Peace Corps Brazil   1962-80
(Site launched July 2000. It has no official connection with the US Peace Corps)

Submitted by:  Bruce Sandie

Date: March 2002

  BRASIL VII

RURAL COMMUNITY ACTION

ESPÍRITO SANTO SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM

The Peace Corps Training Center for Latin America, at the University of New Mexico will train members of Brasil VII to participate in the Campanha National do Merenda Escolar (the national School Lunch Program) in the State of Espirito Santo and implement community development projects.  Brasil VII is composed of fifty-two men an women from who are residents of twenty-two states.  Phase I of the Training Program (November 6 to December 21) will be accomplished in Albuquerque under the direction of a staff of fifty.  Home leave will be taken between December 22 and January 5, 1964.  Phase II  ( will be accomplished in Taos, New Mexico and the surrounding area by a staff of twenty.  The contingent will depart for Brasil immediately upon completion of Phase II training.

Brasil VII Volunteers will be stationed in forty of forty-three municipios  (counties) of the State of Espirito Santo and will reside in rural communities and commercial centers.

They will be assigned the specific duty of assisting the operations of the Campanha National do Merenda Escolar (CNME).  CNME is a new program through which the Brazilian Government seeks to improve the diet of primary school children.  CNME is directed by a semi-autonomous agency with in the Ministry of Education, which cooperates with state agencies in an arrangement similar to that used in state-federal programs in the United States.  The CNME project in the state of Espirito Santo is the most ambitious yet undertaken, and its progress will be closely followed by other Brazilian states.  The project is being operated by CNME and the government of the sate of Espirito Santo; the United States Food for Peace organization supplies basic food stuffs.  The growth of the program has been curtailed, however, by insufficiently trained personnel.  The Government of Espirito Santo has requested the Peace Corps to train a contingent to help fill the personnel shortage; Brasil VII is being trained to that end.

Brasil VII Volunteers will also be trained to promote the process of self-help by stimulating community awareness of appropriate problems and by encouraging the community action necessary to their solution.  When the Volunteers are not assisting in the School Lunch Program, the will imitate community development protests in the fields of health, sanitation, construction, agriculture, and homemaking.  The male Volunteers will concentrate on construction, public health, and agriculture extension work’ the women will concentrate on teaching maternal and child health and on establishing day nurseries,  Sine there is no one organization in Brasil which coordinates community development projects, the Volunteers will cooperate with various governmental agencies.

That was the official description of the training program.  For some reason the Peace Corps also decide to makes ours a high stress training to make sure we all could cope.  In addition to university training staff the was a psychologist and a psychiatrist on site, we took a lot of paper and pencil psychotically tests as well as completing “Outward bound training and drown proofing.  This took a toll on the group, of the original 52 Volunteers 18 either resigned or were  “de-selected". 

The Project was administered by the Experiment in International Living. So that when the group arrived in Vitória, ES, we received additional orientation and lived with Brazilian families.

The project director from the Experiment was Ottis Wickenhouser.

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