If you go to any social media channel right now, there are countless live sessions about “how society will look when quarantine ends”: economists, psychologists, sociologists, “digital influencers”… you name it. Everyone wants to have a best guess on how long it will take to have the economy back on track, how education will be changed, how will relationships between countries differ.

There are so many questions, and so many people guessing, that it can easily lead many of us to anxiety and frustration. And the honest truth is that nobody actually knows, for sure, what lies ahead of us. If you think 4 months back to your New Year’s Eve hopes for 2020, did you imagine you would be wiping supermarket items, or wearing medical masks to go out, or that you would be celebrating birthdays online? Probably not. Yet here we are, doing all those things and so many others that would have been considered unbelievable just a few months ago. The year 2020 has been the “plan to be surprised” year, for sure.

So, instead of getting anxious about the uncertain, what we can do now is to evaluate how these past 6 weeks have changed our lives, deep inside. Our relationships with our families, our coworkers, and as members of the broader society. I have been trying to do this exercise, and I am happy to say that a smile often comes to my face. Of course, I am, like everyone else, overwhelmed with the multiple tasks I have. And yes, 95% of the time it is exhausting, and I can only hope for this to be over soon. But at the same time, some great moments that were put aside before, do happen.

During the holiday, playing board games and cards for hours with my family was one of the best moments I had this year. When you have 4 kids and step kids in a range between 10 to 28 years old, it is not usual to have everyone together at home on a holiday, unless it is a celebration. There is always one out at a friend’s house, at a party, at the beach… The question “why don’t you stay home playing board games and cards with mom and dad on a sunny holiday” is absolutely outrageous in normal days. But yes, we did that. And we had a blast! Time flew by with all of us laughing so hard, having so much fun. The interesting thing is that it also brought me great memories of playing those exact same games when I was a kid with my sisters, cousins, and friends. And how grateful I am to have lived that, back then and now. So how about we make these kinds of memories our lasting memories in 20 years from now?

We might also like to consider which are the rituals we have established during the past 6 weeks that we would like to continue after quarantine ends with our families, our teams, our society. That is something that is totally up to us.

Cris Conforto
Director of Advancement

The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging us all to learn new ways of doing things at an incredible rate. Together with new home office practices, parents are having to learn to support their children as teachers find ways to teach them via Distance Learning. Many of us have had to improve our cooking skills (whether we like it or not), to pay attention to every single action we take at home (“you used it, you clean it”), but most of all, we are learning how to be mindful of each other.

Brazil does not have a strong winter season, so we are not used to staying indoors at all. Especially here in Rio, everything is about the sun, the beach, the forest, the parks… and together with all that, comes the “service culture”. We are pampered, all the time, by hard working smiling people that make their living out of giving us what we wish for, when and where we need it. Since quarantine started, there has been no refreshing coconut water after a run, no “mate gelado with biscoito globo”, and no guys on the streets to help us find a good spot to park our car.

For many of us, it is annoying not to be able to keep our leisure routine, not to work out, or see our friends or get a nice tan. But for many in the service and informal sectors, it means not having food to give to their families or to buy soap to wash their hands and keep them safe from getting sick.

It is critical at times like that communities look to those less fortunate and do what they can to help. So, in order to provide much-needed support, we launched a campaign in our EARJ Community.

In the past 10 days, we have raised over R$30,000, which will allow us to assist around 150 families in Rocinha by donating food, milk, cleaning products, diapers, etc. We have partnered with Instituto Reação that also plays a strong role in Rocinha, and together with them, we have purchased “digital food baskets”, meaning that a family gets a card to purchase items in their local market, helping the local business as well.

We are so thankful and proud of the amazing spirit our community has shown, the spirit we have always cherished throughout 83 years of EARJ history.

Now we believe we can go beyond by increasing not only our support to Rocinha, but also by helping other communities in need. It is time to show our support to more amazing people who’d rather be leaving their homes to go to work every day, but just cannot.

So – if you can – please donate any amount to the account mentioned below. Let us recognize the incredible resilience and solidarity of those in our society who do not enjoy the privileges that many of us enjoy.

Cris Conforto
Director of Advancement