I’ve been in their shoes before. Looking out over 20-some faces, full of excitement, trepidation and curiosity, I feel a familiar rush. They are the first, of an estimated few-hundred volunteers for 2010, to arrive to Chile to participate in the English Opens Doors program (Programa Inglès Abre Puertas). Implemented by the Chilean Ministry of Education and supported by the United Nations Development Programme, the English Opens Doors program places English speaking teachers in public schools throughout all 15 regions of Chile.

A little more than two years ago, I was a four-month volunteer in a local community at the “ends of the earth” in Chile’s XII region of Magallanes. I taught at a rural elementary/middle school in the Chilean Patagonia — the southern-most point of South America — where I lived with a Chilean family in a peach-colored corrugated tin-roofed home amongst glaciers, mountains, penguins, pumas and vast expanses of sheep-speckled, nearly untouched terrain.

As I walked out the door every morning to a brilliant ruby red and tangerine Patagonian sunrise and a rush of brisk air off the Strait of Magellan, I would brace myself for the ensuing rush of energetic adolescents racing around the hallways at the start of another school day in Chile.

Now, a thousand-some miles north of the little town, Punta Arenas, where I was a volunteer, this group of optimistic volunteers is sitting before me. In a university classroom a few floors above the summertime bustle on the streets of the Santiago city-center below, they are asking questions about the program. Like them, when I arrived as a volunteer in 2007, I was not really sure what to expect in the months that lay ahead.

Like them, I had come looking for an adventure, a meaningful experience, an opportunity to teach English and to improve my Spanish. What I found was a unique and dynamic initiative in a country that is leading the way in development in Latin America, as well as a network of teachers, students, professional contacts and lifelong friends, with whom I still keep in touch.

I liked the program for what it provided — the opportunity to volunteer and to really integrate myself in a local community in Chile for a reasonable cost, with a program I felt I could trust.

Two years later, I’m back, but for just a short time this time around, as a graduate student completing an internship in the English Opens Doors central office in Santiago. The reality of returning home to winter in Washington D.C. to continue with grad school readings and research papers menacingly looms over my shoulder.

Just for the moment, I’ll enjoy the agreeable weather of summer in Chile and the nostalgic sense of satisfaction that the program continues to grow, succeed and bring in greater numbers of volunteers each year with the same sense of idealism, adventure and excitement.

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About two hundred men, women, and children —representatives from several communities — gathered in front of City Hall with t-shirts, signs, protest songs, and elected speakers who took their turn in front of the megaphone.

Why? The City Department of Housing has officially announced that 119 entire favela communities, totaling at least 12,196 homes, will be removed by 2012. The city cites reasons of “risk” to justify their removal. According to the officials, “risk” means that these communities exist in places prone to flooding, landslides, or overall need for environmental protection.

However, not all of the communities threatened with removal are at risk. One such community is Vila Autódromo, whose only crime is existing in the very location where the city plans to build the Olympic Training and Media Centers. People do not want to go!

The argument is sound. If there is no environmental risk and if the community is safe and law abiding, the residents feel as if the city is simply cleaning up their city to make way for international tourists who are expected to flock in record numbers for the Olympic Games and World Cup. Residents feel like the city is once again trying to displace and exploit the voiceless poor because their houses aren’t pretty. Instead of helping them upgrade, the city wants them gone.

After years, and in some cases decades, of residence in these locations, where are they expected to go? One protest sign asked just that. Other signs read:

“There is so much vacant space is Rio, why displace us?”

“We’re asking for respect!”

“Say no to removal, