The Atlanta - Rio de
Janeiro Sister City Committee was organized in 1978 as an initiative of the
former late Mayor, Maynard Jackson, to expand trade links with Latin
America. Many Atlantans, through
tourism or Brazilian educational experiences, had developed special
relationships with Brazil and / or Rio and flocked to become members. Not so many people in Rio participated
so the relationship was a bit one-sided.
In a case like this, the initial enthusiasm eventually wanes when ideas
and proposals keep going nowhere.
Over a ten year
period, the Atlanta – Rio Committee disbanded twice until Mayor Jackson tapped
Mrs. Sharon Flexner to chair it.
Sharon’s recruitment skills were formidable and the conference table in
a Buckhead travel agency soon filled up with a talented cross section of
Atlantans possessing broad interests in Brazil. Increasingly, because of the coming Olympics, many
Brazilians who were engaged in business projects here began to help develop
links with organizations and companies back home. The Atlanta – Rio Committee enthusiastically supported the
joint global business educations and student exchanges that I proposed
Northside High School
and North Fulton High merged in 1991 to form the new North Atlanta High
School. I went from teaching
students who were predominately enrolled in Northside’s performing arts magnet to students
predominately enrolled in the International Studies magnet. At first, I taught some World History
classes in the International Baccalaureate program while also taking over and
re-developing the International Business program. I was therefore open to new sources for providing my
students with international education learning opportunities.
Mrs. Sharon Flexner,
a warm and gracious lady, had been informed of my interest in international
education and called me up to invite me to become a member. My thinking was that Brazil was an up
and coming major economic power, Rio de Janeiro was a great city, so why not
get involved? Sharon, over the
next three years, would virtually groom me to serve as chair when she moved on
to establishing the Children’s Museum.
I had already revived
the Montego Bay High School student exchange program, inherited a partnership
with Gateshead College in Newcastle, England, and was interested in expanding
the sister school concept to South America. My being a social studies teacher with an interest in global
education and sister cities made building a partnership with a Brazilian school
a natural objective. My
investigations led me to the conclusion that given the problems that Brazilian
education was experiencing at the time that I should pursue a relationship with
the American School of Rio de Janeiro due to contacts I was making and that
school’s exceptional resources.
My intent was to seek
both a school to school partnership and import Brazilian arts and crafts to add
to our Jamaican and other Caribbean lines that we were selling. Mrs. Flexner assisted the IBP in doing
business with H. Stern’s Jewelry Rio-based arts and crafts outlet – Casa do
Folclore – by working through the Phipps Plaza store in Buckhead. The International Business Program’s
requests to engage in student exchanges were routinely approved because of our
business plan – import arts and crafts from artisans to build our giftware
company. I mailed a letter to Mr.
Hans Stern, the largest gems producer and distributor in Brazil, to introduce
myself and plans for doing business and possible sponsorship of our proposed
exchanges with the American School.
Hans Stern’s company
has stores in nearly every fashionable, upscale tourist destination in the
world so I imagined that Casa do Folclore’s crafts lines were the best that
Brazilian artisans produced and fit ACTCo’s
business plan and IBP learning objectives perfectly. The bottom line though was that IBP / ACTCo capital was less than a $1,000 and borrowing / credit at the
time was premature. I decided I
would fly to Rio to meet with H. Stern & Company to assess the value and
marketability of the crafts, determine profitability margins, purchase sample
lines for student approval.
My aim was to include
the student run enterprise’s importation of giftware lines into a joint project
/ student exchange with the American School of Rio de Janeiro. North Atlanta students would visit the
American School to begin a sister school relationship – both are IB schools too
– to strengthen the sister city bond between Atlanta and Rio. The respective sister cities
commissions would:
·
Sponsor
for secondary students joint global business education programs at the high
school level
·
Involve
students in the direct importation / exportation of goods to experientially teach
international trade practices
·
Support
student exchanges for the purpose of promoting for the young people of Atlanta
and Rio de Janeiro the building of friendship and future trade connections.
I prepared to meet
with City of Rio de Janeiro officials to collaborate on strengthening the Rio –
Atlanta Committee which was functioning under the leadership of several
expatriate Americans and Sally Pecanha, a Carioccan. Ideally, I hoped for a public high school in Rio to twin and
build a partnership with – the reality was that even Rio city officials steered
me the American School with its spectacular campus set amidst a mountain side
rain forest and families and students with homes far above the national poverty
level.
This exploratory and
organizational trip was made possible by a Varig Airlines sales representative
whose job was to build the direct flight trip business that Varig had just
instituted. After several months
of doggedly petitioning the rep and trying to wear him down to provide me a pro
bono airline ticket to Rio, Varig
recognized that I was trying to achieve objectives on behalf of North Atlanta,
the Atlanta – Rio Sister City Committee, the Atlanta Sister Cities Commission,
the Mayor’s Office of International Affairs and granted me the subsidy. I believe that Varig’s investment was
returned in full as I was a very busy guy that week trying to leave behind a
stronger local sister city committee, install a couple of programs, and
commence several joint projects.
Atlanta Caribbean
Trading Company Expands Its Scope and Lines:
I met with American
School Headmaster Dennis Klumpp who, at the time, bore an amazing resemblance
to actor Michael Douglas sporting a crew cut. He had previously served as Headmaster of American Schools
in Vienna and Paris but had settled in Rio because it was his wife’s home. Dennis quickly saw the value in the
joint programs and projects and became a good partner. See below Admissions Brochure, circa
1994.
I prepared North
Atlanta’s two student delegates, Seth Combs and Jackie Johnson, and their
families about safety in Rio and American School background information.
Mr. Taylor Boone was
an Atlanta attorney who was also a committed member of the Atlanta – Rio de
Janeiro Sister City Committee.
