Brazil

Following three centuries of Portuguese rule, Brazil became an independent nation in 1822. Brazil is the largest and most populous country in South America.

In 1985, Brazil got civil rule after more than half a century of military intervention. Today Brazil is South America's leading economic power and a regional leader with a large and well-developed agricultural, mining and manufacturing sector. However, Brazil has a great disparity between rich and poor. Less than one percent of the population owns more than fifty percent of the land, while fifty percent owns less than one percent. Brazil is a very dynamic society with almost any nationality represented.

The USA-Brazil courses have this structure:
Period 1: 3 months at the school - Rich and Poor in the Americas
Period 2: 1 month travel in Brazil - Diversity and contradictions in Brazil
Period 3: 4 months work in Brazil - Fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Poor
Period 4: 1 month at the school - Spreading Knowledge in the US on Fighting Poverty
During these periods the course offers you, the participant, to learn and develop in multiple ways:
Period 1: 3 months at the school - Rich and Poor in the Americas
During this period you study, learn, work, and build up the team.
A major topic is rich and poor, their lives, and the causes for the divisions of the world today. You dig deep into the issue of wealth and poverty through books, meeting people, discussing, investigating and observing, analyzing statistics, reading poetry, and using each others' experience. You learn about the USA, the Latin American countries
and Brazil in particular but use these countries, as examples to understand the underlying global historic, economic, and human factors that create poverty and wealth.
You prepare concretely and practically to go to Bahia State in Northern Brazil to "Fight alongside the poor" for four months so that you and your team ready yourselves to take on solving issues together with the poor on the micro level. Your actions will serve as an example and springboard for the struggle of the many poor and thus serve to counteract the enormous contradictions between rich and poor found in Brazil and in the world in terms of possibilities, life span, material standard, education, and health.
You meet Americans while raising funds for the program. You train to do investigations and produce reports and presentations about what you have uncovered in your quest for knowledge about our world and our times. You will choose a theme that can be investigated in the US
such as homeless and homeless shelters in New York city or Chicago, the life of single mothers on welfare in South Boston or Detroit, the life of a Connecticut multimillionaire etc...
And you learn and practice Portuguese, which will be your
It is essential to build a strong team and
know how to support each other
Period 2: 1 month travel in Brazil - Diversity and contradictions in Brazil
Together with your team you fly to Brazil. There, the school has a bus which will be the base for your one month exploration of Brazil. You seek out the wealthy businessmen of the big city to listen to their view of the country and where it is heading. You meet street children and begin to understand the nature of their plight. You visit government offices to inquire about government initiatives. You meet young and old, housewives, factory workers and the unemployed. You move through vast countryside, pay a visit to the owners of vast tracts of land and go see the families working their land. You visit small scale farmers, the landless, and church leaders.
You record your experience in diary notes, photos, drawings and video clips.
After having dispersed to meet many different people for discussions and conclusions to the issues you have determined to investigate, the team gathers in the bus.
Why do children become homeless? Why are some landless while others own vast areas? What are the dreams of the small scale farmer? What future do the children in the school see for themselves - and what about their teacher?
You send home articles, poems and pictures recording your findings to the school web site, newsletter, and other outlets.
During one month travel you get to see a lot and meet many people
Period 3: 4 months: Fighting Shoulder to Shoulder with the Poor
You go to Cancancao in Bahia State in the Northeast of Brazil. In this
area, Humana People to People Brazil has its projects. At each project
four participants work two and two together. Maybe your twosome seeks out and subsequently allies itself with 25 poor families, breadwinners, or other poor in the project area. Throughout the four month project period you visit a new family or other poor people every day and use at least half the day there - contributing, advising, discussing the situation of the poor, helping out in every way. In this way you visit your 25 newly won friends four times during the four
month period. Your twosome gets to know and discuss, at close quarters, the situation with and of the poor in such detail that the necessity to do something becomes exceedingly clear and measures will be invented together to mitigate the situation. From the first period, you bring a whole catalogue of possible actions and remedies which you have elaborated yourself.
In your work, you will be assisted by the Humana People to People project leader. One whole day each week the whole team, with its groups of two, gets together with the project leader to discuss, develop, and elaborate impressions and experiences, study what to do, agree on new steps to be taken, and prepare for them.
Period 4: 1 month at the school - Spreading Knowledge in the US about Fighting Poverty
Having finished the four months in Cancancao in Brazil with a grand festa, the whole team and all the poor together at the project celebrate the joint results. You then return to the school in the US for the final two months. Here, you put together a grand presentation on rich and poor in the Americas, using many different media, first and foremost yourselves as presenters and backed by pictures, interviews, films, drama and exhibitions. You present it at fairs, in the streets, or in any number of places where people gather.
You tell about how the contradictions between the rich and the poor play out generally in the Americas. About the root causes of poverty, ways to act against it, and how the human spirit must triumph over petty moneyed interests that are inhuman, color blind and - seen from the point of view of the globe - reckless in all matters.
You go on to spread the message of measures that are possible to put in place to contravene the inhuman and degrading situation of the poor, both on the level of a determined group of individuals and on the level, preferably, of countries, organizations, and the international community as such, also comprising the Americans of the US.