Casa do Caminho NGO Intern Gains Web Skills

Web / Creative communication

Casa do Caminho NGO
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

May the 2nd, December the 31st

Plan
 Why did I choose Casa do Caminho
 My application
 My NGO
 History
 Organization
 Ophanage
 Centro Cultural
 Language School
 My internship(s)
 Centro Cultural
 Web
 Cineclub
 Photography
 Graffity workshops
 Language Centre
 Reception
 SEO
 SEM
 Video
 Beach Volley
 Conclusion

Why did I choose Casa do Caminho NGO ?

My goals before my internship were to :
 Be helpful for the planet or the community : to volunteer
 Discover a new culture : Brazil
 Learn a new language : Portuguese
 Use my skills and knowledge : web / creative communication

So the first thing I did was going to Google and search « volunteer in Brazil ».

Sometimes, we have to apply for a hundred different companies to get a job…
And sometimes, rarely, the first opportunity that you find, is the one for you.

When I saw this opportunity to volunteer in Rio de Janeiro for Casa do Caminho, I did
everything I could to be the chosen one.

My application

Thanks to EUROMED Management (coaching, resources…) and my own personal
experience in job/internship application, I was prepared.

I needed my resume made by a web designer

I went to www.codeur.com, to find a freelance in France to do the job for cheap.

I received 17 offers in 24 hours, from 35€ to 215€

And I finally chose one for 50€

My application – my suggestion about the web site

I checked out their website and thought some things needed to be changed. So
Before my Skype Interview I made a suggestion for the website.

My application – my Skype interview

Bart Bijen, the dutch manager of the NGO, interviewed me for this position.

I knew spanish and I kinf of learn
portuguese by myself but I was not
really fluent in portuguese.

So when I knew I had to perform the
interview in both english and
portuguese, I prepared my speech in
both language.

… And it worked.

My NGO – Casa do Caminho History
In 1982 Carlos Alberto Nogueira established Casa do Caminho with the help of five friends. They
distributed aid to homeless people in the area of Xerém, RJ. Their vision was to create a shelter for
homeless people in a green natural setting far from the urban center.
In the first five years of the project, the original group lived among destitute men, women, and
children and they formed a unique community that resided in primitive buildings without
electricity.
It wasn’t until the 1990s that the objectives of Casa do Caminho changed to prioritizing projects for
children solely.
Nowadays, Casa do Caminho still focuses on children, so the core product did not change but
throughout the years many side products have been added to the portfolio.
In 2003, Bart Bijen, the director of Casa do Caminho, designed the volunteer program. After the
implementation of the volunteer program there has been a continuous flow of volunteers that
provide Casa do Caminho with the flexibility to expand its facilities. Ever since, this program is
evolving rapidly.
Since 2003, Casa do Caminho has added an adolescents´ center to house the older children to
make the project itself more sustainable and give the orphanage program a longer range. Various
social enterprises have been added to the portfolio, i.e. the Language Centre, in order to create
incoming cash flow and support the orphanage with continuous funds. The ICT project
(Information, Communication, Technology), a Sport and Community Centre, and a Sexual
Education project have been added too, in order to augment education as a supporting pillar of the
Casa do Caminho program. Also, Casa do Caminho is sells Doces de Verônica, which are
homemade preserves made from the Orphanage organic farm.
In the last five years close to 300 volunteers from all over the world continually shaped, developed
and updated the program to make it more effective and more professional; this provides more help
and more care to the children of Xerém.