Taylor’s parents lived in Rio and he had grown up in the South American
city. Taylor asked his parents to
please support my mission to Rio – the Boone’s were wonderful people who
assisted me with local transportation and helping to form a functioning
committee.
Dennis and the
American School received our students with warmth, generosity, and provided
them an excellent program.
Picture of Rio’s
Copacabana Beach stretching all the way to Leblon, the next beach town over.
President Carter
delivered a sermon that Sunday morning that infused the gospel and foreign
relations in an inspiring manner.
Afterwards, Jimmy and Roslyn took a group photo with the 10th
grade IB trip to southwest Georgia.
Andrea is the taller girl with red hair in back left row behind Mrs. Carter,
Marguerite, a pretty blonde, is hidden behind President Carter.
Dennis wrote to me to
express his and the school’s appreciation for providing Marguerite and Andrea
with a fine program and fulfilling visit to Atlanta.
The sister cities
program is a network for groups and individuals in respective cities to propose
ideas and initiatives to each other.
Completion of ideas into successful projects fosters committee
validation. In 1995, Sharon
Flexner resigned her position as Atlanta – Rio Chair and essentially anointed
me to become the new chair. I
appreciated Sharon’s trust and faith in me and assumed the challenge to keep
the program moving forward. This
challenged was deepened by the sudden shrinkage in membership the committee
experienced upon the Olympics’ conclusion.
Many of the Brazilian
members of the committee had come to Atlanta for performing contract work for a
range of Olympic venues. Most
hooked on to another position when the games were over, often in Miami or back
in Rio. Varig pulled out of
Atlanta altogether after mounting losses from scheduling direct flights to
Brazil.
Myrna Cohen became
the Vice Chair and we quickly realized that my three year term was looking more
and more like a caretaker regime.
Given the lack of a functioning counterpart in Rio – Taylor’s parents
were returning to Atlanta – we recognized that our main goal was to keep the
program alive.
So I approached
Dennis Klumpp with some ideas that might capture his imagination.
I made a concentrated
effort to keep the committee’s structures strong while having few significant
projects to sponsor save for the educational collaborations with the American
School of Rio de Janeiro and H. Stern & Co.
Rio, of course, has
since been awarded the 2014 World Soccer Cup and 2016 Olympics. I apologize for the lack of pictures in
this short and personal sister city committee history. As required, North Atlanta high school
student exchange participants produced web pages documenting their visits but
the www.actco.org web site domain they were
posted on expired and was immediately bought up by a chemical company in
Texas. All of the pages were lost
– furthermore, all of my Rio sister city committee pictures were posted on the
committee’s web site located on the City of Atlanta web site and have been lost
too. Several crashed hard drives
during the past two decades apparently wiped out the rest.
The North Atlanta IBP
sent an exchange group to Rio March 30 – April 11, 1996 and needed Brazilian
visas because of the U.S. visa requirement and the Brazilian traveling public’s
resentment of it. This delegation
included my son Sasha who was enrolled in the International Baccalaureate that
year and the IBP the next.
By now I gather that
the reader is fully aware that travel between Atlanta and Rio is limited by the
above restrictive measures that originated with tens of thousands of Brazilians
over-staying their tourist visas and settling into American life. Both countries are working on ways and
means to better control legal immigration and speed up the entry process.
My students were
placed with families who mostly lived in luxury condo towers in Barra, a
suburban Rio beach town that included a private barrier island as a playground
of sorts. They bought
terrific new lines of high quality arts and crafts worth about $250 purchase price
and sold out very quickly at a 100% markup rate. The North Atlantans were treated to a great program and fun
time while I was leading another IBP group across Estonia and other two Baltic
Republics.
Scheduling conflicts
were the most typical problem facing partner schools trying to build long term
programs – the American School for that year could not send nor receive
exchange students. Virtually all
joint projects were placed on hold.
Unfortunately, Jaime
Arraujo disappeared upon returning to Rio and was not heard from for three
years when he finally surfaced at the 2001 SCI Convention in Atlanta.
Mr. Albert Maslia, a
highly valued member of the IBP / ACTCo Board of Directors, was selected for a
special economic development trip to Brazil and Rio. The trip was co-sponsored by the Atlanta Sister Cities
Commission and Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. I asked Al to please perform a couple of tasks for me during
his time in Rio.
The North Atlanta and
American School partnership began fading after this correspondence. I recognize the difficulty that IB
schools face in connecting with other educational worlds outside that very rich
and competitive academic sphere that is one of the best college prep patterns
in the world. The IB concept also
includes a small international business education component that satisfies most
member school’s entrepreneurship education needs.
North Atlanta was
receiving many new offers to engage with interesting schools in other important
countries and pursued new opportunities.
For a classroom instructor teaching at least four classes a day and
managing the social studies department, there was only so much time for global
salesmanship.
My three year long
term as Chair of the Atlanta – Rio Sister City Committee was up in 1998 and I
had become weary of promises that “a committee will be re-formulated after the
elections…or after Carnival” and so on.
I felt that a real Brazilian – American who spoke Portuguese was better
equipped to lead the committee and build a viable counterpart than I was….and I
was right. Mrs. Wilma Kruger
eventually took over and built a juggernaut of a committee that is a model for all others (501 c-3
foundation). The committee
is currently moving forward under the strong leadership of Franklin McGruder.
In 1998, I chaperoned
a student exchange to Ra’anana, Israel and discovered that a smaller and
resourceful city might make for a more facile partner. I am very proud to have chaired two
important and successful sister city committees, Rio de Janeiro and
Ra’anana.
For more information
about the Atlanta – Ra’anana Sister City Committee, please access all web pages
located under Sister Cities drop down column at www.arnoldheller.org.