This is my second visit to Manaus and the place doesn’t get any prettier. The nice area is near the opera house, as you can see in the pictures nearby. The rest is just a fairly crowded city that could be anywhere in the world that is hot and humid. We did save a lot of money, however, by staying in a downtown hotel called the Go-Inn rather than the more expensive Blue Tree. I like Go-Inn better anyway. You can walk to some of the appointments.
We have two overlapping streams of connection in places like Manaus or Belém. Those are the alumni of our programs and our BNCs. I visited both during my trip. One of the big relatively new sources of connections and friends is our Youth Ambassador Program. We choose some of the smartest kids in Brazil, so they are already on the road to success. The YA program helps them get even farther ahead. We don’t have a massive number of YA, but after ten years there are hundreds and they are proving to be excellent contacts. Even in an out-of-the way place like Macapá, we found young people eager to talk with us.
Unfortunately, we don’t have BNCs in every city. We cannot easily found new ones because of the logistical challenges and the competition from other English teaching organizations. We can nurture the ones we have and encourage them to establish branches in other cities. The BNC in Belém has a branch in Santarém, for example, and maybe the BNC in Manaus could sponsor something in Boa Vista in Roraima.
The BNC in Manaus is our most remote. It teaches about 5000 students and their building is fully booked during the peak times, i.e. Saturdays and evenings. To get more students and to help alleviate the crowding, the BNC is working with UNINORTE, a local Laureate affiliate. The BNC will have access to UNINORTE.
We were able to give the BNC that good new that they could host an English immersion program for our runner up youth ambassadors this year. BNCs really don’t make any money on these things, because they always offer scholarships to the students, but getting to host some of Brazil’s best and brightest young people is worth the effort.
The BNC in Manaus is doing well. There are no serious problems; in fact they have been able to expand operations. Their only complaint was that the area around Manaus does not produce enough quality applications for programs like Science w/o Borders. In the last group of more than 650 students, the whole of Amazonas sent only five. By comparison the city of Londrina, which is a little smaller than Manaus, had seventy students go on the scholarships. One problem, they told me, is the TOFEL. Many people cannot get the scores and it is even a problem to take the tests. Last year there were not enough slots for all the applicants. This problem was compounded by a power failure that affected all of Manaus on the day of the test last semester.
Below is a lonely preacher. He talked about the Bible for as long as we were in the square. He was talking when we came and when we left, so I assume he was there a really long time. He got no takers that we saw.
We noticed lots of Haitians around Manaus. The BNC folks told us that there were now around 5000 in Manaus. There were around 1000 school aged children who are in the public schools, w/o Portuguese. The BNC is trying to help the local schools teach Portuguese, but this is not their primary area of expertise.
We also went over to Instituto Tecnologico Alternativo de Petrópolis where we met the director and his staff. He gets international volunteers. In the group were two Peruvians and a German volunteer.
This organization aims to provide practical education to the people of the neighboring poor area. It is a challenge, but Jonas has managed to organize community resources enough to become a local institution for thousands of people. They primarily learn English, computers and business related skills. The Mission has donated books for their library. While most people in the area appreciate the education, we were told that robberies are a problem. Much of their computer equipment was stolen not long ago and now they have a security system. It is too bad that an organization trying to help has to do something like that.
Last week was our youth and education week. Our posts in Brasília, São Paulo, Rio and Recife processed almost 600 program participants (37 Youth Ambassadors, 20 Student Leaders, and 540 Public School English Teachers, CAPL). This launch is a big step in a continuing success in connection the American and the Brazilian nations and an investment in the future.
The biggest group was the 540 teachers of English. Minister of Education Mercadante and Ambassador Shannon gave the high profile send off in Brasília as did teams in São Paulo, Rio, and Recife. Our Brazilian friends recognize the need for English and they are encouraging progress with a six week capacity building programs at eighteen higher education institutions throughout the U.S. The picture above is from that event. We also signed an agreement to keep the program going with another 540 teachers going out in July.