My NGO – Casa do Caminho Organization
The orphanage in Xerém is composed
of three different houses : one for
Orphanage
kids between 3 and 12, one for male
teenagers, and one for female
teenagers.
The language school in
Ipanema teaches
portuguese to The idea of the
« gringos » (foreigners) Language Cultural Centro Cultural is to
and english to School Center give back to the
brazilians. All the Xerém community
profits go to the (that supports the
orpahange. orphanage) by
giving for free, or for
Clube really cheap, access
Video here Verde to culture : language
classes, cinema, thea
tre, dance, music…
The Clube Verde is a green project that will enable
teens to work in farms and in the green area in
general

My NGO – Casa do Caminho The orphanage

The
Sede « sede », « headqquarter » in
portuguese is where 20 kids
live. The place is situated in
the hills in the middle of
nature
Casa CAM, Casa dAs
Amigas, is where the girls
live. They are more or less
ten. The house is located in
the village of
Xerém.
Casa CAM Heppenheim

In Casa Heppenheim, also in Xerém, live more or
less 10 boys. The name is from a rich donator that
financed the project.

My NGO – Casa do Caminho Centro Cultural

The Cultural Centre situated in the village of Xerém, offers thanks to 6
volunteers, different activities for cheap or for free :
• Language classes => english, spanish, french
• Music => Piano, guitar, dance
• Theatre
• Art => photography, graffity, creative arts
• Cinema => free cine club every Thursday

I was myself working at the Cultural Center between May and August.
During this time I was in charge of many different things :
• French classes
• Graffity workshops
• Photography workshops
• Cineclub
• Web 2.0 Promotion

My NGO – Casa do Caminho Language Centre

The Language School is more than necessary for the NGO. A significant
amount of the money the NGO gets monthly, is from it (the donations are
the other source of income)

The Language Centre is the leading Portuguese language school situated
two blocks away from Ipanema Beach, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“We offer Brazilian Portuguese Courses for foreigners from 14 R$ per hour (best prices in South Rio).
We teach Portuguese to adults, children, university groups and businesses. We have group lessons, as well
as private lessons. We offer regular and intensive courses at flexible times in the morning, afternoon and
evening. There are no registration fees or other hidden fees. Our teachers are all highly qualified, experienced
native Brazilian teachers.”

My Internship(s) – Casa do Caminho

My internship(s) – Centro Cultural Web 2.0

The Cultural Center was knew and unknown in Xerém. The goal was to advertise to
our public : young people willing to learn something different for cheap/free.

In Brazil, Facebook is a pretty knew thing, people used to prefer Orkut, an equivalent
runned by Google and Msn Hotmail. But 2011 was the exact year when the worlwide
leader Facebook succeeded invading Brazil. Good for me, because I knew way more
about Facebook that about Orkut.

When I arrived the CC had a Facebook group, a Facebook fan page, an Orkut account, and
a couple of blogs… Any of them was really successfull and well uploaded. My first
decision was to focus on Facebook that has the same content as a blog
(news, photos, videos, article, network on the platform…) .

My strategy was to upload as many info and content as possible. Everything had to be
directly related to our activities and had to be intesresting for the FB users.

I took pictures of all the classes and workshops, made video interviews of all the
volunteers, uploaded news and schedules for the weeks to come… And I had an idea.

Case Study – IRL + Web 2.0 = Success
As a community manager, I was convinced that an online strategy could be efficient only if
it was supported by an IRL (in real life) strategy .

We needed to meet our community in a public place and make them go to our Facebook
platform.

As I started working with photography in 2010 in France (in a night club and for amateur models), I
thought photography could be a good way to catch people’s attention.

My strategy was directly based on the one some websites use to get viewers and generate
moneytizing their traffics => taking a picture of people and then giving them a
business card with the address of our platform.

So I needed to :
1. Find THE busy place and its rush hour
2. Catch people’s attention
3. Make them go to our FB page
 Look professionnal

1. Find THE busy place and its rush hour :

In Xerém, there is a famous place called Mantiquira where young people and family like to
hang out, have açaï (amazonian fruit), « batata frita » ( french fries) , « pipoca » (popcorn) and watch
the teenagers skateboarding.

Xerém is a very religious town and there is a huge amount of churches, mostly evangelist.

