Working Knowledge

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.

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.

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. ■