This week I had the opportunity to meet some people who, like me, left the US to work internationally, and they have continued to work on international projects. They came with the Notre Dame Kellogg Institute and brought together some local academics with social initiatives.

A Sociologist named Marcio is studying two (k-12) schools in Rio. These schools are across the street from each other and they are both public. The difference between the two is that one school is all white and the other is all black. All the black students and teachers are from the “Community”** and all the white students and teachers are from middle class neighborhoods. The white school performs much better than the black school… Stopping here because I don’t know anything else, but I was not surprised to here about this situation.

I know it is not fair to Brazil to give this tiny excerpt without any context, but in the grand scheme of this blog (correspondence), I think it will even out. Anyways, this is similar to the stuff I’ll be studying, accept it will be less comparative and more focused on the particular challenges of the poorer of these two-examples. I am excited to meet and work with the people that are facing these challenges and their poverty with tons of courage and determination in the face of such a disadvantage.

I still haven’t gone into any of the favelas where I will work, but the vast majority of the people in the wealthier neighborhoods have never stepped foot in one. The farthest anyone can possibly live from a favela in Rio is about 2 kilometers.

** The shantytowns or slums have been called favelas since they started to sprout up in Rio around the early/middle 1900s. Now with over 600 (in Rio), from 3k to 70k residents, Favela is no longer a politically correct term due to the connotation of the word, based on stereotype and prejudice. They are now referred to as “communities.” The word “ghetto” is a decent parallel.