So it was pretty obvious, that the Mantiquira was the place. And the moment was Sunday
night after the evening Mass when people are logically well dressed.

2. Catch people’s attention :
We need to be at a place where everybody goes through, make them watch, stop and
participate. So we decided to put on some dance music, and light up the our stand.

We also printed a 3x5m poster to put behind the people we photoshoot with our FB
address on it facebook.com/xeremcultural.

It made it professional

Random people
become real stars for a
moment

3. Make them go to our Facebook page and like it :

We caught people’s attention, we made them smile and get interested to our activities…

Now we had to convert prospects in clients. So we printed business card and gave them to
everybody that we photoshoot or that stopped by to take a look/ discuss with us.

To get the pictures, they needed to go to our FB page and like it. Then we they liked
it, they were reachable. And we could communicate with us.

Plus, because it was an opportunity for them to
have professional photos of them. Many of these
people turned the pictures into FB profile
pictures. Our FB address was on them, so they
started to advertise for us.

Results

I started this action July the 10th, less then 2 months after the number of Facebook
likes had been multiplied by more then 10 !
More students for the
classes

Better brand image in
town
329 likes

More traffic at the
27 likes Cultural Center
launching

Nov 2010 July 2011 Sept 2011
my starting date

Critical Success Factors

1. The right place at the right moment

2. Photography catches people’s attention

3. We gave a chance to Xerém people to feel like a star for 5 minutes

4. The action was related to our activities (photo workshop, art, music…)

This action showed how much the web 2.0 needs to be supported by an IRL strategy.

If young people can spend up to 5 hours a day on the internet, it means that during
19 hours they are In Real Life !

My internship(s) – Centro Cultural Cine Club

The Cine Club is a weekly activity happening on Thursday nights at 9:00pm

The idea is to get people together for free and show an alternative
movies, something they could not / would not see by themselves : short
movies, independant cinema, art, documentories, unknown master pieces…
Just like « 5 millions of others », « O povo brasileiro », « 5times favela »…

The Cine Club started to be a success, up to 45 people were coming every Thursday
to watch the movies, so we decided to invite some directors over.

For example Cacau Amaral, one of the director of 5x Favela shown at Festival de
Cannes in 2010, came to present his movies and discuss with the audience.

My internship(s) – Centro Cultural Cine Club

Because we had Giovanny Moreno, a drama teacher at the orphanage, and because
he knew I was into video production (CupcakeTV) , we started to make short
movies and documentories for the Cine Club, here is the trailer of Casa
Velha, all made by Casa do Caminho : the kids, the drama teacher and myself.

rated it

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xjsweu_trailer-a-
casa-velha-by-cupcake-tv_creation

My internship(s) – Centro Cultural Photography
workshops

I am no professional at photography. I started a bit more than a year ago. But as
long as I was creative and motivated, I was able to bring something for the
teenagers I was teaching.

The workshops were a lot about « light painting » as
people usely like it for being fun and pretty.

here a video

But I also offered
free
photoshoots at
the end of every
workshop. Girls
loved it !

My internship(s) – Centro Cultural Graffity workshops

Usally the workshops were open to Xerém community : teenagers from the town or
the area.

The graffity workshop was only open to Casa do Caminho teenagers because
the spray paints are very expensive in Brazil

My internship(s) – Centro Cultural Results

Being at the Cultural Center was a great experience for a lot of reasons :

1. I was doing creative activities such as photos, videos, graffities…

2. I was close to the orphanage and was able to see the kids and teenagers
everyday

3. It put me in a really brazilian enviornment, not the one I used to know

4. I learnt portugues really fast

But Xerém is a very small town, and I could not live more than 4 months in it. I
was born and raised in a city so something was missing in my life.

I decided to apply for the web 2.0 / SEO position at Casa do Caminho Language
School in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro.

