Here in Brazil, I once spoke with the owner of an Internet café on an isolated island that is populated by indigenous people and heavily visited by tourists. This man had the only Internet connection on the island. When I asked him how much he charged for Internet access, he said he charged $3.00 USD per hour, (which turns out to be 60% of the Brazilian minimum wage for one person to access the Internet one hour per day for a month). So, I asked him whether he had many clients who were natives of the island. He said, "No, Brazilians lack the culture required for the Internet." I think they lack money, not "culture".
In this diary, I'm going to tell you about my passion, the Brazilian Peninsula Project, which aims to make Internet access affordable on just such an isolated peninsula in Brazil. Asking for your help is hard for me, but I think it's worth it for an immediate and practical solution to help others.
This month, I've spent three or four days per week on an isolated peninsula, on the Atlantic coast of Brazil, something I also talked about in a previous diary. [
http://www.dailykos.com/... ]
The peninsula is isolated by poor roads, the lack of state telephone lines and electricity. Nonetheless, it is home to thousands of indigenous people, a grade school a Government health post (with free medical care), a vibrant fishing community and tourist industry.
During Brazil's four-month summer, scores of tourists trek hours to the peninsula over roads that are impassible in the rain precisely because of the area's immense natural beauty, including endless and seemingly pristine beaches and navigable river, verdant forested swamps, and the utter lack of motorized traffic and artificial lighting that makes the sky a sea of stars at night.
The warmth of the afro-indigenous and indigenous populations is also crucial to the area's attraction because locals serve as guides and lead river and ocean-borne excursions to areas that would otherwise be impassible to tourists, like the Indian reservations and isolated beaches along the ocean and the river. When the summer is over, to sustain themselves through the low season, residents depend upon the fishing industry, off-island work and the few tourists who remain.
In spite of the interest the area holds for Brazilian and foreign tourists, the indigenous population's only modes of communication with the outside world are by exorbitantly expensive and unreliable cell phones and by physical travel across rivers or by sea to cities and towns ninety minutes away. Because the peninsula has no high school, children must leave the peninsula and live elsewhere at their parents expense to attend high school, if they reach eighth grade at all. Access to the Internet, if it were available, could improve access to information and learning opportunities.
There are a couple of Internet cafes now on the peninsula now, and an Indian cooperative, that offer Internet access during banker's hours (with Mediterranean-like lunch breaks). But because they charge $3.00 USD per hour, most natives of the peninsula have never touched a keyboard. Many young people who are familiar with computers only have accessed them on trips to big cities, with about the frequency of American's visits to Museum of Natural History or Disneyland. When Internet communication is essential on the peninsula, adult residents sometimes travel two hours to access the nearest functioning and affordable Internet café.
I've found a restaurant/bar/dancehall owner who lives and works on the prime riverfront area, who has four adolescent and young adult children there, and who already work diligently in his family business. (Shown here are the father, "Pelé" (no relation to the soccer player), Joanna (13 years old) and Andressa (11 years old). When not in school or doing their homework, they take orders in the restaurant and serve delicious whole fried fish with rice, beans and salad for $4.00 USD. Shown as follows are "Leoncio" (19 yrs old) in the striped shirt, and Zezinho (21 yrs), coming back from a fishing trip. Also shown are Joanna, on the bow of the boat and Andressa, in pretty white dress with red flowers. When Leoncio and Zézinho saw us walking along the peninsula, they gave us a ride home in the fishing boat! Leoncio has really taken to the computer, as I describe below and is already teaching his siblings and neighbors. "Vanda", the mother of the family, keeps a lower profile but her work, love and direction are essential to the functioning of the restaurant and the family's sustenance. With Pelé and his oldest son Leoncio as leaders, I am helping to organize a "people's Internet" café on the peninsula, hopefully to begin offering access within the next two weeks. (The door to the space that Pelé has dedicated to this project is seen here, between his daughters Joanna and Andressa.)
If you already think this is a great idea, please go to PayPal and make a contribution at BrazilianPeninsulaProject@Yahoo.com. We only need to raise USD $1031.00 to get this project off the ground by funding its satellite Internet connection through the end of December.
Pelé's family will host and operate the Internet access point and, with the adolescent and adult children as attendants, will increase the hours that the Internet is available to locals (perhaps 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM and 24 hours during the high season) without creating any new personnel costs. This will enable this new Internet to bring the cost of access for Indigenous people down from $3.00 per hour to $1.50 per hour or less. In the process, the children will learn as much about the deploying the Internet for others as a year at college might teach them.
The initiation of a popular Internet on the Peninsula, in a restaurant open 16-24 hours per day (depending on the season), and always seven days per week, would serve to bridge some of the information gaps created by geographic isolation and lack of access to high school. Even when closed, the Internet will have a doorbell that will be audible to the family in case of emergency. A people's Internet, available in the diverse hours when residents need to learn and communicate, would reconnect residents with family members who have left the island, enable them to study for and enroll in courses and licensing exams, and even allow them to order parts and materials not available on the peninsula with lower transactions costs.
