For the next 12 months we are moving to a city in the Brazilian interior called Uberlandia. It is a city that not many British people will have heard of and is not on the usual tourist circuit but its geographical position makes it quite significant in terms of transit and logistics in Brazil and many large distribution companies are based there. We will be doing two main things:
Representatives for Aprender
Firstly we will be the representatives for Aprender, a charity set up by our good friend Phil Hawkins, the aims of which include helping to improve the public schools by supporting the teachers with training and encouragement to move towards more active learning. You can read much more about Aprender on the website http://www.aprender.co.uk/.
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| photo opportunity after running a workshop |
We will initially be working with a municipal school called Odilon Custodo Pereira in the Sao Jorge area of Uberlandia. We ran a workshop there in August 2010 with a team of students and teachers that we took to Brazil for three weeks, and had a meeting with the directory (lady in purple) to talk about ongoing support for them through Aprender, when we visited Uberlandia in April.
Monte Moria Childrens Home – Technical School Project
Secondly and mainly we are working in a children’s home called Monte Moria helping them to get a technical school building project off the ground. This home is one of the social projects under the wing of Missao Sal de Terra and has its own charitable status Missao Crianca. The home shelters children that are orphaned, abandoned on the street or placed in the home through the courts being deemed “at risk” in their current situations.
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| Ben and Liz with Carlos Mercadante |
The vision of this lovely gentleman who has given his life to running this home, it to address another of the issues of education in Brazil, the lack of practical and technical subjects. He has been given a piece land next to the school and would like to build a technical school for the locality as well as the children in the home. He can see that by introducing the young people to more vocational studies in practical subjects they can be inspired to pursue a different route in life other than drug dealing and prostitution which will begin to feature in their lives at around 11 or 12 if not shown an alternative.
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| Ben and Phil looking at the plot of land that the technical school will be built on (while some little ones take the chance to "run free") |
Initially we will help to run information practical workshops and as we establish connections in Uberlandia and the surrounding area, pursue fundraising and sponsorship for the school build. The architectural plans have already been drawn up and in such a way that each classroom or workshop can be built one at a time.
When?
Darcy and Ben have their last day at Heathside School on 22nd July and we have booked our flights for 5th August 2011 arriving in Uberlandia on 6th August. We are moving out of our house in Anyards Road, Cobham on 31st July and staying with Liz’s mum and dad just down the road in Stoke d’Abernon. Out tenants move in on 1st August so we will have a few days still in the country while they settle in.
Something else we fitted in to our busy lives before the move is the marriage of our first daughter Hilary to Adam which was on 16th July. They were keen that we hang on until they return from honeymoon before leaving the country for a year.
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| The lovely couple! |
Where?
In April we made a trip to find a place to live and a school for Darcy. The final papers have yet to be signed but we found small house, just big enough for the three of us, plus and office/guest room downstairs where we can accommodate visitors (come and visit!). It is in a small gated condominium in the Karaiba area. Its called Condominium Inglese(!) because the houses are terraced which is unusual in Brazil. We are on the end of the terrace which is good in terms of music noise we tend to generate! We will be opposite some Brazilians we already know that lived in Redhill for a while.
We found several suitable schools for Darcy and the directors very kindly offered for her to spend the day at each school before deciding, after we move.
How?
We have applied (and been granted!) volunteer worker visas which means we will not be allowed to receive any remuneration for the work we are doing. The costs we will incur will be living costs, materials for running workshops at Monte Moria and admin costs in relation to fund raising and establishing sponsorship. We will be able to cover some of our costs with the rent from our property in Cobham though we will still have mortgage payments going out plus insurance etc. We also own a rental property in South East London but have offered this to Adam and Hilary for the rent of two people for the next year, rather than the three person rent we were getting but that is still a bit of income.
A number of friends have kindly said they would like to support us with a regular monthly amount and we have set up a Stewardship Services account that can be donated through which includes tax efficient giving if donors are UK tax payers. On-off amounts can also be donated tax efficiently through this account. And donors can give anonymously if so desired.
You can either fill in the “Supporting Ben & Liz Cole” leaflet (email me for one) or give through your own Stewardship Services online account. You may already have one for giving to all sorts of causes tax efficiently or otherwise or you can easily create one by logging on to http://www.stewardship.org.uk/. Or you can call them on 020 8502 8560.
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