Angelica Furquim

Born in Curitiba (Brazil). Went to law school at Universidade Federal do Paraná (Class of 2016). LLM student, determined to research the phenomenon of child forced migration in the Americas. Currently works as a legal assistant at Cáritas Paraná, an NGO, in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Angelica has devoted her life to help refugee families and understand the processes of becoming a refugee.

 

Luiz A.C. Lucchesi

Luiz Antonio Corrêa Lucchesi has been an Agronomist Engineer for the last 36 years, acting as a UFPR professor since 1989. After this significant period of experience in different areas of this broad profession, Professor Lucchesi observed great lack of information about the importance of the agriculture for the contemporary society, even among groups considered “elite”. This perception inspired him to create the extension project “Agronomy & Sustainability: Agronomy for a more sustainable society” with the objective of educating people about the importance of agribusiness and professions that deal with the so called “agrarian sciences”. Knowing the great dependence of mankind on the soil’s ability to produce products and services through agriculture, and the rule of food and water provision for the growing world population, Dr. Lucchesi continues to be involved in organizations that promote superior education in agriculture and better professional acting. He thinks that great deal of society’s contemporaneous problems, such as air and water pollution, lack of potable water, bad food quality, poor security, fate of wastes, lack of space and materials for households, and economical and territorial conflicts can have local or global sustainable solutions proposed through this approach. The Brazilian “ABC Government Project” (“Agriculture of Low Carbon Emission Project”) is a concrete example of what will be presented during the Global Issues Network (GIN) promoted by students of the International School of Curitiba. Nobody will be “green” if they are in “red” completed Prof. Luiz Lucchesi.

 

Rafaela D, Guilherme G, Rodrigo R and Valeria W.

 

Rafaela is an 18-year-old senior at the International School of Curitiba, in Brazil. As an individual captivated by the international environment, Rafaela enjoys meeting people with different backgrounds, nationalities, and experiences, to widen her cultural and social view of the world. She has been involved with GIN since 2013, when she first attended a GIN conference in Quito, Ecuador. Rafaela is most fond of the networking and sharing opportunities provided by the conference environment. Most recently, her interests have expanded to marketing and communication. She plans to study both in college. In her role as the Social Media Youth Director she is working to grow global learning, dialogue and action with the Global Issues Network and beyond.

Gui is 17 years old and was born in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba. He has been an active member of GIN since 6th grade, participating in several conferences around Latin America and the world. He believes that genuine global citizenship comes as a result of meaningful interactions between individuals of different backgrounds and perspectives, and strives to fulfill this in several segments of his extracurricular life. One of Gui’s main GIN Projects, presented at  GIN Argentina 2015, led him to establish an NGO accredited by the Brazilian Government that helps break social barriers that limit the well-being of kids with disabilities in his local community. Currently a senior at the International School of Curitiba, Gui plans on attending university in the United States and plans to continue to collaborate as a GIN leader working to provide fulfilling experiences to global citizens all over the world.

Rodrigo Rose is 17 years old and lives in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, where he was born and raised. He is currently a senior at the International School of Curitiba (ISC), which has given him all the opportunities he could hope for to have a promising future. He has attended two Global Issues Network conferences and served as a facilitator in the UNESCO Center for Peace Summer Program, since becoming an intern with GIN in 2014. This has provided him important skills and abilities in solving issues on both a local and global scale, and has shown him how each and every one of us, regardless of our differences, can work together to create a better planet. This involvement, together with his passion for learning and growth, is what motivates him to help GIN develop and is why he devotes his time and effort to make GIN better for all students who love it through the GIN Creating Connections Program. He believes that all things in life, good or bad, help us grow, and wishes to see the entire world grow to become a place everyone shares and enjoys together.

Valeria is a senior studying at Colegio Roosevelt, in Lima, Peru.  Her work with GIN dates back to 2011, as a 6th-grade photographer for the first AASSA GIN Conference hosted by F.D.R, The American School of Lima.  Ever since then, she has built a strong connection to the program and participates actively as a GIN community leader. She has attended five GIN conferences in Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico, United States (UNESCO GIN) and Brazil. As part of her own GIN project, Valeria co-led an installation of 14 solar water heaters in her school that save approximately 75 metric tons of Co2 annually.  The project got selected as finalist of the Americas for the Zayed Future Energy Prize in 2014, and received a 50,000 USD grant to expand renewable energy at her school.

Bernardo P and Rodrigo P

We have successfully demonstrated that we can easily save energy in our school, by using solar power as an alternative source of energy. At first, on September 2016, we installed a solar panel capable of charging 10 cellphones at a time. Financial help from many companies devoted to face the environmental problems with a way to replace the burning of fossil fuels. Thankfully we could influence not only our friends, but the whole community around us to spend time and effort investing in renewable energy.

Carlos P

Carlos’ work as a member of GIN dates back to 2015, when he helped conducted a project that successfully eliminated single-use plastic cups from the campus at his school. After attending his first GIN Conference, Carlos became a Global Ambassador for the Global Ambassador Program. Then, at the end of the program, he became a GINtern. After working as an intern at GIN for more than one year, in February of 2018, Carlos was named a GIN Youth Director and Co-Director of the Global Ambassador Program.

 

Jessica Kenny

Jessica Kenny is a woman, learner, listener, and grower from Curitiba, Brazil. She currently grows cilantro at home and young minds at her day job as a 4th grade teacher at Dom Bosco School. Kenny graduated from ISC in 2013 and got her B.A. at Brown University in 2017, where she studied Development Studies: ways to flourish, across species, in an increasingly crowded home planet.

In 2016, she went to Marrakesh, Morocco, to observe COP22 (the annual UN Climate Change Conference) as a member of the Brown Climate and Development Lab. There, she ended up demonstrating for climate justice with the Brazilian youth NGO EngajaMundo. Her main take-away from the conference was that grassroots action is her way to go, at least for this moment in Earth’s becoming.

Kenny is a certified Ecovillage Design Educator through the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and she is interested in everything that has to do with cultivating an urban ecovillage in Curitiba: from community-building in neighborhoods, to urban food forests, to conflict facilitation and multi-species worlding. Currently, Kenny is helping start the Curitiba chapter of EngajaMundo (EngajaCu). To join her in this effort or to share ideas, email her at jessica_kenny@alumni.brown.edu.

 

Tim Kenny

Empowerment starts in education. Showing and sharing the power of school communities in creating and promoting sustainable systems and conscientious living as the International School of Curitiba Sustainability Coordinator. Mr. Kenny is encouraging more schools to create this position at their school as an instrumental aspect of education in this day and age given our shared global issues and our shared responsibility to solve them.