Volunteer Adriano his day at the School in Jerash”My idea was to give them a Brazil day, where I could teach them about our geography and culture and most importantly to leave with them the idea of hope and empowerment, it doesn’t matter where you come from or how difficult life is right now,  you can achieve whatever you want if you work hard and believe in your dreams. I had a difficult childhood myself, lost my mother, my father left, but that didn’t mean “failure” to me, our current situation doesn’t have to be our final destination.”

We started the day with a breakfast where I served cheese sandwiches with Jam, which is something that us, Brazilians love, accompanied of milk chocolate and fresh orange juice, Brasil is the world’s 2nd biggest producer of orange juice and we all love that. While they were having breakfast I played some typical Brazilian musis.  It was really lovely to see them all eating with some BOSSA NOVA and SAMBA playing in the background.

After that it was time for the actual lesson on Brazil  – I chose to focus on the “Amazonia” , which is a part of the world that we should all regard with extreme importance and where I spent good part of my childhood. I’ve given each student a picture of a different animal from the  Amazonia, highlighting they can only be found there as well as a picture of the forest itself. I walked them through each animal where I explained their importance to that environment as well as teaching them their names in Portuguese, it was so much fun, they were so good at speaking Portuguese, I was very impressed. I highlighted the importance of taking care of our environment because its directly linked to the quality of the air we breath and the water we drink. And ultimately, our lives, without that humankind can’t survive.

That was followed by me asking them to draw the same picture they had been given as well what they imagined their environment was like. I had brought school supplies such as coloring pads, pencils, pens etc, they were able to use this for this art activity. They were so engaged with the pictures of the animals and were very curious, asking questions about my experience living in the jungle and the animals themselves.

By exposing children to different cultures and giving them access to knowledge We are directly empowering them to believe they can do more in life, regardless of their current situation. – “Everything you can imagine is real” .

Adriiano Paiva – Brazilian volunteer  based in London and volunteering at our school in Jerash.