Before I go on with my description of the cast of characters in my neighborhood I want to pause and write about an incredible community service project a friend of mine, Chris “Sparky” Sparks, has been working on for the past two years.
Chris is an amazing guy. A Marine pilot with experience flying missions in the Middle East, he was an ROTC instructor at Vanderbilt, and a student in the Owen Graduate School of Management. He decided he wanted eventually to pursue a career in international business. He studied Portuguese at Vanderbilt and decided the best way to gain true fluency was to move to Brazil. When he went into the Reserves last year, he came down to Rio and, on his own savings, began to build a non-profit (NGO, non-governmental organization) in the largest slum (favela) in Rio–Rocinha. With some 350,000 inhabitants, Rocinha is a small city that has grown up on the western slopes of the Dois Irmãos mountains that separate Ipanema/Leblon from Barra da Tijuca, the highest priced neighborhoods in the city.
Rocinha with peaks of Dois Irmãos to the upper right, and Ipanema and Leblon in the distance
After encountering a series of frustrations trying to work with some existing NGOs in Rio, Chris eventually moved into Rocinha to live with a family and started Crossfit, a “strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists.” The idea is simple: teach people how to get into shape, do with some martial arts, and then teach them how to teach others. The multiplier effect. Through his own extraordinary efforts, he has raised donations (cash and equipment), rented a location in Rochinha, and trained locals to run the operation. With some luck, and all his hard work, he may be able to secure the sponsorship of some athletic companies, especially with the World Cup and Olympic Games coming to Rio in the next few years. If you would like to see something about Crossfit, check out the website at www.rocinhacrossfit.com To see his blog go to http://notesfrombrazil.weebly.com/
Crossfit loction in Rocinha
Recently, Chris took a job in Brasília and this will make his work here in Rio more dependent on those he has trained to run the operation in Rocinha. If you would like to help Chris out, he is in always in need of volunteers to help with fundraising, doing the paperwork to register Crossfit as a U.S. non-profit, or to secure donations of equipment. Chris has done an incredible amount of work to get this project off the ground, and it is on the verge of sustainability. I hope some of you reading this will help him out with this amazing project.
