US-Brazil Connect is gearing up for Colorado Gives Day 2015 with a goal to raise $10,000.  Donations will support the US-Brazil Connect Future Fellows Fund, which ensures that US-Brazil Connect can continue to create transformative opportunities for hundreds of US-Brazil Connect fellows and thousands of Brazilian high school students.

Support form new donors in the US is crucial to continuing the life-changing work of US-Brazil Connect.

There are several ways stakeholders can support US-Brazil Connect on Colorado Gives Day:

1. Pre-schedule your donation today.

2. Create a fundraising campaign to support US-Brazil Connect through the Colorado Gives website

3. Share your love for US-Brazil Connect on social media sites and encourage others to donate.

Colorado Gives Day is an annual statewide movement to celebrate and increase philanthropy in Colorado through online giving. In 2013, Colorado Gives Day raised $20.9 million in support of more than 1,400 nonprofit organizations. For the fifth consecutive year, Community First Foundation and FirstBank are partnering to present Colorado Gives Day on Tuesday, December 9, 2014.

Colorado Gives Day is just one of many fundraising efforts that US-Brazil Connect is making this year, as the organization is rapidly growing and impacting more young people across Brazil and the US. 

With this growth comes the need to raise funds to continue the organization’s mission of strengthening education and building economic opportunities by connecting communities, engaging leaders, and creating transformative learning experiences.  “Since our organization is all about connections and building community what better way to demonstrate this than through our fundraising efforts,” shared Global Leaders Program Manager, Kerri-Ann Appleton. 

As part of its fundraising strategy, US-Brazil Connect has created a Professionals Group comprised of former US-Brazil Connect team leaders and fellows.  This group is comprised of members who want to support the organization’s long-term success and strengthen knowledge and interest in Brazil.

“My experience as a Team Leader this past year has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life, very life changing. Yet I felt that I had just barely scratched the surface of knowledge about Brazil and about Global Leadership. I am excited to continue my exploration!” shared former Team Leader, Patti Cummings. 

Any former leader or fellow interested in being a part of the group is invited to email for more information and get signed up.

US-Brazil Connect is delighted to announce that its Brazilian partners—SESI and SENAI—finalized selection of Brazilian student delegates for the 2014 Conexão Mundo Program on October 20th.

In recognition of their hard work over the course of the 18-week English-language program, 107 students from 18 states across Brazil--selected from 2,000 participants--will have a unique opportunity to visit the US.

The main focus of Conexão Mundo is to offer all participating Brazilian students the chance to strengthen their confidence and skill communicating in English. This is facilitated by the interactive leadership of a US-Brazil Connect Fellow. To incentivize student participation throughout the program, each year, five percent of Brazilian students are selected to continue their cross-cultural education over a two-week, fully funded trip to the US.

The outstanding students will travel to one of four sites in the US. The majority will come to Denver, where US-Brazil Connect is partnering with local communities to help host the students. Several of US-Brazil Connect’s community college partners—including Jackson College (Jackson, MI), Flathead Valley Community College (Kalispell, MT) and Kirkwood Community College (Cedar Rapids, IA)—will also host students.

The Brazilian students will visit in two waves: January 17-30 and February 15-28, 2015. During their visit, they will tour scientific and industrial locations, partner with students in schools, attend cultural and social events, strengthen their English through immersion, and live with families to learn more about US culture.

US-Brazil Connect currently seeks Hosting Communities in the Denver Metro area that would help facilitate such activities and arrange host families for each student. Confirmed 2015 Hosting Communities include Monarch High School, College Track, Partners of the Americas, St. Ambrose Church, Denver Center for International Studies, Boulder High School, Highline Academy and Palomino Park.

The impact of the visit is best expressed by one of the students who visited in 2013:

 “I loved everything that we did at the USA. Every single part was really special for me and I will remember it for the rest of my life,” wrote the student. “The program has changed my life in all the ways, the program made a dream possible and shown me that I can reach places that I can’t imagine. Thank you for everything.” 

The following is a message from Mary Gershwin, President and Founder of US-Brazil Connect. 

In 2009 and 2010, I consulted with the Lumina Foundation, Joyce Foundation and the Annie E Casey Foundation on strategy for philanthropic investment. These foundations focused on a range of pressing issues, but they all wanted answers to some common questions:  What strategies create significant impact? What strategies build broad-based support for change? 

My point of departure for understanding impact was to go to the best sources:  I interviewed leaders who were excelling, and reviewed the literature about high-impact philanthropy.

The findings jolted me. Money was important, but it was not the key factor in success.  Heart, combined with focused strategy, were essential elements.  Cash didn’t have much value without heart.

The realization challenged me to think about my assumptions of who really has the ability to make a difference. If the size of one’s capacity to care mattered more than the size of one’s wallet, when measuring nonprofit success, what did that mean for me? How could my dreams and passions hold the potential to make a difference?

When I pondered that question, my dreams took me back to Brazil.  

I had lived in Belo Horizonte, Brazil as a Rotary exchange student in 1976. My Brazilian family, the rhythms of the streets and smell of fruit lingering in humid air left me enchanted. Perhaps my most important realization was rather philosophical: I saw that there were different ways of gaining knowledge. As a seventeen year-old, I had assumed knowledge was wrapped in intellect and logic. Brazil helped me to acknowledge a wisdom of the heart.  

At the same time, my year abroad begged fundamental questions on justice. The gaps between the rich and poor were stark and overwhelming in Brazil. Seeing millions submerged in the swamps of poverty and struggling against a military dictatorship forced me to question assumptions about opportunity in my own country. Ultimately, the experience lead to a career of expanding access to education for underserved communities in the US, by strengthening the role of community colleges. 