Our part of the program is identifying programs in the U.S. as well has helping with visas and logistics. Our Brazilian friends are doing the heavy lifting and supporting the teachers. I love this program and I am proud of the input we had in helping shape it. Participants are all public school teachers representing all twenty-six states in Brazil plus the Federal District. We all think that spreading the benefits to all corners of the country is an important goal. I got to meet a lot of the teachers. For many, this was their first time travelling outside Brazil and many had not even travelled much within Brazil. This will be a life changing experience for them and I hope they will be able to change and improve the lives of countless students when they get back. This is a big deal and being part of the aspirations of so many people is a fantastic privilege.
I have written about Youth Ambassadors before. The Youth Ambassadors are also chosen from public schools with special care taken to make sure that every Brazilian state is represented. This is “our” program in that we organize it, but it also has become a shared success with our Brazilian partners. We had almost 17,000 applicants for the thirty-seven available slots. Our partners throughout Brazil winnow this number down to a manageable number (about 200). After that, my colleagues read through all applications and make the final choices. It is a tough job. We could easily send 500 w/o diminishing quality, but I don’t have the staff or the cash to make it happen. I am trying to think of ways to get somebody else to take up some of the slack.
This year we are partnering with EMBRATUR for the first time. EMBRATUR is the Brazilian tourist agency. One of the reasons why Youth Ambassadors is so well accepted here is that it truly is a partnership. We are not just explaining America to Brazilians but also helping Americans understand Brazilians. EMBRATUR helped with materials and information, helping our Youth Ambassadors know their own country. Many of the Youth Ambassadors have not traveled much in Brazil and it is great to have a partner like EMBRATUR.
This week we also launched this year’s Student Leaders. Twenty of them will go to University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The Student Leaders are older than the Youth Ambassadors and different from the SwB students because they are studying subjects such as political science and history. I think we generally do a good job with youth in Brazil because we have such great youth to work with. I am inspired when I talk to them and glad that they want to learn about the U.S.
We held a big pizza party at Casa Thomas Jefferson to honor all the groups that were leaving from Brasília. Similar events were held in Rio, São Paulo and Recife, but I can best describe ours. 141 “youth” showed up for the party. I put youth in quotation marks because the teachers are youth in comparison to me but maybe not all are youth in comparison to … very young people. One of our staff acted as MC and did a wonderful job. Everyone seemed to have a good time, but it was a little loud for me. The Youth Ambassadors seemed to love Gangham style. I didn’t know what that was until a few weeks ago and I can see why kids like it. They all got up and danced frenetically when it came on. I didn’t dance.
Pictures show some of the groups, plus the pizza makers and CTJ Southwest.
Recife had two kids chosen as youth ambassadors from the same school, ABA – the BNC there. We invited them to breakfast, along with their teachers, who after all helped create success. We are making it policy to meet with current and former YA in the towns we visit. Make new friends & keep the old.
Planting Trees
CAPES celebrated 60 years of existence by planting some Ipê trees at the headquarters of ENBRAPA. Ipê is a very pretty tree with yellow flowers that thrives in Brasilia. I attended the ceremony, so I had dinner with Jorge Guimarães, the head of CAPES and then just a few hours later met him again at the tree planting. Tree planting is a good way to mark transitions. The tree will usually still be alive long after the people at the ceremonies are compost, me included. A tree is a living thing that links the past with the future. BTW, They gave me a blue shirt like that too.
I have a little tree in my yard called a Jabuticaba. I thought it was just the usual round topped tree, but it bears fruit in the strangest way. The fruit grows right on the branches, instead of in bunches hanging down. It tastes like a grape and supposedly has anti-oxidant properties. IMO, the berries look a little better than they taste. The tree is above. Below is my watermelon plant. I had a very good watermelon a few weeks ago, so I planted some seeds. They came up. I have no idea how to grow watermelons. I figure they need lots of water, which they will surely get around here. The plants have flowers. Maybe I will get melons.
Getting to Work
It is only around four miles from home to work, but there are a few choke points along the way that make it less pleasant to ride my bike. I have to cross a narrow bridge, for example, climb a grassy bank and ride across a field at different points. It takes about 25 minutes to ride to work. The choke points and the necessity to walk just about double the time needed. I have my car here, finally, and the drive is very easy. It takes less than ten minutes to drive. My system is that if I don’t have something especially heavy to carry and if it is not raining when I leave, I take the bike. Since it can rain after work too, my system is not perfect. If I take the bike in the morning, I have to take it back in the evening, rain or shine.
