I imagine that this can be attributed to two things: The number of English-language schools that throw Halloween parties and also because of American pop culture. It is entirely possible to find Halloween parties around Rio, but they aren't that numerous and you generally wouldn't see swarms of people dressed up in costumes everywhere!

We try not to limit our curriculum to strictly English lessons, so whenever we can, we incorporate cultural lessons and activities. Additionally, Halloween is my absolute favorite Holiday, so it was only necessary to celebrate Halloween with our kids and teens by throwing a party at the Escola Moranguinhos. Vivi (Our Field Coordinator) and I planned and organized the party in adavance, but she couldn't stay for the party because she was ill. Will (a resident volunteer), Maria (one of our board members) and I were at the school before the party started to set up and decorate everything.

Maria & Will decorating

Vanessa & I

Around 7PM, Will had to leave the party to teach his English class for adults and shortly after, Maria also had to go home. I would also like to note that I was very impressed by how helpful some of the teen girls were. A couple of them did a wonderful job of helping me watch the younger children.To keep the momentum going and everyone entertained, we played some typical Halloween games such as bobbing for apples and the mummy wrap game. Since children do not go out trick or treating in Brazil, we did the opposite and went door to door on our little street to hand out candy to our neighbors. 

Here is a clip of our reverse trick or treating:

I hope all of you had an equally delightful Halloween!

Also, if you are interested in learning a bit more about me and getting more insight on my life as a resident volunteer/assistant field coordinator here, you can click over to my blog:
 www.riohapa.com
or e-mail me directly at Jennifer@2bros.org

A New Rotation.

As summer came to a close, we said farewell to two very wonderful people, welcomed two new resident volunteers and welcomed a returning resident volunteer for our second term of the year.

Will Brandreth is from the United Kingdom and he is currently teaching our children’s class and our adult beginner English class.

Harriet Simpson is also from the United Kingdom and has taken over the teen English class, from the reins of Erin.

Katie Dauth is from Australia and she first came to work as a resident volunteer in July of 2012 and used to teach our children's class, adult intermediate class and adult advanced class. She returned to Australia in the following January and came back to Rocinha this past July to teach our advanced English class.

Erin Kanygin (Canada) and Wesley Cornwell (U.S.A.) served as resident volunteers from the beginning of May until the end of August. We want to thank both of you, from the bottom of our hearts, for the work you contributed to the Two Brothers Foundation, for your dedication, eagerness and compassion for the people of Rocinha and for our project. We miss you both!