The introduction of new access models and competition in the market will bring the price down to something Brazilans can afford.
Boldly, we even put up a sign announcing "Pelé's Internet", hoping that by doing services for the community that don't require Internet access, we can generate the $150.00 USD needed to install the satellite dish. We hope that Pelé's family's roots and popularity in the area and their success with their restaurant and dancehall and as fisherman will accrue to the Internet as well.
Perhaps quite foolishly, I bought a computer two week ago and immediately began training the children to work as Internet attendants, even before I knew how we would pay for the cost of an Internet provider between now and when the tourists come back in December. I cannot bring myself to wait until simple business logic makes it sensible, when tourist money again is plentiful. The people of the peninsula need to communicate and learn and research right now.
If assisted with the start-up costs, this family will run the Internet access point as a sustainable business that leverages the tourist dollars from summer to offer Internet access to residents all year round. The access point will offer VoiP telephone calls, instant messengers, resume preparation, games and music and will teach customers to use applications at no additional charge. I will mentor them, but they are highly competent in business and with other technology and will soon fly on their own. You can make a financial contribution to their Internet by posting it at PayPal.Com using the e-mail address BrazilianPeninsulaProject@Yahoo.com .
For peninsula residents, the host family has agreed to reduce the cost of Internet access by half. The people's Internet will further a half-hour of Internet access free to residents on their first time using the access point. During this free half hour, Internet attendants will teach residents to use the keyboard and will and set up an e-mail and/or instant messenger account, so that people immediately grasp and begin using the communication functions of the Internet.
The host family agrees with me that because most people in the area have never used a computer (just as most of the host family never had), demystifying the computer and the Internet is both a social good and a good business. Our goal is that the Internet quickly becomes a financially self-sustaining business, just like their restaurant, dance hall and fishing boat. I will provide all of the training and computer maintenance, eventually teaching Leoncio to do all of this work himself, which will bring down the expense of Internet access for the peninsula, and maintain its continuity, by avoiding reliance on outside technicians. "Leo" can be seen here in the striped shirt. He learned ten-fingered typing in a couple of hours and quickly began to teach his sisters and the neighbors. But to get a satellite Internet connection, Leoncio and his community need our help, which you can help to give by making a PayPal contribution to the entity identified as BrazilianPeninsulaProject@Yahoo.com.
Normally, there would be immense technical and practical challenges to mounting an Internet here, but all of them have been overcome, mostly by a judicious choice of local partners. Although the peninsula is not part of the electricity grid yet, the restaurant has powerful generators to run its food freezers, which will allow Pelé to provide reliable electricity for the Internet until the national grid reaches the peninsula later this year. The computer equipment costs are overcome because I have brought a new computer to get the project started and a neighbor has donated an old computer in lieu of a financial contribution. Advertising costs are nil because the Internet is sited in a functioning restaurant located on the waterfront that has an established clientelle for its food and dancehall. The restaurant/dancehall already has a business license that precludes any need to spend time and money on licensing issues. The clients of the established businesses are already longing for the otherwise unavailable services of the start-up. (Here are pictures of Pelé's dancehall from the inside, during the daytime.)
Moreover, teachers from the local grade school have asked to site one of their computers at the project if we will only connect their computer to the Internet and make it available to them at the same rates paid by other residents. They'll need a hub/switch to network these computers, but that can be had here for $35.00 USD. (Although one DailyKos member offered to donate a computer, he discovered that it would be more expensive to ship it to Brazil that to pay three months of satellite Internet access fees.)
The only remaining obstacle is obtaining a satellite Internet connection. At the current exchange rate of 2.12 Brazilian Reais to the dollar, a 300 Kbps connection would actually cost $422.17 USD per month, while a 200 Kbps connection would cost $257.75 per month. [ http://www.primenetwork.com.br/... ] Since the installation fee for 200Kbps installation fee is considerably lower than that for 300 Kbps and the equipment is the same, with no charge for a subsequent upgrade, it seems to make sense to request 200 Kbps initially and increase to 300 Kbps later, if necessary. The apparent advantage of the 300 Kbps connection is that it includes 2.5GB monthly downloads while the 200 Kbps includes only one GB, and is therefore more likely to result in the unpleasant surprise of a monthly excess usage fee.
My wife and I will make the three additional monthly payments on the initial Project computer somehow, even if the Project cannot contribute anything toward these payments. It seems very likely that when the tourist season comes the Internet will become self-sustaining. But my wife and I would be financially ruined if we committed to paying for the Project's Internet access and the Project was not able to make these payments between now and December. So, if it depended solely on me, I would have to cry uncle right now and admit that this project was financially unfeasible.