For over thirty years, I felt my experience in Brazil was a piece of my past that grounded my career. But soon my dreams about the country shifted into the present tense. I read reports on Brazil’s democracy and quickly growing middle class.  I couldn’t help but wonder about young people born in such a time of opportunity. 40 million Brazilians gaining the means to build Facebook accounts, chat over Skype and film YouTube comedy meant enormous potential for personal connections that disregarded borders. How would young people in the US react as young Brazilians reached out? Would they reach back? 

At 52 years old, my memories of being seventeen in Brazil felt suddenly urgent. Brazil was no longer an exotic experience from the distant past.  It was beckoning my future and the future of so many others.  

So I took a chance, started dreaming and encouraged the people I respected to do the same. The extraordinary thing was how well it worked. Real people and resources were there when I started letting my heart build a vision for concrete connections and learning.  

Even funnier is how quickly reality has surpassed the fullest extent of my dreaming. Conexão Mundo—the kids who love it, the fellows who learn from it and the networks of people benefiting from it—has brought me back to the feeling of waking up in Brazil and seeing a range of paths to knowledge. Watching the students and fellows of Conexão Mundo overcome enormous gulfs in distance and culture reminds me that knowledge runs along lines of personal connection.   

As a bonus, the numbers tend to confirm my ever-tentative feelings of success. In three years, we’ve managed to create an educational experiment reaching 300 US fellows, 3,000 Brazilian high school students and 32 Brazilian cities. In 2014, 99 percent of students said the program improved their confidence speaking English and 99 percent of our fellows recommend the program continue . Six community colleges have found new capacity to prepare students for a globalized economy.

But even as we might use those numbers to brag a little in impact reports, they don’t tell the true power of the program. That success story is much simpler. The kids of Brazil are reaching out, and young people in the US are reaching back. And while I can’t imagine the community that will emerge from the seeds of these connections, I find it heartening to see so many people dreaming.

Denver-based nonprofit US-Brazil Connect opened applications for its 2015 Global Leaders Fellowship today.  Now in its fourth year, the fellowship offers a unique opportunity to college students and young professionals in the US hoping to develop global leadership skills through work in Brazil this summer.

Those accepted to the fellowship join the Conexão Mundo Program (World Connection Program)—a unique collaboration between US-Brazil Connect and Brazil’s National Confederation of Industry (CNI). The program pairs top US fellows with a small group of Brazilian high school students for 18 weeks.

Fellows will travel to Brazil for four weeks, where they coach high school students to help them on projects to develop their English skills.  For eight weeks before travel and six weeks after, fellows engage with their students over Facebook and Google Hangout.

The work earns each fellow an extremely affordable path to Brazil. While in Brazil, partners provide hotel accommodations, meals, local transportation, and Brazilian health insurance—a package with a total value of more than $8,000 per individual. Fellows are responsible to pay for their visa and plane ticket, and are asked to raise a modest financial contribution to support the on-going work of US-Brazil Connect.   

Susan Gershwin, US-Brazil Connect’s Educational Director, said this organization is interested in potential fellows looking for more than a tourist experience in Brazil. She wants those who will use the program to sharpen their leadership skills in an international setting.

“Our fellowship curriculum helps fellows to be outstanding coaches, but we also press against a consumer mentality,” explained Gershwin. “This fellowship is an opportunity for young people in the US to grow through creative partnership.”

Last year, the Global Leaders Fellowship spun off from US-Brazil Connect’s Community College Fellowship to meet unexpected demands for the program in Brazil. 50 fellows were accepted as Global Leaders last winter.

With such marked success, US-Brazil Connect fully expects a much more competitive application process in 2015. The application process will be open from October 30 until November 30.

“Apply now and get your application on top of the digital pile,” said Director Meg Barritt, encouraging applicants. “We can’t wait to meet the next generation of global leaders, and neither can Brazil.”

US-Brazil Connect could now have equal claim on the best Brazilian students and the best Brazilian author. 

US-Brazil Connect Board Member Adriana Lisboa has been nominated to receive the prestigious São Paulo Prize for Literature in 2014.  Adriana is among ten writers shortlisted for the Best Novel of the Year and a sweet R$200,000 prize (US$82,000).

Lisboa earned the distinction for her novel Hanoi, which tells a cross-cultural story of second-generation immigrants to the US meeting in Chicago. She was nominated for the same prize in 2011 for her novel Crow Blue, which tracks a young girl's travels from the comfort of Rio de Janeiro to a new life in Lakewood, Colorado.

A native of Rio de Janiero, Lisboa has lived in Colorado since 2007 and is a founding board member of US-Brazil Connect.

Just weeks since the close of the 2014 Conexão Mundo (World Connection) Program, US-Brazil Connect is already looking forward to 2015. First on the agenda is to hire team leaders, each of whom will be co-directing an English language program for 4 weeks in Brazil this summer. 

Leaders fill two positions key to the success of Conexão Mundo: Team Coordinator (TC) and Education Facilitation Specialist (EFS). The TC handles logistics and fellow support at one of 32+ Brazilian sites planned for 2015. EFSs advises US fellows on the best techniques for coaching Brazilian students in English both online and on the ground in Brazil. At some smaller Brazilian sites, a team leaders will fill both roles. 

Potential team leaders need to live in the Denver Metro Area so they can attend a number of weekly training sessions with US-Brazil Connect. Returning leaders can apply if they live in another location. 

Leaders receive a leadership payment from US-Brazil Connect. US-Brazil Connect covers the cost of the airline ticket to Brazil and a Brazilian visa. While in Brazil, all meals, lodging in a hotel, local transportation and health insurance are also covered.