Showering at 8:00am. Getting home at 5:00pm and collapsing on a couch from exhaustion. Answering e-mails at 11:00pm. In some ways, my AIESEC traineeship in Porto Alegre really wasn’t that different from the average summer job or internship in D.C. or New York. Nonetheless, as far as my actual internship was concerned, my summer volunteering in Brazil turned out to be a far more unpredictable and surprising experience than I could have expected.
I was hosted by the
Centro Social Marista (CESMAR), a large, Catholic-affiliated educational
complex located at the heart of a very low-income community in the northeastern
outskirts of Porto Alegre. The CESMAR consisted of a high school, a
technological education branch and a “socio-educational” arts wing that catered
mostly to the younger children. Because the center operated as a charity
catering to the surrounding neighborhoods, most of the education and services
were provided free of charge.
My efforts were
divided chiefly between the arts and technology wings. I taught two weekly
Spanish classes, assisted with three English classes per week (which sometimes
involved co-teaching), and co-taught two computer literacy classes per week. In
the computer literacy class, I directed a human geography side project, through
which students would apply the knowledge of Microsoft Office software they had
just learned to discuss issues related to international and social relations
(such as, for example, by creating graphs in Excel to discuss population trends
over time in various countries). Learning at the CESMAR wasn’t all a one-way
street for me, though; I also got to participate myself in the students’
theater, hip-hop and Afro-Brazilian percussion classes.
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| Out for a stroll with my Hungarian colleague during our lunch break. |
To be honest, I was
uneasy at the beginning about working for the CESMAR. I was actually afraid
that my work would be tantamount to intensive babysitting, without actual work
of substance or any true exchange. However, my supervisors at the center gave
me a lot of freedom and space to make what I wanted of my experience. After
only a week of training and observation, I had to sit down and draw up lesson
plans—in Portuguese!—for all the different classes that I was going to be
leading (especially since the each language class dealt with a group of a
different level). Thankfully, my Portuguese had started out at a professional
enough level that the task was not impossible, but it was a challenge
nonetheless.
The people I met
there also made the CESMAR memorable for me. My Colombian coworker, a fellow
AIESECer from Bogotá, made my first few days on the job feel a lot less lonely.
Although she was only there for a month, we bonded on the hour-long commute to
and from the CESMAR and ended up becoming very close. There were also two
volunteers from Germany at the CESMAR. They had been there for a year with
another European agency, and they helped us two become more integrated by
introducing us to the people of the center and showing us the ropes. Knowing
some Portuguese really helped me become closer with my coworkers, and it even
served as our lingua franca when another volunteer from Hungary came in toward
the end of my stay. As the weeks progressed—and especially after my Colombian
coworker left—I became close with many of my Brazilian coworkers, even being
invited by the younger programmers in the technology center to go out with them
on weekends.
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| We AIESEC EPs take ourselves very seriously. |
On my last day, the
hip-hop instructor, Luciano, organized a goodbye presentation for me in which
he and his students performed an impressive routine that they had worked on all
semester. Halfway through the presentation, he changed the music and the
students began showcasing some of the salsa choreographies that I had taught them
when Luciano invited me to give salsa lessons in the second month. At that
moment, I realized that my experience at the CESMAR had turned out to be
exponentially more rewarding than I had initially expected.
And not just
rewarding, but also reciprocal. The students might have learned a thing or two
from me, but I learned something new from every one of them every single day.