So far, residents of the peninsula have contributed $68.44 USD toward the installation of the satellite dish, which costs $140.38 USD. The peninsula administrator and a few others have promised to make contributions in the coming days. Plus, they will need USD $1031.00 to pay for a 200 Kbps Internet connection between the beginning of September and the end of December, when their business should fly financially on its own.
A few days ago, when I described this financial challenge at DailyKos, a number of commenters suggested that some readers would be willing to make contributions to a PayPal account to raise the Internet access and installation fees. Others suggested that I write a blog in which I continue to describe these experiences and our progress. I tried to combine these suggestions and cross-post my DK diaries at a blog with a PayPal button for who want to contribute, but it doesn't seem to be possible to put a Paypal button in a blog.
Meanwhile, even if we had the money for an independent website, the cost ($600.00 USD here, not including hosting) would be enough to provide this community with a satellite Internet provider until the end of November. Developing a website would distract from the immediate task of getting the Internet access point functioning and the workers trained, and then would require administrative attention that would be beyond the technical skills and time of myself the onsite staff.
Ironically, if I worked on developing a website myself, with a developer, I would have to abandon the peninsula and its inhabitants in the development stage, because there is no affordable Internet access there for the website development process. I could try to get the PayPal button on someone else's site, but I'm loath to get involved in such bureaucracy and interests that might involve.
So, I submit this Peninsula Project to the considered mercy of DailyKos readers, promising to continue to update you, hopefully including original photographs, articles and schoolwork prepared by the Indians themselves. To give you a clearer sense of what and whom you are investing in, the head of the Internet host family has agreed that pictures of him and his family be posted at DK and on the blog. (This is a photo of his daughter Andressa with a flower on the dock in front of the restaurant.) It is really they who will be trained to maintain the equipment and the Internet access for the benefit of the family and their neighbors. Their daily work to operate successfully will assure Internet access for themselves and everyone else.
Let's all chip in and pay the Indians' 200 Kbps Internet access September through December (USD $1031.00), when tourists will return and the hosts will have been sufficiently trained to operate a self-sustaining Internet operation on their own. Readers who speak some Portuguese can confirm the details I have provided to you by contacting the Star One (Satellite) Representative, Romério Ferreira da Silva at eletrosat2@hotmail.com or at 55 (73) 3295-4573. He can provide details of his negotiations with the Brazilian Peninsula Project, and of the other "Associação dos Indios" whose Internet is not functioning now. But please do not publish the names or locations of participants.
If you are satisfied that your contribution will be for a good cause, please visit the (new) Peninsula Project blog, where a PayPal button enables you to make a contribution, large or small, for the Internet access of the children and adults, families, teachers and health care workers - all of the community and visitors to the peninsula. Your contributions are greatly appreciated and I will get back to you tomorrow in the next couple of days about the Project's progress. The e-mail address needed to donate to this project at PayPal is BrazilianPeninsulaProject@Yahoo.com, but please write to me personally at manic_lawyer@yahoo.com .
Meanwhile, there are a couple of new details about my own Brazil family: The Brazilian government has approved my application for permanent residence (great!), but requires pay additional fees and visit a US consulate in a distant city before a residency card can be issued (utto!). I'm greatful, but overwhelmed thinking of all of the expenses involved.
Meanwhile, the local family court is moving toward approval of my application to adopt my two daughters. My goal is that one day they will become US citizens and have a chance at achieving their own professional aspirations, in spite of having been to modest circumstances in Brazil. (The youngest wants to be a medical doctor.)
I've discussed some serious personal challenges in diaries at DK, and in the past have limited all requests for help from Kossacks to working for systemic solutions like national health care. I'm not going to change that policy now. But I would ask your help for a programatic solution to the lack of communication on the Brazilian peninsula. Please go to PayPal now and make a contribution to help pay the USD $1031.00 to pay for their satellite Internet access from September through December.
I'll admit that your PayPal contributions to the Brazilian Peninsula Project ( BrazilianPeninsulaProject@Yahoo.com ) indirectly help me and my family, because Pelé will help me to make the payments on the Project computer if the Project generates money. If you help the residents of the peninsula to pay for their Internet access for these start-up months, you help me to resolve my temptation either pay for it myself, which would be financially ruinous for me and my family, or reconcile myself to the unacceptable idea of Joanna and Andressa and their community going without Internet access, even when they need it now to research and write their school reports.
BrazilianInternetProject@Yahoo.com on the PayPal site.
So, please make a contribution, and I'll continue to update you about our progress. We'll post photographs of the functioning Internet. And for the first time, Leoncio, Zezinho, Joanna and Andressa will have their own e-mail accounts where they can communicate with you about their progress. Please donate ten or one hundred dollars toward the USD $1031.00 that is needed to pay for their Internet access between September 1 and the end of December. Whatever you can do will be profoundly appreciated. It's BrazilianPeninsulaProject@Yahoo.com at PayPal.
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Postscript: A DK reader has offered to contribute a computer, but we need someone who is in the States and coming to Brazil to bring it down here for us? Anyone coming to Brazil?