With a full week of class and culture under our belt, we climbed into the van to travel again to UFBA, The Federal University of Bahia, to learn about the community-based interventions and research being completed for seven different communidades or informal settlements. Throughout this trip, there has been one clear message: the community should direct how resources and interventions are made. It has been really inspiring to see how often the community is involved compared to research in the states. We were able to hear about several new initiatives, including Mais Lugar, a mapping system that relies on gamification elements to “map” both positive attributes and negative incidents in the community. Gamification is the idea of using concepts from gaming, like rewards and achievements, to encourage participation in an activity. What really stood out to me was how Ricardo’s team created an event to encourage the youth in the communidades to actively map out these events. Using this data, the researchers at UFBA have been able to index distribution of certain infections, as well as further engage the communidades in identifying what interventions will best serve them.

We also learned about community interventions designed to support desires of the community, like Teatro É ao Quadrado, which focuses on arts and cultural education, as well as supporting students preparing for the national exam (ENEM)!

What I think makes our program unique has been the ability to connect with students – not only do we get to hear about their research and careers, but also how we can connect on a personal level. Ruan (David), Brittany, and I bonded over our love of Real Housewives of Potomac and we can’t wait to see him on screen someday!

After a long break for lunch and group work, we met back at ICR Brasil to hear from Federico Costa on his work impacting the spread of leptospirosis. Using mapping tools like Mais Lugar, they have been able to identify the majority spread of the infection comes not from direct contact with rats but instead from the runoff and water contaminated by rats. We spent time investigating how the geography and environmental factors enable this spread, and we heard about the index of “rattiness” to describe the prevalence of risk in communidades.

Lastly, we finished the day with a workshop about Capoeira, a uniquely Brazilian practice. As Mestre Sapoti shared, capoeira is more than a dance or fight; it is ultimately a ritual that connected African people who were enslaved and trafficked to Brazil to their roots. He showed us the instruments (like an orchestra), as well as the fundamental movements of Capoeira. It was incredible to see it demonstrated not only by the experts but also by our classmates!

There’s so much more to say, but today was full of incredible, one-of-a-kind experiences! Que boa quarta-feira!