Brazil’s BNCs held their big meeting, their Coligação, at the Casa Thomas Jefferson in Brasilia. Ambassador Shannon gave his speech at the evening opening program. I got to give mine the next day at the opening of the working sessions. The evening program included the round of speeches plus a chorus that sang the American & Brazilian national anthems and some selections from Andrew Lloyd Weber hits.
We stayed for the morning of the working sessions. My colleagues and I presented the types of programs that could help BNCs. I announced our new program to help the BNCs develop a program of intensive English training plus cultural aspects for U.S. universities in support of the Ciência sem Fronteiras program and during a brainstorming session we talked about how this might work. Coligação members took into account our ideas and will develop a working plan.
We took the occasion of the Coligação to bring together our PAOs and some leading local employees to talk about our own plans and aspirations. Such face-to-face meetings are important to build common visions and align our own understanding of the situations we face.
Our biggest problem is that we have too many opportunities. This really is a problem. It is hard to prioritize among the many excellent opportunities. You always regret the road not travelled, the choice not taken. But it is a better problem to have than the opposite.
Of course, we have too much office work to do too. I am trying to cut that and streamline processes, so that there are fewer places where thing get stuck and fewer approvals, so that we can get away from our desks. Our people are smart and well trained to make decisions and we need to trust their judgement and commitment. I don’t want work, in the sense of the stuff we do in the office, to get in the way of accomplishments we can make only when we are out of the office with our Brazilian partners and contacts.
Office work, like all bureaucratic tasks, accretes. A little at a time, the rules designed to address particular problems build, like sediment at the bottom of a lake. We can always think of extra steps and necessary precautions. One of my jobs is to keep on digging away at the accretions. It is a job that never ends and if you ever stop working the accumulated accretions can paralyze real effort, all the while making everybody work harder. When you see a really busy office, with everybody constantly doing the urgent tasks, this is what you are often really seeing.
I, the boss, can be among the biggest sources of needless work and I take seriously my duty to be careful. I like to have more reports, so I know exactly what is going on. It makes me feel secure to have control over what my colleagues are doing. In general, however, I can trade control for innovation, but I really cannot have lots of both at the same time.
Our job is to interact with, engage and influence Brazilians. This is what is important. All the other things we do just support these goals and are not ends in themselves. I try to keep this foremost in my thoughts and actions, but it is not easy to resist the gravity of the office.
Visiting the Porto Alegre BNC was a lot like visiting home. It was the first BNC I worked with and it set the pattern for what I think of them. Since I have indeed written about BNCs on several occasions, I refer you to those entries for some of the general details about BNCs. Suffice to say that I am very fond of BNCs and consider them one of the best ways for us to reach youth in Brazil.
Porto Alegre presents a bit of a challenge, since they have subcontracted their English teaching to a private firm. They still run to operation; they do cultural programs, youth ambassador selections & the other things we value in BNCs. Beyond that, they have the tradition of being a BNC and a board of directors well connected with the local community. I wonder if this kind of hybrid organization will become more common and there could be a time when the definition of BNC is lost. If you look to goals, does the exact method matter?
One of the women at the BNC remembered when I used to do lectures at there. We did a lot of things with the BNC in those days. I remember our old friend and first consul George Lannon when they showed me the auditorium. We did a cowboy film festival there. It was low budget but very popular. All we did was show a different cowboy movie every week. George would tell something about the film and the director. This was something he knew and had a passion about. We started with “Stage Coach” directed by John Ford. This is the film that made John Wayne a star. We featured several John Wayne films, as befits a Western series. The one I appreciated the most was “the Searchers.” I think we ended with “Cheyenne Autumn,” also directed by John Ford, but not featuring John Wayne. You don’t need a lot of money to do a good program. Usually, 90% of success is just showing up.
Curitiba BNC called “Inter” is doing better now after going through hard times ten years ago. They now have around 3,500 students at any one time. They had more in the past, but the good news is that the numbers are growing. Inter has six satellite campuses, including a fast growing operation at one of the local shopping centers.
In addition to teaching English to Brazilians, Inter teaches Portuguese to foreigners, mostly MBA students working on doing business in Brazil programs at ISAE/Fundação Getúlio Vargas in Curitiba. FGV currently has nineteen students learning Portuguese at the BNC.