My internship(s) – Language Centre Language Centre

At Casa do Caminho Language School, I was also in charge of the same
kind of missions, but I was hosted for free in Ipanema, 2 minutes away
from the beach.
Video production

French classes Web promotion

Beach volley

My internship(s) – Language Centre Reception

At the Language Centre, we are 6 volunteers from Australia, South
Africa, Belgium, Holland and France. We all live together in the school
building.

Our main task is being at the reception in charge of :
1. Welcoming and giving informations to people
2. Cashing in payments
3. Doing the paper work
4. Answering emails in our language (me in french and portuguese)

We have 5 weekly shifts of 7 hours so 35 hours a week. From Monday to
Friday. It is either from 7h30 to 14h30 or from 14h00 to 21h00.

But we also have specific taks. Mine are web 2.0, Search Engine
Optimization and Marketing (SEO/SEM) and the beach volley activity.

My internship(s) – Language Centre Web 2.0

The page already had a good amount of likes, and a good interaction with
the IRL world : pictures of the activities  tours, beach
volleyball, cineclub…

So my job was just to run it, and improve it a little bit.

Just like adding a landing page to increase the rate viewers/like

This is the first
thing people now
see when they
visit the page

In 3 months we
got 22% increase
of the likes

My internship(s) – Language Centre SEO

When I arrived, the school was paying a company to add backlinks on
marketing website.

Thanks to that, the website ranking got way better, and the traffic
increased a lot.

This strategy is prohibited by Google, it can only be a short term option.
Google bots crawled websites and analyze this kind of link building
strategies. As soon as you get caught. Google put your website in a
« sandbox » and you disappear from the SERPs (search engine result pages).

It was really difficult to make my boss understand and accept that. As
this « black hat » strategy generated a lot of incomes for the school.

But I made a report based on forums, blogs posts, books about SEO
that I called with humor « SEO for Dummies » then my boss decided
to stop working with them.

3 of the 34 slides right after, (full presentation here)

by Rudy Turinay for Casa do Caminho

Search Engine Optimization
1.
2.
Definition of SEO
A complete strategy
Plan
1. Content is King
1. What kind of content ?
2. How to optimize our content ?
2. Backlinks
1. Definition
2. What is a good quality backlink ?
3. How to get good quality backlinks ?
3. Ninja Linking
1. Definition
2. How to use the Ninja Linking ?

Definition
Definition : Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving
the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural“ or
un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Other forms of Search
engine marketing (SEM) target paid listings.

A complete strategy
How to get on top of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)?
1. Write One-of-a-Kind Content
2. Add brand new content all the time
3. Use keywords
4. Watch out the competition on these keywords/key phrases
5. Write an accessible website
6. Get good quality backlinks

My internship(s) – Language Centre SEM

Thanks to that we saved $400 a months and kept our ranking on
Google !

Then we started to use this money for something else : Search Engine
Marketing  Adwords

Even when you have the first ranking on the SERPs, you are actually at the
2nd (or 3rd) position right after Google ads

That is why it is
always usefull to
invest on Google
Adwords

My internship(s) – Language Centre SEM

Adwords clearly was an option that guaranteed us a good traffic
during the last few months.

This healthy source of traffic is giving us more and more visitors.

We even miss « clicks » due to budget, which means that with a higher
budget we’ll get more « clicks ».

Adwords investment Clicks and viewers

Clients Monthly report here

My internship(s) – Language Centre Video production

In order to offer creative content and generate more traffic and more
business for the school, I was i charge of take pictures and making videos
of all kind of things :

1. The classes

2. Interviews of the volunteers

3. Students testimonials

4. City Tours (called « shitty tours » )

5. Beach volleyball…

6. The events

Here is our Youtube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/cdclanguagecentre

Conclusion– Casa do Caminho
At the time I am writing this, my internship is not over yet. I am currently
performing my seventh out of eight months in Rio de Janeiro State. Four in
the small town of Xerém. Harsh on the one hand in extreme conditions but
on the other hand amazing thanks to the kid and the lessons I learnt. And
three in the Cidade Maravilhosa of Rio de Janeiro with all its parties, its
culture, its dirtiness, its lack of infrastrure, its beaches, its accent, its
slang, its people…

I have to work, 4 more weeks and a lot of things can happen during this
time. But so far it has been a wonderful opportunity to work for an NGO in
Brazil. Even if a lot of unexpected storied happened to me I can tell that I
completed all my goals.

