Opinion: Public Service

10/16/2014 - 09h54

There are some individuals who deserve recognition and thanks for their efforts to enlighten those of us who live outside of Brazil, and most especially during a sharply contested presidential election.

The first is Professor David Fleischer of Brasilia. David was brought up in Columbia County, in rural upstate New York, where he had been a member of the 4-H club, a organization of young farmers. He dropped out of Antioch College to join the Peace Corps.

He had previously spent a summer in 1956 on a family camping holiday in Canada. His only previous foreign trip. The American 4-H clubs had good relations with the Brazilian National Rural Extension (ABCAR), and between 1962-1964 he was assigned to Minas Gerais, where he met and married Edyr, his Brazilian wife.

He was in Brazil when Tancredo Neves was prime minister and during the '64 coup.

He went back to Antioch College and switched to political science. He then obtained a PhD at the University of Florida. He returned to Minas Gerais in 1969 and since 1972 he taught at the University of Brasilia where he chaired the department of political science and international relations between 1985-89. He has dual Brazilian and US nationality.

Since 1996 he has published his "Brazil Focus" on line. As might be expected his "weekly report" has a strong focus on elections, public opinion polling, and on politics (including the status of the various on-going corruption scandals.) Since 1996 he has also been president of the Brazilian chapter of Transparency International. .

The second person is Leona Forman, founding president of the Brazil Foundation. Leona was born in Tianjia, China, to Jewish exiles from Russia. In 1953 she arrived in Rio de Janeiro after a 40 day voyage via South Africa from Hong Kong. She attended the Colegio Anglo-Americano and the National University (now UFRJ) and was naturalized as a Brazilian citizen.

She then lived in New York City with her husband Shepard Forman, the anthropologist, and worked for 30 years at the UN where her last job was liason with non-governmental organizations globally.

In 2000 she founded the Brazil Foundation, an New York based charitable foundation that captures money from rich US-based Brazilians as well as Brazilian and American corporations, for good works in Brazil. In the US charitable donations are tax deductible (www.brazilfoundation.org).

Over the past 13 years US$20 million has been raised and over 300 projects supported throughout Brazil. Leona now lives with her husband in Rio. The most recent Brazil Foundation Gala was held at the David H. Koch Theatre at Lincoln Centre in New York City in September. It celebrated "women" and raised over US$4 million.

Even "Vogue" magazine was impressed. Leona has found a winning combination: Fun, beauty, lots of Brazilian noise and music, a very good party, and of course lots of money, and all for an excellent Brazilian cause.

David and Leona, are both in the their early 70s.They are a salutary reminder that long term commitment, as well as an abiding love of Brazil, still matters.