I wrote about FGV in São Paulo in other posts. The one in Curitiba is also impressive. They have partnerships with Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, George Washington University and the University of Cincinnati. I have been extremely impressed with the people at FGV whenever I have met them. I am glad that we can work with them on many occasions.
My picture at top show part of the library at the BNC in Curitiba. Below that is FGV. The last picture is the old army HQ in PAO, recently restored. It has nothing to do with the article, but I thought it was a nice picture. The colors were good.
We were reunited, my old staff in Porto Alegre. It has been almost twenty-five years since I went boldly & over confidently to run the USIA post at the southern end of Brazil. Paulo, Ula and Cezar came to the reunion, along with Ulla’s niece. Our driver, Azambuja, died, so he didn’t show up. At least nobody saw. But we told stories about him, which kept him there in spirit. Azambuja had the interesting habit of talking about himself in the third person and talking to himself generally, so maybe it was not that different.
Paulo and Ula are in their 80s. Cezar is a little younger than I am, i.e. a very young man. Reunions are always bittersweet. Porto Alegre was my first post. I made all kinds of mistakes and my loyal staff saved me from the embarrassment of getting knocked my own overconfidence. The initial condition has a great influence on subsequent developments. My bosses were thousands of miles away in Brasilia and they generally neglected me down at the end of the road. I got to/had to make decisions that were beyond my pay grade. Being in PAO in POA helped me develop a sense of self reliance, which today makes me admirably independent or weirdly idiosyncratic, depending on who you ask or when. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
The work was different back then. We were really isolated. I don’t think that you can be that isolated anywhere in the world today. Even in the desert in Iraq, we had the latest news. In Porto Alegre I couldn’t get an English-language newspaper until a couple days later. Most days I had no contact with either Washington or Brasilia. I didn’t really miss that. We didn’t have easy access to CNN. We had a couple of horrible computers, that didn’t really do anything but word processing and didn’t do that well. Generally, I would write with pen and paper and Ula would type or use the telex. Back then, I could plausibly deny that I had the chance to consult with my superiors. It is different now. I like the Internet, but I think we communicate too much now. It is better to let the person on the spot make decisions whenever possible. Because we can, we too often ask for advice even on small matters and too often want to micro-manage the work of far-off colleagues. My father told me that you should not spend a dollar to make a dime decision. He was right.
Talking to my old friends, I remembered the lines of an epitaph, “As you are now, so once was I; as I am now, so shall you be.” I remember back then looking at Paulo & Ulla as a little behind the times. I was young, up-to-day & filled with best ideas a new MBA could have. I was riding the wave of the big trends of the late 1980s. It gets harder to keep up with trends and eventually you just don’t. Some of the trends are going nowhere anyway. The things I learned from reading the Greek classics are still with me and still useful. Many of the things I learned as a sharp MBA are perniciously out of date.
Ula and Paulo have had good lives, full of accomplishments and generally good health into old age. That is all we humans really get on this earth. The young look forward with great expectations. The view from the other end is a little sad, but it shouldn’t be if you can say “I fought the good fight, I finished my course, I kept the faith.”
Part of my job I do for duty; this one is about the part of my job I do for joy. This joy category is much larger, BTW, and even the duty part is usually fun. I really enjoyed the seminar and I only had to pay for it with a ten minute speech – sweet.
As I have written before, I have learned that a big part of public affairs is showing appreciation for the things your hosts value, praise the things they are proud of. It helps if you are really interested and I am passionately interested in forestry and ecology. I mentioned this and the State of Bahia came through with something they are proud of. They have a sustainable forestry initiative and I think that the person telling me about it took as much joy in the telling as I did listening. It was a true shared interest.
They took me to the Reserva Sapiranga, an area of secondary growth of the Mata Atlántica or Atlantic forest. This is the rain forest that once covered coastal Brazil. Most of the Brazilian population and the big cities are in the biome of the Atlantic forest and most of the original forest was cut long ago. This was also the case with the area now included in the Sapiranga reserve. This land was plantation and cow pasture only a fee decades ago, but like our eastern forests in U.S., it grew back.
You can still see the coconut palms, gradually succumbing to old age. Coconut palms live around fifty years. They require sunny conditions to regenerate naturally. The encroaching forest shades out potential new coconuts. Soon there will be none.
Only 7% of the native Atlantic forest remains in Brazil. As I mentioned, the Atlantic forest biome is the one most affected by human settlement. The State of Bahia contains three general biomes. Near the coast is the Atlantic forest. It is a type of coastal rain forest, with diverse species of plants and animals. Farther inland is Caatinga. This is semi-arid, with the thick skinned and thorny plants you find in deserts.
The Caatinga is less immediately attractive than the Atlantic forest and has attracted less attention, but it is in fact more in danger. The Atlantic forest will grow back if given a little help or even just left alone. It is similar to the forests of the Eastern U.S. in this respect, which regrew during the 20th Century. The Caatinga runs the risk of desertification. This can happen if the climate changes to become drier, since it is already near the edge, but it can also happen with simple bad land management. It takes a long time for the vegetation in the semi-arid soil to grow and when it is removed of even stepped on a lot it can lead to significant soil loss. And dirt, in the final analysis, is the basis of everything.
Farther west the Caatinga yields to the Cerrado. This is the grassland/savannah we have also in Brasilia or Goiás. Western Bahia has become a thriving agricultural area, with the introduction of new strains of plants and new agricultural techniques. Not too many years ago, it was generally thought that the soils of Western Bahia could not be made productive over large areas and that any attempt to do so would result in more or less permanent damage. This was incorrect. What was needed was a better understanding of the dynamics of the natural systems as well as better genetics and technologies. As I mentioned in other posts, the Brazilians are building railroads to link the region with ports along the coast. They are also working on massive projects along the Rio São Francisco, which flows through Bahia to Pernambuco. This is a vast reclamation project, which may change the face of Bahia as much as Hoover Dam changed the Imperial Valley in California.
These are things I want to see, but have not yet seen with my own eyes. I am waiting for my car to be released onto the road.
What I saw on this trip was the resurgent rain forest in coastal Bahia. There is a local project, sponsored by Petrobras, to restore the forest while protecting the livelihood of the current inhabitants. Of of the challenges will be actually knowing what to restore. Nobody is sure what the forest primeval really looked like. Nobody has really seen it for hundreds of years and even at that early date the ecology was heavily impacted by the activities of Native-Brazilians, especially through their use of fire. The forest restorers are seeing what old books tell and trying to ask the local inhabitants what seems to grow. I suspect that it will be something like what the forest looked like in 1500, but certainly not the same. Too much has changed.
They are calling the project sustainable forestry or agro-forestry. It is not exactly as I envisioned it given the terms.* What they are doing is more like restoration and preservation. Since there are no plans to harvest timber in the newly forested places, I don’t think the term forestry applies perfectly. The agro-forestry has similar caveats. What they have here in more of agriculture of small clearings. It is a valid form of agriculture, but it is not an integrated agro-forestry operation.
They also are trying to phase out hunting. People who like animal and grew up in cities tend to dislike hunting. I can understand that in the early stages of ecological development, but I believe in the longer term sustainable hunting must be part of any sustainable forest-agricultural community. If you really want to sustain nature, you have to cut some trees and kill some animals and humans need to be integrated into the system, not just squatting on top of it.
I don’t mean to sound critical. In fact, I am sharp precisely because I believe this project is important and valid. It should succeed but will require some modification. I would not presume to dictate, but I do presume to have an opinion based on what I saw develop in the U.S. over my lifetime and what I studied that happened before.
The organizers understand that humans cannot be excluded from the environment and there are lots of people living in and around the reserve. But it still seems to me to have too much of a demarcation line, with preserved areas out of bounds. I tried to explain (it was hard in Portuguese, since the concept is very subtle and nuanced) how we use stream management zones in Virginia. They are managed for healthy forest growth, but they are by no means off limits. I can do silvicultural practices in the SMZ. As a result of our activities, the forests are healthier and MORE robust and the water is cleaner than it would be if we were not acting. And, of course, our lands are heavily used by hunters. Hunters are the best conservationists because they want to keep on hunting. Foresters maintain forest ecosystems with similar motivations. These are examples of man in and of nature. Some things need to be preserved; most things need to be well-managed. We all love nature. I think it is better to be actively part of it than just looking across the fence.
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* Agro-forestry is the sensible practice of mixing forest and agriculture. It is best applied in relatively small scale, since it often precludes the use of big machinery. It is not appropriate everywhere. In large flat fields where no-till agriculture can be used, for example, agro-forestry is not always the best environmental solution. But it is a good option where it works.
Agro-forestry allows a more complete use of the land. Trees complement crops or pasture. There is some competition, especially for sunlight. But the trees tend to draw from a different level of the soil. The tree roots can do a kind of clean up, absorbing water and fertilizer that would pass through the first layers of vegetation. They can also form a sort of nutrient pump, with their leaves bringing nutrients back to the surface where they are again available to surface vegetation. Even the shade can be useful in some cases.
Coffee, for example, is a kind of bush that evolved in the shade of larger trees. Plants like coffee can be more productive in the filtered sunlight than they are in full sun. The key is balance and knowledge. The challenge of agro-forestry is exactly that. The farmer-forester needs to be more involved in his land and understand the sometimes complex and changing relationships among plants.
The key to the forestry part of the equation is that you have to manage and eventually cut the trees. Forestry has three generalized parts. (1) You plant or allow trees to regenerate; (2) you take care of them (3) with the eventual goal of harvesting timber and forest products. If you leave out the last step, you are not really in business and I do not believe it can be sustained over large areas for a significant time. The profit is the price of survival. Sustainable means that you can do it again and again. If you never cut, it really is not sustainable. It is just preserves.
I was one of the opening speakers at conference on black entrepreneurism in Salvador that I talked about in my last post. It is part of our program on encouraging racial equality in both Brazil and the U.S. You can read about it at this link.
This is part of my ceremonial diplomatic duties and the part of communications that I am less good at. I am good at the extemporaneous talks and persuasion, but I have a real problem actually reading a speech. I always want to skip ahead and I tend to accelerate as I am reading. I could make the excuse that I have to read it in Portuguese but the concern is not valid. If I have to read a speech and say all the words (as opposed to the free form) I think I actually prefer to do it in Portuguese. It is easier for me to read slowly in my non-native language. I worked with the language coach yesterday to get the pronunciation better.
I have been practicing this entire career and still feel like a freshman when I get in front of a crowd. Nevertheless, in the last couple of years I think I have finally gotten a bit better at this type of performance precisely because I now understand that it is indeed a performance. They don’t come to see me; they come to see a representative of the United States of America. I am expected to play a role and I do that. When giving a set speech, originality and knowledge are not virtues. I didn’t write the speech. I am there to convey the policy produced by others and it is much more important to be true to that than to add my own spin. My job is to wear a nice suit, smile at the appropriate time, read the words right and modulate the sounds so that at least some members of the audience enjoy the experience. I
I have to fight the feeling that I am a fraud for not producing my own material. This is where the recognition that it is a performance has helped a lot. The higher you get in the organization, the more you are called on to perform the ceremonial task using words prepared by others.
Speaking of others, my picture shows one of the other participants. I don’t have a picture of myself, and he is better looking anyway.
I chaired my first Fulbright Commission meeting. This is a great honor & I won’t deny that I take some joy in bragging about it here, even if I didn’t do anything in particular to earn the honor. I take the responsibly seriously and I took the Fulbright course from FSI distance learning so I understand the history and the process. Ours is a binational commission, which means that the Brazilian side shares in the decision making and funding. It is a great asset to our two countries and to the world, since such encouragement of scholarship is good for everybody.
Besides the usual business, we talked about Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s aspiration to send 100,000 Brazilians overseas to study in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Math & Engineering). We all have been thinking about that and the all the world’s universities have been beating a path to Brazil to try to get a piece of this action, especially since the Brazilians will fund the studies. Fortunately for us, President Dilma has said, and repeated on many occasions, that she wants at least half of the students to go to the U.S. Today there are only around 9000 Brazilians studying in the U.S. Multiplying that by five will be a challenge.
Our interests and those of our Brazilian friends correspond almost perfectly, but so do some of the challenges. Brazil is a big country like the United States and Brazilians, like Americans, are not among the most polyglot people of the world. Americans are lucky; our English, is the international language of business, science, education & entertainment. Brazilian leaders recognize that more Brazilians will need to know English at a higher level if the country is to continue to thrive in the wider world. Weak English will be one of the challenges in sending 100,000 Brazilians to studies overseas. It is not only in the U.S., the UK or Australia that English is necessary. Many Brazilians bound for places like China, India, Germany and even France will study mostly in English.
English and Education are priorities of ours too. One of my goals is to make it easier for Brazilians to study in the U.S. I understand that just pushing harder to get more young people interested in the U.S. is not the answer. We need to smooth the path and remove obstacles. A problem with English proficiency, and the knowledge that goes with it, is the biggest hurdle, or at least the one we can most readily address.
Fortunately, we have some solutions. I have written on several occasions about our BNCs. They already reach thousands of Brazilians and often exactly young people who might want to study in the U.S. So we are working with the union of BNCs to develop a course that would include intensive English plus acculturation to U.S. university culture. We would do this in cooperation with our EducationUSA colleagues. The courses would help in general with English and specifically with the TOEFL test of English proficiency.
I don’t fool myself into believing that our efforts will determine the future of 190 million Brazilians, but I am certain that we will positively affect the lives of thousands of young Brazilian, enrich the lives of thousands of Americans who will become their friends & help American universities. This is no small thing.
The Brazilian aspiration is beautiful. As an American I feel proud that so many choose the U.S and American universities as their destination.
As I have written before, we have been working in Brazil for generations (Fulbright has been here since 1957). We have structures in place that facilitate educational exchanges. Beyond that, the American nation is greater than the American government, and American universities, NGO and others have also been active. But our network has been carrying a relatively small number of mostly high level student and professors. What our Brazilian friends imagine now is a much bigger number with participants from all parts of Brazilian society. I think of this like the streets of São Paulo. The network is designed for a much lower level of traffic. We need to figure out ways to make it work better.
My picture is left over from my recent visit home. It shows the book fair on the Mall in Washington.
I had not seen rain for three months, but it has rained every day since I have been back. It has made the grass emerald green. It is strange to be home, maybe stranger because I took the night flight. I left Brazil at night and arrived in the U.S. was the sun was coming up. It is like a waking from a dream. I find myself back home and it seems as though I never left.
My time in America will be short. I am here for a conference with my fellow PAOs and to consult with colleagues. Our work in public affairs is not rocket science. Everything we do is simple. You need energy, persistence and experience. Meeting with our colleagues inspires energy and persistence and helps exchange experience. This meeting, IMO was better than most because it emphasized the exchange of real work experience. I don’t need to hear any more theories about public affairs by people who used to do the work or maybe just read about it in books. Our work is not amendable to detailed plans. We are creating it every day. It is a continuous iterative process. I wrote about this process aspect a couple years ago at this link and I stand by it.
One of the big differences between Brazil and the U.S. has to do with fences. In Brazil, almost all the houses are surrounded by tall security fences and ground level windows have bars. American cities are open. Our fences are often decorative. A picket fence with a gate that doesn’t lock is not designed to stop would-be burglars.
Right after the 9/11 attacks, the students at School #8 in Ceilândia made an American flag representing their feelings and sympathy toward Americans. It was a beautiful and moving gesture and several generations of Foreign Service Officers and Brazilian colleagues have kept the flag over the last ten years and kept the memory of how it was made and presented.
We reconnected today; this time we went to the school in Ceilândia where we met the new generations of school and a few of the original kids, now young adults. I admit that it was a good media event with great visuals. We got coverage on radio, TV & in newspapers. But I think it was also a good way to pay back, or maybe pay forward, friendship and sympathy expressed a decade ago at a time when we really needed friends.
The kids were very friendly and funny. They liked to hear us speaking English, even though they couldn’t understand it. Some asked what their names would be in “American,” but names don’t really change. One little girl very seriously promised that if we came back next year, she would speak to us in English. It was hard to understand their questions and I have to admit that I am not really very good at talking to little kids in any language, but I tried with limited success. When they asked me about my favorite team, I told them Corinthians, because that is the team that came quickest to mind. I found immediately out that their favorite team is Flamengo. Who knew? Flamengo is based in Rio de Janeiro. I also learned that the team recently signed a very good player called Ronaldinho Gaúcho & that Flamengo is not named after the birds with a similar name. You can learn a few things from little kids. Next time somebody asks me about my favorite team, I can say Flamengo and reference Ronaldinho. I will be okay as long as nobody asks any follow-up questions. I always wanted to know more about spectator sports, but I just don’t care. I am the opposite of most guys. I watch the news every night, but my attention drifts when the sports comes on. I think I will master a few more facts about football, however.
BTW – Ceilândia is one of Brasilia’s satellite cities. It grew up out of an informal occupation by people who worked in Brasilia but couldn’t afford homes there. Even the name of the city reflects this. The CEI comes from Centro de Erradicação de Invasões, which means center of eradication of invasions; in this case the term “invasions” refers to irregular occupations of land near the capital.
My colleagues did a very good job. The visit to School #8 in Ceilândia was the last event in our 9/11 campaign themed on resilience “Superação”. The webpage is here. Our social media got around 170,000 comments and probably around a million visitors. We also got good coverage on TV and in newspapers. My colleagues also made a good video to go with the visit in Ceilândia. We sponsored graffiti artists to paint a couple of walls at the school. You can see it being done on the video.
The pictures show the kids at the celebration. Below is a newspaper article reporting on the event. The last picture is an interesting juxtaposition of the Brazilian symbol of Christ that stands above Rio with the Statue of Liberty. We didn’t make it. It is a little corny, but the thought is nice.
Please look at our videos here & here. IMO, they are very good. The one shows how art overcomes the gang markings. The other shows the story of the Brazilian kids and the flag.
Our Information Section did something really great with social media. I find it almost unbelievable. It came, as many things do, at the intersection of preparation and changing conditions, with a little bit of luck. Let me explain.
We launched our 9/11 commemoration campaign a couple days ago. Our theme is “superacão” or resilience & overcoming difficulties. My colleagues prepared a poster show. We did some media interviews & generally reached out to Brazilian media and people. There is no shortage of attention to 9/11 in Brazil. We don’t have to create a demand. But we do prefer that the narrative be one of superacão and resilience rather than destruction. We want to remember and honor the victims, but emphasize the resilience of America.
Among the things I find most appealing is a program we have set for September 12. Ten years ago, after the attacks of 9/11, a school in Ceilândia, just outside Brasilia, made an American flag for us. All the students contributed part. It was very touching and we still have their work. We will return to the school for a ceremony and have invited the original students, now young adults, and their teachers to join us. Response has been great and I look forward to taking part. But I am drifting. Let’s return to social media.
We launched the campaign this weekend and as of this writing we have more than 106,000 responses. We might have had a few more, but the initial surge crashed our server and we had move to a bigger server. Our theme of superacão was popular with our audiences. They were invited to write their own feelings about 9/11 and/or their own stories of superacão. And they did. Our Facebook page has almost 10,000 new members and we have gained another 38,000+ on our Orkut platform. Orkut is popular with non-elite audiences in Brazil. A video of Ambassador Thomas Shannon talking about 9/11 has garnered 9,260 views as of this morning, but I figure more than 8000 by the time you read this. Today we were getting almost 1000 new comments every hour. I say comments, not visitors and not “hits”. A commenter has to take the time to write something.
Our initial demographic analysis indicates that participants are coming to us from all over Brazil, even interior towns indicating that Internet has penetrated far into Brazil. Many of our participants are from the less-privileged social groups. This is because the Orkut component is providing them a forum, we believe.
I want to emphasize again that these are responses, not mere “liking”. Of course, we have been unable to look at all 100,000+ responses, but our sampling indicates that most are thoughtful. Most are also favorable to the U.S. Many of the personal stories of resilience are moving.
We will follow up with social media and with boots on the ground. I remain a little skeptical of social media that doesn’t yield physically tangible results. One of our initial ideas is to take representative groups from various cities and invite them to programs or representational events when we visit their home towns. This will create a good media opportunity both in MSM and new media, especially in those places were we rarely tread. It makes it more concrete and exciting for the participants and fits in well with our plant to reach out to the “other Brazil”, i.e. those places not Rio, São Paulo or Brasilia. As I wrote earlier, we had planned to reach to the 50 largest cities. I had to add a few extra so that we could encompass all state capitals, even in places with thin populations and some cities of special significance, such as an especially good university, for example. I ended up with 61, but I think I will find five more so that I can call the plan “Route 66”.
I don’t know how many Brazilians we will have touched by the time we are done with this campaign, but I think we are doing okay so far. As I have written on many occasions, this is a great place to work. The only problem is that we might get tired taking advantage of all the opportunities.
