![\"More](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/106\/2022\/12\/brazil-trip-full.jpg?resize=993%2C470&ssl=1\")
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Last summer, 14 K-12 teachers and faculty members from Detroit Mercy and Hillsborough Community College spent 30 days in Brazil. Attendees traveled to three of the country\u2019s states to conduct academic research and engage with Afro-Brazilian communities and others.<\/span><\/p>\n This marked Detroit Mercy\u2019s third Group Projects Abroad to Brazil trip through the Fulbright-Hays program, a grant funded by the U.S. Department of Education and Bureau of Cultural Affairs. It goes to support research and overseas training efforts with a focus on \u201c<\/span>non-western foreign languages and area studies<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe program has to do a couple of things,\u201d Director of Language and Cultural Training\u00a0Lara Wasner<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cIt focuses primarily on language learning and less commonly taught languages. It’s to help promote linguistic, cultural growth and knowledge.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Wasner, who\u2019s also Detroit Mercy\u2019s Fulbright liaison and the study abroad information coordinator, applied for the grant in conjunction with Hillsborough Community College and oversaw all three phases of the program: pre-departure, in-country and the implementation of curriculum projects.<\/span><\/p>\n From March through June, those selected for the trip spent three Saturdays a month attending weekly Portuguese lessons, learning from local Brazilian scholars and meeting with past Fulbright-Hays group project abroad participants.<\/span><\/p>\n During this phase, they also developed pitches for their curriculum project, which are to demonstrate how attendees will \u201cenhance and internationalize their curricula\u201d with the research gathered while in Brazil.<\/span><\/p>\n Next, the participants spent 30 days with one another immersed in Brazil, exploring the culture and researching.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey had an opportunity to get to know some of the scholars, community residents, activists and students in Brazil and were able be to schedule some time with them to conduct interviews tied to their curriculum projects,\u201d Wasner said.<\/span><\/p>\n Upon their return, attendees had until the end of October to submit curriculum projects before\u00a0<\/span>publishing them online<\/span><\/a>\u00a0for others to learn from.<\/span><\/p>\n The experience had a profound impact on many of the Detroit Mercy faculty members in attendance, no matter if their motivation for attending was academic in nature or for personal and professional growth.<\/span><\/p>\n Promoting empathy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Yvonne King\u00a0is the Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusion and Community Innovation at the College of Health Professionals & McAuley School of Nursing. She is also responsible for student success.<\/span><\/p>\n She was born and raised in Jamaica, but throughout the process of learning Portuguese, she gained an even greater appreciation and empathy for international students, especially those who speak English as a second language.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI had never felt so incompetent in my adult life until I actually sat in a classroom every day to have language lessons,\u201d King said. \u201cWhen our students are challenged, they’re not challenged because they’re academically incapable. They’re challenged because they’re trying to straddle both sides of the fence, their mother tongue and the English language and trying to combine the two to meet academic standards.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It gave her new perspective on working with students.<\/span><\/p>\n During the trip, she also learned more about the Atlantic slave trade and how important traditions and practices were kept alive elsewhere in the world \u2014 most notably the\u00a0<\/span>Afro-Brazil religion Candombl\u00e9<\/span><\/a>, which combines elements from several\u00a0<\/span>African religions and Catholicism<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was in the presence of my ancestors, and how they had lived their life and still managed, in spite of all the adversity, to persist,\u201d King said.\u201d That was very transformative for me. Candombl\u00e9 is not only a religion, it’s a way of life. It’s a health center. It’s a social gathering. It’s where people find themselves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Coming to a stage near you<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Greg Grobis<\/a>, managing director for the Detroit Mercy Theatre Company and associate professor of Performing Arts, also attended the trip. He went to study Augusto Boal, a Brazilian playwright and political activist.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, he\u2019s in the early stages of developing a play from the trip:\u00a0<\/span>Unheard Voices: Afro-Brazilian Diaspora<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt’s my main project from the Fulbright scholarship,\u201d Grobis said. \u201cWe always try to have an angle to every show that we do that really leans into a component of social justice.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAs a Jesuit and Mercy institution, it is so critical that we are teaching our students to empathize with other people, but also to find issues of oppression and how can we fight for justice so we can eliminate or provide some relief from the oppression.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In one of Grobis\u2019 classes, students will help him develop a play using Boal\u2019s methods.<\/span><\/p>\n During the trip, Grobis and the group visited nine\u00a0<\/span>quilombos<\/span><\/i>, settlements in Brazil founded by former slaves.<\/span><\/p>\n There are nearly\u00a0<\/span>6,000\u00a0<\/span>quilombos<\/span><\/i>\u00a0throughout the country today<\/span><\/a>, but oppressive land rights practices prevent those communities from owning the property that they and their ancestors have lived on for more than a century.<\/span><\/p>\n In the play, Grobis hopes to highlight what he and others witnessed on the trip, including a\u00a0<\/span>quilombo<\/span><\/i>\u00a0where community members were murdered after lobbying the Brazilian government to remove an unwanted landfill from its property. But presenting Grobis\u2019 perspective is not the main objective of the play.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMore importantly, it will shine a light to illuminate the voices that we met in Brazil, from the politicians to the spiritual leaders to the cultural leaders,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to offer a glimpse into some of the stories that the Fulbright-Hays Program highlighted while we were there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Unheard Voices: Afro-Brazilian Diaspora<\/i><\/a>\u00a0will be performed at the Marlene Boll Theatre at 1401 Broadway Street, Detroit, from April 20-23.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe trip was an eye-opening experience, but there’s so many good things as well,\u201d\u00a0 Grobis said. \u201cThis show is also going to hopefully highlight some of the great musicians and poets that we met.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014\u202fBy\u00a0Detroit Mercy Marketing & Communications<\/a>.\u00a0Follow Detroit Mercy on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Instagram<\/a>. Have a story idea? Let us know by\u00a0submitting your idea<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Detroit Mercy faculty were members of a group that traveled to Brazil this past summer as part of the Fulbright-Hays program, a grant funded by the U.S. Department of Education and Bureau of Cultural Affairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":12644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6],"tags":[195,19,94,2355,2309,246,249,5159,4705,4761,4818,5202],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/106\/2022\/12\/brazil-trip-full.jpg?fit=1900%2C900&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbwnTV-3hV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12646,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12643\/revisions\/12646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Yvonne](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/106\/2022\/12\/use-this-one-too-yvonne-king.jpg?resize=285%2C380&ssl=1\")