Work Day Sixteen - Visits and Meetings (Visitas e reuniões)

On Monday we were scheduled to meet with another NGO not directly related to the NGO with whom we are working - Institute Politriz. You can find more information on the Institute here:  http://institutopolitriz.org/en/ or on the blogs of two of our team who are working there:  http://bleekem.wordpress.com/  or   http://robertinuberlandia.wordpress.com/.  Politriz does similar work to ONG CASA, to take care and develop young children from poor backgrounds and provide them with an opportunity to grow when not at school.

Karen took us straight there where we met with the Director and the staff of one of their units.  When we arrived the children were having dance lessons from two professional dancers with a well-known and internationally travelled Brazilian dance company. The dance company does this partly as a give-back but it does also help them identify emerging talent - one of the dancers we spoke to had come through this route himself.

At the dance class

With the dance teachers and the Director of Politriz, third from the right

After the dance lesson we were invited to address the two classes - split by age and maybe 50-60 in total.  We told them our background and the older class in particular asked us lots of questions.  One boy was particularly interested in earthquakes and as we had representatives from China, Viet Nam, Japan and me from NZ we were able to give him a lot of detail!

Talking with the older class

There is absolutely no question in my mind that Politriz, ONG CASA, and the other NGOs who deliver similar services are a major help to these children being able to develop for a better future.  I gather the state schools in these areas are poorly resourced and heavily stretched so they only get a very basic education. These NGOs are set up by people who see the need and are able to act, either through their own generosity or by organising funding from the government and private benefactors. They do a tremendous job.

After we finished our visit there Karen took us on a brief visit to the last ONG CASA centre we hadn't seen - a small nursery school.  We arrived at morning nap time for the little ones and the slightly older ones were eating lunch.

Nap time for the littlies - I don't think our visit helped them sleep!

We then returned to the office where we spent the afternoon working through various changes and enhancements to the documents we were preparing.

We arrived back to the hotel in time for me to fit in a quick Skype call to my wife, who had been a bit poorly with a chest infection but was now thankfully on the mend, before attending the last of our weekly team meetings.  At these meetings, which all the members of the overall team attend, each project reports on progress, issues and any help they need.  Everyone is, of course, focussed on preparing their final deliverables to give to the client as this is our last week.

Brazil 14 team in action.

After the meeting, like many others, I caught up on some work and on my blog, which had fallen by the wayside a bit!

#ibmcsc brazil