Up top I mentioned the intersection of preparation, good luck and changing conditions. Preparation is what my colleagues did and have been doing. They built a social media system ready to be used. It needed an opportunity. They also prepared for what they knew would be a big anniversary. But this program would have gone nowhere had not Brazil expanded its internet network, so that people could respond. I don’t think this success could have happened last year or even six months ago. One of the Portuguese terms I learned was “banda larga”. It means broadband. Many Brazilians were learning the term and its meaning the same time I was. Now they have the capacity to log in and they are doing it. New fast-spreading technologies have allowed Brazilians to jump over a digital divide that we thought was as wide as the Grand Canyon. We are lucky to have these conditions.
Our BNC in Salvador, ACBEU, celebrated its seventieth anniversary. It was founded when much of the world was already at war and only months before the United States would be dragged too. The context is not coincidental. The founders understood the need for the two greatest nations of the Western Hemisphere to come together in the face of all of this rising sea of trouble. They wanted to make their contribution.
I say “our” BNC. The accuracy of the usage depends on what you mean by the word “our.” It is certainly “our” in the sense of U.S.-Brazil and it is our in the sense of the U.S. government representing the U.S. nation. We helped. But it is mostly theirs. It belongs to the people of Salvador, who over generations have built ACBEU to the institution it has become. The thing that impressed me most about ACBEU, what has impressed me about all the BNCs I have visited, is the depth of community involvement. There are people who have been involved with this BNC for two generations. The son of one of the founders spoke at the anniversary celebration and around the room were leading members of the Salvador community.
I talked to a guy about my age who runs a charity that helps a thousand poor kids with education, medical care and general direction. He proudly told me that he had been a student at ACBEU many years before and that it has helped shape his life. This is an example of a long term impact. The Chairman of ACBEU Board estimated that they have around 420,000 alumni, many like the man I mentioned above doing important work in Salvador.
ACBEU has around 6000 students this year. It is the usual BNC mix, with mostly young people but also adults and professional students. ACBEU supports an EducationUSA advising center; they have strong partnerships with local businesses and governments and the reach out to the community, giving poor kids scholarships and holding some classes in the poor neighborhoods. These are all great things that most BNCs do. An unusual aspect of ACBEU was its American student contingent.
ACBEU hosts around three-hundred Americans each year who come to learn or perfect their Portuguese. We talk a lot about two-way exchange, but it more often is Brazilians going to the U.S. Brazil is a great country and getting more important all the time. We need to develop a bigger group of Americans who understand this country, its language and customs. These students mostly come through linkages with American universities. American students want to come to Bahia and the cultural experience is great.
We also met one of our ELFs – English Language Fellows. This particular ELF, Jennifer, is housed at ACBEU. Among the things she does train high school English teachers, obviously another high-leverage activity since they will in turn train thousands of kids. We are trying to expand this program in Brazil to help satisfy the seemingly inexhaustible demand for English language. We currently have only two in the country: one in Recife and the one in Salvador that we met. But next year we should get four more funded by ECA and another one funded by the public affairs. In addition, the Secretary of Education in the state of Pernambuco wants five more ELFs and he says that he will pay for with his own funds. ELFs have always been hosted by local partners, but I don’t think this type of full cost-share has ever happened before and it is certainly the first time in Brazil that we have had that kind of partnership. Our English Language Officer in São Paulo is figuring out the details. You always know when somebody really wants want something when they put their time and/or money up.
ELFs are is a great way to reach young Brazilians, a high leverage activity, since we are helping them get what they want and we get a self-selecting group of highly motivated people, who are likely to be influential in the future.
I have marveled at how easy it is to work in Brazil. It is because of these programs implemented over many years that we can so easily do our business in this country. The polling data give us their ephemeral numbers of how many like us and how many don’t. Currently we are well-liked in Brazil, according to the polls. I read polls and I pay attention to them, but I understand their limits. People have opinions that they report and they have things that they do; these are often not closely related. I know that through good times and bad times, we have friends.
The top picture shows Associação Comercial Bahia. Below that is me at the commemoration trying to look good. The next two pictures show murals at ACBEU. They have an art gallery space. New artists can show their work there. There is no money charged, but the artists have to leave a work of art at ACBEU.