We announced this year’s winners for Youth Ambassadors in São Paulo on Friday last. This program keeps getting bigger and better. It attracts an ever larger pool of highly-qualified candidates (this year 7500); pulls in more cooperating institutions (now 64 partners in the recruitment and screening process}; and is acting like a magnet pulling in resources from the private sector.
This year firms like IBM, DOW and Bradesco promised tens of thousands of dollars more in support. In fact, we are quickly approaching the legal ceiling of PA Brazil’s authorized fundraising for a single project, which is $75,000. In addition, outside the actual project firms are providing things like mentoring programs, free software, internship and/or job opportunities, and scholarships to the winners and alumni. This is a program that has captured the imagination of aspiring students all over Brazil and all those who support them.
Some people say that success is achieved through resources and they are right, but theirs is not a dynamic perspective. It is clearly true that good ideas and well managed programs attract resources.
The ceremony of the announcement filled the auditorium at the Alumni BNC in São Paulo. But the crowd gathered to hear Ambassador Thomas Shannon announcing the forty-five winners from among around 150 finalists was only the tip of the iceberg. We live streamed the event to around 500 viewers, but even this doesn’t tell the whole story. We know that many BNCs were hosting events with the streaming featured. The State Secretary of Education in São Luís do Maranhão hosted an event in his auditorium which included eighty teachers, students and parents. But even this is not all. For weeks leading up to the big event, events were being held in all the states of Brazil to bring together students and talk about the program. This is a really big show for a really big project, the culmination of a great process but just the start of another.
After the announcement came the media in proud hometowns all over Brazil. Headlines like “Londrina terá representante no Jovens Embaixadores de 2012” (a Londrina girl will represent the Youth Ambassadors) “Estudante cuiabano representa MT” (A student from Cuiaba will represent Mato Grosso.) or “Estudante de Araguaina é a nova Jovem Embaixadora 2012” (A student from Araguaina is the new Youth Ambassador 2012) set the tone.
A good measurement must be appropriate to the things being measured, stable and easy to understand. Public Diplomacy really doesn’t have such a measure. Even in much more concrete marketing of goods or services, there is significant disagreement about the extent that advertising drives sales. There are often rises or drops in sales that have nothing to do with the promotion. For example, many firms did very well in the late 1990s when the economy was strong. Many have seen sales drop after the economy went south in 2008. Is advertising to blame?
They tell us that we need to have a culture of measurement & that should measure all our programs against objective criteria. I agree. My problem is with the proxies we must use in PD and the time periods we assess. By proxies, I mean things we can measure that we think reflect the real thing we want to measure, that is changes in attitudes that lead to changes in behaviors. At best, we can do opinion research, but such surveys are often poorly designed (what real use is the question about whether or not you approve of the U.S., for example?). Besides, people often do not tell the truth to pollsters or even know themselves what they really think.
But the bigger challenge is time-frame. We want to know within days if our exchange program or outreach effort was successful. That is a little worse than planting an acorn and asking a day later about the size of the tree.
I talked to a lot of people during my recent trip to São Paulo. I did not have a representative sample, since I talking only to those who had been affected by our PD programs. I also am unable to factor out my own bias. I asked the questions based not only on what people were telling me but also on my own ideas about what was important. Nevertheless, I believe that my visit provided insights that, added to my extensive experience in diplomacy, produce a useful narrative.
My narrative starts not with a contact but with a creator. I went to São Paulo a day early so that I could meet Ambassador Donna Hrinak and watch the taping of her telling the story of Youth Ambassadors. You can follow this link for more information about the program in general. I was impressed by how well the program had grown and progressed since it originated in Brazil ten years ago. This primed me to look for other signs of achievement.
I didn’t have to look far. I didn’t have to look at all. The experience found me in the person of one of the former Youth Ambassadors, now an intern at DOW Chemical in São Paulo. Wesley told me how the Youth Ambassador program had changed his life and that he viewed his life history divided into before and after the program. Wesley came from a slum in São Paulo so nasty that taxi drivers refused to enter. He was poor in the existential sense but he lived hopefully in a hopeless place.
The Youth Ambassador program was his way out. But he didn’t leave physically. He still goes back home to work on helping others improve and volunteers at an orphanage there. His presence alone is a continual example that challenges can be met and overcome. Our public diplomacy helped achieve this, but it is not mere social work and not limited to Wesley. I have heard similar stories over and over from people who will be future leaders of Brazil. They say they will never forget the generosity of the United States and I don’t think they will. But Wesley told me something else more poignant.
He said that before being chosen as a youth ambassador, he thought he was a limited person. He now understands that he has no limits. America is like that, he said, and it helps create this in others. Can we have a better advocate carrying a better message? You can see Wesley alongside this article, speaking at our youth ambassador event. And there are scores of others like him. Thanks Donna.
Then I went over to SESC. We don’t have anything exactly like SESC in the U.S. It is a corporatist institution created by Getúlio Vargas that receives mandatory contributions from commercial firms. In return it runs social centers that feature gyms, arts exhibits, plays, swimming pools and even a dental clinic. I was impressed but with somewhat mixed feelings. It was a lot like things I had seen built by the communists in Poland or by authoritarians in other parts of Europe, a paternalist network. But nice; undeniably something that worked.
I met the directors, who were honest, earnest and dedicated. I started to praise their operation, mentioning that we don’t have similar networks in the U.S. This they knew, because many of their number had been to the U.S. on our voluntary visitor program. The VV program is, IMO, a highly leveraged PD tool. The visitors pay their own way and so are highly motivated – at least they have some skin in the game. My colleagues in the U.S. help set up a program of study. In the case of SESC, they studied how charitable organizations and NGOs work in the U.S.
What the SESC people explained to me, I could not have said better myself, although I have on many occasions tried to explain it. They saw that in the U.S. we indeed did not have public funded organizations like SESC. Our public-funded institutions were often more literally public funded – and staff. The U.S., they understood, was exceptional in the way that voluntary contributions of time and money ran many of the things that governments need to do in other places. This goes back at least to the time of Alexis de Tocqueville, I added. They approved of the way things were done in the U.S. They understood the subtlety that the U.S. Federal government does not much sponsor culture, but that the America nation does in spades. Again, imparting this understanding of the U.S. is an important PD objective. I could have brought down an expert on NGOs or maybe given a lecture on Tocqueville. As a matter of fact, I have done both those things more than once. How much better is it for intelligence and involved Brazilians to do the explaining for us?
In the cases I mentioned above, how would we measure? I suppose the people involved would have expressed satisfaction when they were debriefed. But the understanding and appreciation developed over time. I understood from the SESC people that they had shared their experience all around their organization, even published a book about it. As the experience in America mixed with experiences of their own in running their operation in São Paulo, it became something different, something their own, something sui generis the offspring of Brazil and America shaped by its own environment. They also have maintained contact with Americans they met on the trip, forming with them an engaged and interactive community. This is the kind of thing that public diplomacy can foster but not create. We can create only the conditions for others to prosper. We did.
I had supper with a couple of people from the arts community. As a talent-free individual myself, I don’t really do art, but I understand that others do and the value it has for the community. One of my meal-mates we the culture director at a local TV station. When I mentioned that I had been in Brazil in the 1980s, she explained how an IVLP grant they received during that time had changed her career path and not incidentally her views of the U.S. Back in her youth, she recounted, she had been influenced by European artists and intellectuals in ways not generally favorable to the U.S. The master narrative was that Americans were a materialistic bunch who didn’t really have much use for the higher things in life. Her visit to the U.S. showed her that this was not true.
She learned that the American system was simply different. It was much more flexible, less dependent on centralized or bureaucratic planning but as or more effective as other systems in “delivering” arts and culture to people all over the vast country. In many ways, she said, this system was more appropriate for Brazil, which like the United States is a vast and diverse country. Since the time of her visit, now a quarter of a century ago, the insights she got on the IVLP tour have been developing and evolving. Of course, the way she thinks today is not based on what she “learned” in America during her first brief visit, but the visit was instrumental in setting her thoughts in a new direction. This is what she told me.
Our other meal-mate was headed to New York the next day and from there to Washington to meet contacts at the Kennedy Center. His ties to the U.S. were greatly enhanced by a voluntary visitor program (the one where the visitors pay for the trip and we help arrange meetings) three years ago. Among the places he went was Julliard in New York, where he met with Americans eager for exchanges of talent and experience with Brazil. This led to a robust series of privately funded and run exchanges. It is not enormous. We are talking about five people a year, but this is exactly the kind of individual networks that hold society together and help bring communities together, in this case artistic communities in São Paulo and New York. The American nation is greater than the American government. In this case, like in others, activities of diplomats and bureaucrats like us helped bring together Americans and Brazilians in sustainable ways that is leading to cross fertilization and enrichment on all sides.
Let me get back to my original question. How do I – how do we – measure these things?
We have lots of friends in influential places. They are in constant contact with Americans influential in their fields. They actively seek contacts with us and with American counterparts; they talk to their fellow Brazilians about the U.S., sponsor programs and even publish books about their experiences or the outgrowths from them months and years later. This didn’t happen in a few days. We would have been able to boast about media coverage, but even the most widespread television or newspaper coverage would pale in comparison to what that slow building of friendship achieved.
I used to think we were in the information business years ago when I was a young officer. I measured my success mostly by media coverage and “buzz”. Now I understand that we are in the relationship business and relationships take time to grow. To illustrate, I suppose we could say that relationships are the orchards and the day-to-day information is the fruit, or maybe it is the urgent versus the important. We have to do the fast-media. Not paying attention to this can be hazardous. But, we should go for the high value-long term results whenever possible.
Yesterday’s newspaper is old tomorrow; Homer is new forever.
My top picture shows Brasilia roads, with the green of the recent rains and the shining sky. Below is Ambassador Donna Hrinak being interviewed about Youth Ambassadors. Down one more in Wesley, one of our most successful YA. Below that is a pool at SESC followed by a Sao Paulo business center.
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.
I watched “Remember the Titans” today. The story is a common one, retold since the time of Homer or Gilgamesh. Different people, maybe even enemies, come together to achieve a common goal and in the process of working toward the goal they become a team. They learn to respect each other by working together. Winning the championship is not the story; becoming a team is the real theme and long-lasting mutual respect is the long-term outcome.
A successful public diplomacy program is like that. We don’t win friends in the long run by always being right or by convincing people of the righteousness of our cause; we win friends by working together on a common cause. And the process of doing the task is often more useful than the final outcome. Creating a process IS the goal if your purpose is to make friends for the long run. The key to finding joy in this endeavor is to find a worthy common purpose that will absorb the energies of the participants and capture their imaginations. I mentioned our school principal exchange before. I didn’t know a thing about it a few months ago, but I love this program. It takes top-performing Brazilian public school principals and sends them to the U.S. where they work with American counterparts for three weeks. Then they come back to Brazil to report on their experiences to their Departments of Education and their colleagues. They hold their big conference in a different city each year. It will be in Recife this time on November 5.This year we will have representatives of twenty-four of the twenty-six Brazilian states. They usually do not come from the biggest cities in Brazil and they do not go to the biggest cities in the U.S. It is a heartland –to-heartland exchange as well as a heart-to-heart emotion. Next summer, after keeping in contact over the intervening months, the American principals will come to Brazil. I wrote a little about the principal exchange in an earlier post. This is a great process in and of itself and if we achieved the goal of bringing the principals together I would consider it a grand success. It puts Americans and Brazilians in a common quest to improve public education in our two countries. But it is even deeper than that. The Brazilians and the American institutions involved take the selection process very seriously. Dozens of Brazilian principals vie for each opening. Thousands of people are involved and I believe they are improved by it.
Our youth ambassador exchange is celebrating its tenth anniversary next year and it keeps on getting better. It started out when then U.S. Ambassador Donna Hrinak wanted to do something to reach a youth audience in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Our PA section came up with the idea of sending twelve ordinary young people from public high schools to the U.S. It was a modest start and it is still not a program that reaches masses of people, but it has grown. Now we send thirty-five and work with 7500 students. And again the process is what touches most people.
This year we got around 7500 applicants, as I mentioned above. All speak English and are good students. They apply through sixty-four of our partner organizations throughout Brazil, all of Brazil including little towns in places like Acre or Rondonia, where we can rarely tread. This partnership is valuable. They are BNCs, education departments and schools, all of which are willing to devote many hours of their people’s time to the service of what they consider a worthy cause. Everybody is a volunteer and they do it for the love of learning and the future of their country. In the process we build friendships.
The applicants write essays about American topics – in English, which are judged by boards that include university professors, teachers and BNC officials. They narrow the field to 180 finalists. After that a board in Brasilia made up of our CAO, our lead Brazilian employee plus some other people from consulates in Brazil. Thirty-five get a scholarship to visit the U.S. This year, since it is the tenth anniversary, we want to send “plus ten” or forty-five. We are looking for corporate sponsors for this addition, which is another opportunity for partnership.
All the finalists get something. Those not chosen as youth ambassadors get a week of English immersion at one of Brazil’s great BNCs. I wrote about the last time here and here.
The lucky winners go to the U.S. During their first visit in 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell took the time to meet with the group. He spent more than a half hour with them, which is a lot of time for a busy guy like him at that time. Subsequently, they have met other Secretaries of State plus people like Laura Bush and Michelle Obama. It is a class act.
We always get a lot of great press in Brazil, which magnifies the reach of an already great program. This year we believe we will get the winners announced on one of Brazil’s most popular TV variety programs. It will reach millions of Brazilians with the kind of excitement generated by American Idol. I am not at liberty to reveal details now, since we are still in negotiations, but I am reasonably certain that we will make a big noise o/a October 22. So this is a great program in terms of tangible PR results, as is the principal exchange. We get press and we get noticed. By I return to what I consider more important, the lasting relationships. We have friends all over Brazil who have worked with us on these programs and recall our common success. Long after the newspapers have composted and the television glamor has faded, these relationships abide.
My pictures show the city of Sao Paulo from the offices of the Lemann Foundation and the SP State Ministry of Education.
Reaching youth audiences in a meaningful way is a perennial challenge for public diplomacy. We sometimes pander to them, trying to supply vacuous messages in a pathetic attempt to be cool. I don’t like this. We (USG) are not cool in the adolescent way and I don’t want us to be. But I think we already have nearly perfect vehicles for sustained contact with youth. We may not appreciate them because we have been using them for a long time but we have not been using them in the same old ways.
I wrote a note about our BNCs earlier here & here. So far, I have visited BNCs in Rio, Recife, São Paulo and Manaus and that has made me more certain than before that this is a great vehicle. We reach thousands of young people with almost no direct cost to the U.S. taxpayers. BNCs have also played parts in a couple other great programs, that I will describe below. It is the synergy that we are always seeking.
For example, one reason I went to Recife and Manaus last week was to follow up on participants in our youth ambassador program. Young Brazilians went to the U.S. a few months ago. Most of the winners were chosen with the help of the BNCs. The BNCs also did follow up programs with runners-up, as I described in an earlier post here & here. Now they are hosting Americans coming to Brazil as the counterpart of the program. It is a great experience for the young Americans, but it is even more important to the young Brazilians they meet. The program lets us reach all parts of Brazil. Each of the youth Ambassadors personally interacts with hundreds of Brazilians. Through social media and traditional media (they are interviewed in newspapers, radio and TV) they reach even more. One reason this is so effective is that they are in smaller centers too. An official American is a bigger deal in Manaus than in São Paulo and an even bigger deal in Rio Branco or Boa Vista.
In Manaus, I had planned to meet the four American youth Ambassadors who went there. So I invited them to a meeting. I had not counted on all their new Brazilian friends and former Brazilian youth Ambassadors. I ended up with twenty kids at Pizza Hut, excitedly talking about America with me and with each other. They want to know about … everything. They commented that they couldn’t believe that American diplomats could be so open and eat so much pizza. They had a image of us with three-piece suits. The Pizza Hut encounter changed their minds. I am not saying that twenty kids will change the world, or our image here, but, as I wrote above, they talk. It was touching that they worried about spending my money and wanted to chip in for the check. It cost about $R20 a person. We can afford that and it was money well spend. I think I will try to regularize these kinds of meetings with young people. I used to do it a lot in Poland and it worked well. Kids everywhere like pizza. Me too.
The other program I have been following around is the Brazil-U.S. Principal Exchange Program. This one takes the best principal from Brazil and sends them to work with schools in the U.S. It is followed by some of the best American principals who come to Brazil. Each group studies the work of the others and suggests exchanges of best practices. These educators go to places where Americans are less common, like Acre, Tocantins, Mato Grosso or Rondonia. They reach thousands personally and maybe millions through the media.
