Newsroom

Key Leader heads to Brazil

A newly forged partnership with the United States Department of State helped facilitate a Key Leader event in Brazil this past November 10-12.

Music livens the Key Leader Day.

Three former Key Club members who currently work for the State Department immediately thought of Key Club when asked to sponsor positive youth education/character-building programs. The resulting partnership with Key Leader was able to move quickly on the event because of existing State Department contacts in Brazil from earlier youth-education programs.

Brazilian youth-service groups recruited attendees ages 17-24, from all over the country in order to have diverse representation for this inaugural event.

Key Leader staff experienced a few challenges during the planning of the event but quickly overcame each obstacle.

“This is the first time we’ve had to completely translate all of our materials,” says Key Leader manager Dick Peterson.

Surprisingly, a current Key Leader facilitator, Karen Ramos, knew some Portuguese, and a Brazilian graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, Camila Lizie de Freitas, signed on to help with the translation and facilitation of the event.

“Everything just fell into place,” Dick says.

Dick views the Brazilian event as a pilot situation since there is no Kiwanis presence in the country, but he is hopeful this will develop into a whole new pattern for Key Leader.

“Perhaps this will open doors to other sponsors,” Dick says, “so we can become the Kiwanis presence and help bring Kiwanis into new countries.”