I fell in love with Brazil the day my mum gave me an Atlas as a present. I found
brazilian and portuguese flags the cuttest ones. Because they were complicated
and unique. Then I started to discover more about brazil, its culture, its dances,
Its football and its language… And I knew it would a place in my heart forever.

After living 8 month in it, I can say I was first disappointed. Nothing is like I was
imagining. I experienced traveling before, so I know it is never the way you have
been told it is, but still it surprised me again.

I do not know if I will come back to live in Brazil in the future. I need to see more
Countries to really compare.

But which is sure, is that Brazil is a very special country, and will always be for me.

I was not only in a new culture, but in a complete new environment and experience. I had
spent 1 month in the West Indies, 3 months in Mexico, 6 months in San Francisco away
from my friends and family. So I kind of knew what it was to be alone having to integrate
a new culture.

But it was the first time I was volunteering full time. And this, was the most difficult thing. 7
days of work a week, from the sunrise to late nights, sharing a room with 4 other
people, having cold showers, electricity blackouts, eating the same food everyday… Made
me realize I was a very selfish and spoiled kid.

It was something that I could not have realized before because I never had the chance to put
myself in such an extreme situation and conditions. It definetely made me grow.

Fortunately I am a very motivated and strong person that barely gives up with my goals. I
went through critical situations that made me miss physical and mental comfort back
home but I finally found solutions and solved problems.

When I go to a country, I try as much as possible to act like the people and
then become one of them. Some societies are easier to integrate then
others. Brazilian society is very welcoming one but it does not mean
becoming brazilian is an easy thing.

Their food for exemple, based on rice and beans everyday was a huge
surprise. In a country with so much diversity in terms of
fruits, vegetables and animals, I was expecting something way more
exotic. They also never drink water with meals, they have
guarana, sodas, or most of time : beer.

Brazil teached you how to be happy : you are poor ? You are orphan ? You are
homeless ? See the good aspect of it… anyway this is the only thing you can
do. This is not a stereotype to say brazilians are positives. They do not
always smile or dance for no reason. But they learnt how to be happy with
less. Not because of samba, caipirinha or football, but because they went
through slavery, misery, dictatorship… Not so long ago.

Cariocas do a lot of sport and/or work out. They take care of their body and
this is very inspiring.

Since I came back from San Francisco in June 2010, I decided to become step
by step vegetarian. Contrary to what we can think, being veggie in Brazil is
a very complicated decision as meat (churrasco and assado = bbq & roast meat) is part
of the culture. But I staid strong and ate only when it was necessary.

First I learnt brazilian portuguese, which does not make me unique but
rare.

What made me really unique is the human experience. Working with
orphans, in extreme conditions gave me such an other vision of life. I
am not sure I have the same goals in life that most of the other
students.

Happiness would be the only one thing that matters in my life, no matter
what I will be doing, where I will be living, and how much I will be
earning.

Thank you for reading
If you have more time, I would like you to watch this video I made about a
very important event at the orphanage : The Olympic Games with the
kids.

It is a yearly event when all the kids and teenagers get together and play
during a full week learning the values of sport.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRNRSiqwzXU

Casa do Caminho NGO Intern Gains Web Skills

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Similaire à Casa do Caminho NGO Intern Gains Web Skills

Similaire à Casa do Caminho NGO Intern Gains Web Skills (20)

Dernier

Dernier (20)

Casa do Caminho NGO Intern Gains Web Skills