I spent the morning in Manaus with the principal that went to Amazonas & Acre. Her name was Sandra Boyles and she was a principal in the State of Georgia. She made her report to the State Secretary of Education in Amazonas at a big assembly of school leaders from throughout the state. They met us – literally – with a band and a choir.
I talked to the Secretary of Education Gedeão Timóteo Amorim during lunch that followed the program. I have rarely found anybody so satisfied with one of our programs. He said that he had spoken with the principals that went from Amazonas and that his staff had lots of ideas for following up. In fact, our current good situation is a partial follow up to an even to an earlier program. This guy was an IVP. He told me that he got many ideas about distance educations during his official visit to the United States. Amazonas is mostly rain forests and it has few roads. People have to travel hours by boat along the rivers or they have to fly. Amazonas today has one of the best organized distance learning systems in the world. And we helped; our program made a big difference. And the authorities in Amazonas recognize and appreciate it.
Our principal was treated like a rock star by the HS students and she told me that this had been her experience during his whole time in Acre and Amazonas. Students, teachers and administrators flocked around to have their picture taken with us or to offer their words of English. With the social media, they are sharing these pictures and sharing their experience. She told me that it had been like this during her whole trip. The other principals confirmed this with their own stories. I lost track of the number of times I heard some variation of “Americans are so much better than we thought from the news or movies” I heard from the kids.
I am certain that we will have had a lasting positive effect on Brazilian education and I think the exchanges of ideas will have a lasting positive impact on U.S. education. But strictly from the public diplomacy point of view, I don’t think we could have made a greater impact on youth audiences in any other way. These programs work.
As much as we want direct contact with the youth audiences – future decision-makers- which these programs give us, I still believe in the imperative of reaching current decision makers. This exchange program got us in close personal contact with decision-makers like principals, politicians and state secretaries of eduction who will decide what to do now. The principal I was working directly with in Amazonas has impact in the states of Amazonas and Acre. This program also sent principals to Alagoas, Ceará, Espirito Santo, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Norte, Rondonia, Roraima, São Paulo, & Tocantins. Suffice to say that the got to places were our public diplomacy would not otherwise reach. They talked to people we would not otherwise meet and had experiences we will never have. Beyond that, there is a network that has been created. This year’s principals are benefiting from those that went before and so shall it be in the future. I repeat because it bears repeating that the American nation is greater than the American government. A program like this lets our public diplomacy leverage the power of the American nation.
I also repeat again – just about everything we do in public diplomacy is simple. Success depends on energy and persistence in the application of things almost all of us know to do. We have to get out of the offices and among the audiences, fewer meetings with each other and more meetings with audiences. And we have to leverage the efforts of others. We all know that. It is simple, but maybe not easy to do. My first weeks have included lots of travel and literally hundreds of meetings with Brazilians. This “boots on the ground” approach is also something that works. I hope I have the energy to keep it up and to keep up with the Brazilians.
One more thing to add about our youth outreach. We are using the interaction of old and new media very well. During my stop at the TV Globo in Manaus, I ran into two of our vice-consuls, Dustin Salveson & David Fogelson doing TV and then online interviews about visas. Nothing is we do really more interesting to Brazilian audiences than visas. There are lots of myths and misconceptions. Almost all Brazilians now who seek visas get them. This is a change from years ago, but many people still believe the old system is still in place.
Beyond that, there is essentially no wait for student visas. I asked our vice-consuls to repeat that early and often. You have to repeat the same message over and over. It gets boring for you to do it, but we have to remember that most people are hearing it for the first time and even if they heard it before, they probably did not pay attention. Our vice-consuls did a great job. You can see the pictures of the “event”. This is a trifecta. We get television, live-online interview and a written record.
I believe that you have to understand before you can try to be understood, which is why I am doing so much contact work and travel in Brazil. I am learning a lot and my Portuguese is improving too. The more I see of what we are doing in Brazil, the more encouraged I become. Our colleagues of the past laid a great foundation and our colleagues now of doing a great job. Beyond that and most important, the Brazilians like and appreciate what we are doing. I have always been lucky with my posts, but this one seems to be beyond great fortune.
