Vitor Amaral – Vice President the University of Rio de Janeiro and Directeur of International Relations
Sir Vitor Amaral, Vice-President of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Director of the International Relations of this institution, came to Rennes in order to give a conference to the students of the Master ALPI, for the week of 16th to 22nd October 2017.
Mister Amaral’s interventions dealt with three main topics:
The 1st seminar offered an analysis of the Brazilian culture
The 2nd presented the political history of the country finishing by a focus on the impeachment of Dilma Roussef and the governance of Michel Temer after that event
The 3rd conference outlined the organisation of the educational system in Brazil
First of all, Mister Amaral highlighted the link between the Brazilian culture today and its colonial history and its development after this period of time. In fact, Brazil relied on what was going on in other countries, especially in France, to develop itself and show the image of a “civilised” country to the world. However, the country did not adapt those concepts to its postcolonial situation, which stunted its development. Wanting to “do as well as the rest of the world” impacted the Brazilian society. The latter kept this feeling of inferiority and the thought that everything coming from outside is better. Then, we discussed the different political regimes that have succeeded one another since the “discovery” of the country in 1500 until now with the Government of Michel Temer. Brazil went through many political systems after the colonial period, like monarchies, republics, dictatures and moments of transition marked by a certain instability and suffered various coups d’État. At the end, the country has not lived a reel period of political stability and that phenomenon has been reflected in its economy and the strong disparities between the citizens. Will the 2018 elections change the situation or represent another mandate among many others ?
Finally, Mister Amaral explained the functioning of the educational system in Brazil. He insisted on Advanced Education and its International Relations, which is related to us as students of an international Master’s Degree specialising in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. Moreover, the cooperation between France and Brazil is strong and began at the beginning of the 20th century.
Matthieu Pautonnier – Specialist in Credit Risk
On Thursday 26th October, we welcomed Matthieu Pautonnier, a quantitative economist in TAC ECONOMICS, a private practice founded in 1991, in Saint Hilaire des Landes, near Rennes.TAC ECONOMICS, employs 20 people in France who work also with a subsidiary implanted in India and sales representatives around the world and more precisely living in India, Singapore, Japan and London. His work of quantitative economist consists in reasoning on numbers and “making them talk”. He is also Production Manager, because he participates in each stage of the production from the manufacturing itself to the customer follow-up. He oversees all French teams.
The company relies on 4 main activities : emerging country risks, thanks to this activity the company developed an internal tool named Riskmonitor, mature economies and raw materials, Strategic Consulting and Technical Studies. This conference was really enlightening and complemented the classes of International Trade and Economics that have been taught in our formation until now. The bonus of this conference was the comparison between a country of the ALPI region and another from the PECO zone, namely Argentina and Russia.
Stéphanie Grasteau – Self-employed Event Planner
Stéphanie Grasteau, auto entrepreneur, came to expose her career in Events Management and the evolutions that this sector has known these past ten years.
Being an expert on sports events and coming from Le Mans, she worked and still offer services for the Le Mans 24h car race. Now, Stéphanie Grasteau is independent and proposes consulting, sponsoring advertising control services. She participates in the organisation of different types of events, like festivals and rallies. She stressed the fact that the creation of a professional network is paramount in events. Finally, Stéphanie Grasteau dedicated the end of her conference to an exercise helping us to think about ourselves, what we like and what we could do in our professional future. This moment of exchange gave us the opportunity to focus on what we really want to do, something that we do not take time to do in the everyday life.
Carlos Laboy – Auto-entrepreneur portoricain
We got the pleasure to welcome Carlos Laboy, a Puerto Rican entrepreneur and Language Assistant at the University Rennes 2. He presented the situation of Puerto Rico and especially the law of cabotage that force the imported products to pass through the United States. He wanted to be able to develop business activities locally, that is why he founded two companies with members of his family in Puerto Rico.
His first entrepreneurial project, Olita, an eco-friendly clothing brand dedicated to fans of surf, this activity being very popular on the island, manufactures t-shirts with timeless design. Moreover, the project is committed to the development of the island, 10% of the benefits being donated to local social actions. His second entrepreneurial project is the creation of a cultural bar, Birriola, where artists, musicians, poets, painters… can express themselves. Still with the idea of “localism”, they offer drinks, like Puerto Rican bears.
Alfonso Martinez – Responsable de Gestion de Projets de Coopération Internationale avec l’Amér
On Friday 27th of October 2017, the Master ALPI had the pleasure of welcoming Alfonso Martinez Saenz, Project Manager at Expertise France, in Paris, since 2013. There was a good atmosphere during this conference, thanks to the very jovial character of Mr. Martinez.
Before starting to talk about his experience, Mr. Martinez asked us to introduce ourselves by giving our name, our destination for the second semester, the countries of South America we went and finally our professional project after the master.Then it was Alfonso Martinez’s turn to introduce himself. He comes from Monterrey, northern Mexico. He studied from 2001 to 2005 Political Sciences and International Relations at Monterrey Technological Institute and he also stayed one year in Madrid, in exchange program at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in 2003-2004 where he studied European Institutions and International Law. Then he did two master degrees at the University Paris XIII. Firstly a Master’s degree in international cooperation with emerging countries and secondly master degree in international cooperation and NGO in 2009-2010.
At the end of this last master degree, he did an internship in 2010 at the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) in Paris in the delegations of the EU and Mexico, during which he analyzed public policies on development aid. Then Alfonso went to Brussels in January 2011 to work for 3 months at CONCORD, a European NGO confederation for relief and development. After these 3 months in Brussels, he came back to Paris to work at France Expertise Internationale as cooperation operator implementing social cohesion projects in Latin America (EUROsociAL project) then he worked 6 months as European and International Relations Manager at FEDEREC (Federation of Recycling Companies). Finally, since May 2013 he returned to Expertise France, as Project Manager for EUROsociAL project. The projects work with the 18 Latin American countries that want help from Europe. It also benefits from European Commission financial assistance and therefore tries to use these funds wisely. Alfonso Martinez is in constant contact with ministries in Latin America such as the Ministry of Women’s Rights and the Ministry of Social Development.
Ludivine Félix – Responsable de Communication d’une ONG bolivienne
We had the opportunity to have a conference from Ludivine Felix, Communication and Volunteers Manager for the association Bolivia Digna. Ludivine worked in various Non Governmental Organizations in the European Parliament. After that, she decided to completely change and went to Bovilia, more precisely to Cochabamba, in order to give more visibility to this association. At first, she went there as volunteer before she ask the director of the association to work for him as Communication Manager. She has been working in this association for one year now and she had to launch new strategies in order to attract new volunteers so that the association could work better. For example, she changed the entire webpage of the association in three different languages: French, English, Spanish. Moreover, she developed the social networks too like Facebook or Instagram, which are the ones that work best amongst the Youth population. She presented us how the association worked and the difficulties that they are actually facing because of the Bolivian government that is not in favor or these types of associations. Consequently, a lot of them are forced to close and stop their activities.
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