Remember Lucas?
Hello dear host Friends,
Since it has been a little while since we last talked, a little refresh feels important. My name is Lucas and I am the Brazilian exchange student that lived in Canada hosted by the great club of Edmonton-Stratchcona in 2004-2005. You might remember me by being the tall / weird looking hair guy that could speak about three words in English when first arrived, or by my weekly little speeches in our Tuesday meetings or even by my public appearances as Rudolph in our Red Nose Operation. I hope that you will not remember me by the amount of food I ate on those Tuesdays (for those who do not remember that, I say let us keep it that way).
Either way, what I would like to share with you now it is what has happened to me after 10 years of that wonderful year, recently completed on last Tuesday, 11th. As close friends that have not seen each other for a while, I feel that mix of shame for not keeping contact as I should have with that certainty that in 5 minutes it will feel as if we never grew apart.
Right after I arrived in Brazil, I was selected to the Federal University in my state to the Civil Engineering graduation. I am happy to inform that since Dec/2010 I am officially a Civil Engineer. In between this time, I worked on geoprocessing and after as an intern in the building site of buildings.
In 2009, I met an old friend who had been to New Zealand and who was a year ahead of me in the University. We discussed the opportunities of the construction market in Brazil, which by then needed around 8 million houses, especially for families with income from zero to US$7.000/year. We understood that that many houses would require technology to be built and it had to be done in a much more sustainable way. He asked me what I knew about wood framing construction, to what I replied that I did live in houses like that in Canada. To put in context, at that time, there were about five houses in the whole country built like that - and I mean five as the number of fingers in one hand - something completely out of our culture. From that meeting we created a company called Tecverde.
Nowadays our company has built over 90.000 m2 of wood frame houses, both for high-class families as low-income condominiums. We directly employ over 120 people and, last year, Tecverde was selected the most innovative company of the country in the construction sector. And we do it all by panelizing the buildings - last year we installed a factory with the capacity of producing 110.000 m2 of walls per shift in a very automatized process. With all that, in 2013, we were selected to be part of an organization called Endeavor, which supports high impact entrepreneurs believing that entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurs are the key to change in our society.
From these achievements, I can say that I have been happily very busy for the past 7 years and that I feel proud for building more sustainable and better quality houses in Brazil.
In my personal life, I met a very nice girl named Ju in 2006 and last year we moved together. Modesty aside, what a catch! She is a very competent dentist and a magnificent cooker. Our plans definitely consider living in Canada. I am looking forward to the day she will see and live all the amazing things I have seen and lived when I was there. Thanks to these great experiences, my younger brother and her younger brother went overseas as Rotary Exchange students as well (Belgium and Germany, respectively). My father-in-law later became a Rotarian himself and last year was the President of his club. My parents are doing great, living by the ocean about 100km away from the city I live, Curitiba. My brother lives in São Paulo, where he is finishing his degree in Geography and my sister works with me in Tecverde as head of Marketing. From her I have an incredibly smart niece.
In 2014, we had the World Cup, also held in my city. Putting aside the problems before the event, the World Cup itself was very fun. I unfortunately did not get to watch the last couple of Brazil's game, but I was told there were at least seven good reasons that I did not miss much. We were less saddened by the fact that at least the Argentinians did not win as well. In 2016, there will be the Olympic Games in Rio, so if any of you plan to watch it, you are more than welcome to visit me!
I guess that is a good brief of what went on this last decade. I would like to reaffirm my gratitude for what you have done for me, not only when I was there, but for all the learnings that I do and will carry on throughout my entire life. I am proud to be part of the Edmonton-Stratchcona Club, eh!
Thank you very much for your attention. I hope to see you all very soon.
Lucas