Danaë Huijser visited AEC-TEA for 10 days in 2005 and wrote this article about her experience.

Report of a journey April/May 2005

AEC-TEA is located in a small town in Bahia called Capim Grosso (“thick grass”). Capim Grosso lacks good educational opportunities and is tortured by corrupt local politics that are based on social contacts and friendships within the community.

Fábio Ramos, trying to increase educational and cultural opportunities in the village, founded AEC-TEA. His goal was to get local volunteers involved and increase their sense of citizenship and community responsibility. Starting out in a garage next to Fabio’s house, the goal was to teach English teachers better English. But the teachers felt embarrassed. They complained and felt threatened, instead of working together they felt they were in competition and the association had to re-evaluate its mission.

AEC-TEA no longer teaches from a garage and rents a small school. One half is used for teaching, the other half is where the international volunteers live. The international volunteers were supposed to serve as role models for the local community. But since getting the community involved is a slow process, the international volunteers play the most important part in all the projects.

AEC-TEA does not receive any support from the government or any other funding. They survive because of some small donations, the course contributions but most of all because of the great enthusiasm and dedication of international and local volunteers, Fabio’s idealism and optimism, strengthened by Sacia (one of the fist AEC-TEA volunteers who decided to stay).

I planned to visit AEC-TEA for a couple of days and then continue my trip in Bahia. But I was so impressed with the association, overwhelmed by their many projects and felt so welcome that I ended up staying for a week and a half. I spend my time with the other volunteers, visiting their classes, helping out as much as I could at the crèche, visiting ACEC (a public school where AEC-TEA also teaches classes) and the PETI. What intrigued me most weren’t even the projects and the great work they did, but it was the people I met, Fabio, Sacia and the other volunteers. I started to realise that I liked it so much because I was surrounded by people with similar ideas, people with great dedication, a lot of patience and an enormous amount of energy. I would like to share some of their thoughts here, because they changed my way of thinking about life.

See the whole text at www.aec-tea.org