Brazilian trainee advances from garden-wrecker to CAEP horticulture program coordinator

Leila, 26, came to the United States from her native Brazil so she could become proficient in the English language through CAEP. To say she has ccomplished that goal extremely well would be an understatement. But more important than her knowledge of English is the way she uses the language to communicate. She is both informing and entertaining as she uses exactly the right words to express ideas, describe experiences and explain almost everything.

She credits her increased communication skills and her advancement primarily to CAEP. "I came to this program not knowing what I was going to get, and I got more than I expected," she said, in her animated Brazilian accent. "It's awesome."

Leila, from Pinhal, in eastern Brazil, in the Southern Hemisphere, came to the United States because she realized she needed to learn English in order to achieve any meaningful career opportunities. She researched, looking for a good program through which she could learn English. She discovered CAEP, which seemed to her to be effective and affordable, as it allowed its trainees to learn about their host nations while learning about different careers in those nations. Leila became a CAEP trainee in the United States.

Her first assignment was on a Buffalo farm near Montello, Wisconsin, "It was very cold," is how she summed up one of her original impressions. At that time, her knowledge of English was minimal, to say the least. She was unable to fill orders through the company's web site, as she had planned. It was then that the infamous garden destruction incident happened. It was because of her lack of understanding of Northern Hemisphere horticulture. She was asked to clean the garden. When Leila saw seasonally-dormant
plants, she thought they were dead, and uprooted everything. "We (she and her hostess, Georgia Derick) had a huge problem talking to each other," she acknowledged. "I didn't know a word of English. The first three months were really difficult." At one point, in fact, Leila was so discouraged that she was planning on dropping out of the program and returning to Brazil. A call to her mother influenced her into reversing that decision. She stayed, and she was assigned a variety of other duties, such as driving tractors and making hay.

She became involved in the farm's marketing. She also worked on learning English in every way possible, such as watching movies with closed captioning. She estimates that she has watched the movie, "Forrest Gump" 150 times because the lead character speaks so slowly. Because Leila's Wisconsin hostess had friends who were Native American, she had the opportunity to observe some of the rituals of their religion. It taught her to respect the culture of others, she noted. Leila also met many of her host family's other friends. One of them, Peggy Lewis, a former teacher, proved especially helpful to Leila in her learning objectives. She not only volunteered to give her English lessons on a regular basis, but also and equally
important, she taught her about U.S. culture and customs.

After five months, Leila felt she was ready for new experiences, so she received a new placement, as a worker and shuttle driver on a canola farm in Hanna, North Dakota., near the Canadian border. She was flabbergasted by the size of the town. "The population was 16 people, two cats and one dog," she said. "It had gravel roads. There were more people in the cemetery than in the city." Leila's host was the mayor of Hanna, Scott Howatt.
After the culture shock of finding that a city could be as small as Hanna, Leila learned to like the place, and especially its people. She commented she now considers it better to be in a small place where everyone cares about each other, than in a large place where nobody even knows each other. "It was a very nice place to be," she said. "The ladies made me pies." However, it was the weather and the elements of nature that caused Leila to ask for another placement in a location more in line with her climate preferences. Specifically, it was her first experience with a snowstorm which caused the heater and all the systems to go down.

Leila was transferred to a packing house in Rocklege, Fla. Her hot was Jim Harvey "To me, it was one of the best places I could live in my entire life," she said. "I lived with eight CAEP trainees from different countries. We saw dolphins and were near the beach. It was awesome." As much, however, as Leila enjoyed being in Florida, her time there was limited because the work in which she was involved
was seasonal. She was offered the opportunity to come to Fergus Falls, Minn., national headquarters of Communicating for Agriculture, parent organization of CAEP. She became an assistant to CAEP's coordinators, helping hosts all over the nation in in dealing with different issues. Among other things, she began doing a lot of traveling. "I assisted everybody," she said.

Leila apparently performed so well as an assistant coordinator that she was offered a permanent position as coordinator for horticulture programs. She accepted in November, 2006. She now works with about 200 trainees (representing approximately 35 nations) and between 70 and 80 host families. She explained that she can do her job while headquartered in any location. Because of changing visa requirements, she technically is currently a resident of Brazil, although she spends much of her time in Fergus Falls. This status may change, though, she noted.

Leila pointed out that while she was a trainee, she experienced a wide variety of what nature has to offer. "I was in a snowstorm in North Dakota, a tornado in Wisconsin and a hurricane in Florida," she explained.
More important than experiencing radically different types of weather, Leila stressed, was that she has experienced considerable personal growth through CAEP. She said she feels her horizons are continually expanding in a major way as the result of her association with CAEP. "Being with the exchange program opened my head to so many ideas," she emphasized.