BRAZIL JOURNEY – FEBRUARY 2016 €13K
The experience gained in the crowdfunding campaign for the 2015 Global Campus project gave birth to our collaboration with the team of the Escola da Esperança in January 2016. A group of 8 youths and 4 teachers produced and successfully carried out a €36K crowdfunding campaign for a one month political journey to Sao Paolo, Brazil, which took place in February 2016. The Grace Foundation accompanied the crowdfunding process in a mentorship role. €13K of the total budget was moved through the Grace Foundation.

We see political journeys as a core piece of meaningful education for youth, often providing deep initiation moments for the awakening of their planetary consciousness. A future culture will largely depend on our readiness to walk in somebody else’s shoes and understand their situation in a larger political context. If carried out with sensitivity and care, political journeys can lay the foundation for shaping both the character and essential world views of youth (and adults) and thus can be an important preparation for a compassionate life path. We strongly support the inclusion of such deep processes in schooling programs for the coming generations. Also, we felt the connection of Tamera’s youth with Healing Biotope-oriented communities to be important for their understanding of the political network and their future life paths.

The journey of Tamera’s youth consisted of visits to two different projects:

• Projeto Ancora is “a world-renowned school in which the children create projects according to their own needs and to those of their community.” Through a set of social rules, the school manages to free the children from power games usually induced through the mix of different social backgrounds, creating real space for cooperation, questioning and learning instead.

• In the Favela da Paz (long-term Global Campus station in Sao Paolo) the teenagers got an insight into life in a favela and the communities’ creative vitality in dealing with a harsh socio-economic situation. They were also challenged in a very unique living situation. Their final report reads: “Through our dense living situation in the favela it was necessary to overcome the private lifestyle and to become aware of the whole group. The teenagers were challenged to not only think about the fulfillment of their personal needs, but to find ways where the whole group benefits from it.”

Both the Grace Foundation and the team of accompanying teachers see this journey as a success for the youth. Being exposed to a radically different cultural context while still being held in an educational framework, many of them have taken leaps in their personal development since and found ways to be more engaged in their day-to-day communal responsibilities. In 2017, the students of Projeto Ancora will come to Tamera for the second part of this cross-cultural student exchange.

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