Where you can go
BRAZIL
Brazil is the world’s fifth largest country with the world’s fifth largest population. Best known for its beaches and the Amazon rain forest, Brazil has so much more to offer the discerning visitor. Whilst South Africa may claim it, Brazil is the country that truly deserves the epithet of the ‘ Rainbow Nation.’ Its population is an eclectic mix of native indigenous peoples, Portuguese, Africans, Italians, Germans, Japanese, Poles … the list goes on and on. Its biodiversity is immense from the Amazon rainforest to deserts, to the wetlands of the Pantanal, the ‘sertão’ of the north east, the ‘cerrado’ or savannah of the Central West, the Atlantic rain forest, the mountains and serras of the south. Its regional cuisine is rich and varied and worth exploring. Vital and vibrant, Brazil epitomises fun and glamour.
In contrast, a large proportion of the population lives in abject poverty. The public education system is poor and it is exceptionally difficult to get into the federal universities, which are the best and are free, from the state schools. This of course preserves the status quo whereby the professions are taken by those from the private education system.
We have chosen to start offering volunteering opportunities in Brazil precisely because so many communities are in great need of help but at the same time the opportunities for cultural diversion and travel are great.
Brazil Fact File
A few interesting facts about Brazil. Did you know...?
• Brazil is the world's fifth largest country. It covers an area greater than Western Europe and is slightly bigger than the United States excluding Alaska.
• Brazil shares a border with every other country in South America apart from Ecuador and Chile – ten in total – and has lived in peace with all of them for almost 140 years.
• It is estimated that Brazil contains greater biodiversity than any other country on Earth. The rivers of the Amazon region, for example, are home to more than 1,500 different species of fish.
• The River Amazon, most of which lies inside Brazil, could be the longest in the world. Some scientists argue that the true source of the Amazon is in southern Peru, not in the north as previously thought, in which case it would have a total length of 4,225 miles, about 90 miles longer than the Nile.
• With more than 187 million people, Brazil is the world's 5th most populous country after China, India, the United States and Indonesia.
• Brazil has the world's second biggest black population after Nigeria, the largest number of people of Japanese ancestry outside Japan, and more people of Lebanese or Syrian extraction than the combined populations of Lebanon and Syria.
• Brazil has an indigenous population of around 450,000, comprising more than 200 peoples who speak more than 180 different languages. According to the National Foundation for the Indian (FUNAI) the indigenous population has been growing at a rate of more than 3.5% per year and is now four times greater than in 1950. FUNAI also estimates that in the Brazilian Amazon there are more than 60 'uncontacted' indigenous groups living in complete isolation from the outside world. Government policy is to avoid contact with such groups unless they are in extreme danger.
• Brazil has the 9th biggest economy in the world in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• The Brazilian company Embraer is the world's third biggest aircraft-producer and exporter after Boeing and Airbus. It specialises in 'regional' jets, medium-sized planes that seat up to 110 passengers.
• Brazil is the world's largest exporter of sugar, coffee, orange juice, soya, beef, tobacco and chicken.
• Brazil has become the world’s leading source of satellite images, due to the government's policy of providing users in Brazil and neighbouring countries with free access to the images produced by the Sino-Brazilian Earth Resources Satellite.
• In 2000, a team of scientists based in São Paulo achieved the first ever sequencing or 'decoding' of the genome of a plant pathogen. The bacterium in question was the insect-borne Xylella fastidiosa, which infects citrus fruit and other commercially important produce.
• The first person to make an 'unassisted' flight in an aircraft (i.e. a heavier-than-air machine, not a balloon) was the Brazilian Albert Santos-Dumont, who piloted the 14 Bis over a distance of about 60 metres, at the modest altitude of 2-3 metres, in Paris on 23 October 1906. The Wright brothers had flown a similar distance in the United States in December 1903, but in order to become airborne their machine required launch rails and a catapult.
• The city of Rio de Janeiro throws a New Year's Eve party that is probably the biggest – and arguably the most spectacular – in the world. Around two million people, all of them dressed at least partly in white (a popular tradition adopted from Afro-Brazilian religion), congregate on the huge crescent-shaped expanse of Copacabana beach to watch a midnight firework display and throw little baskets of flowers into the waves as an offering to the goddess.
• Rio also gets into the record books with its Christmas festivities: the city's 82-metre high artificial Christmas tree (a conical metal framework covered in lights), which floats in the middle of Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon near Ipanema beach, is the biggest of its kind in the world.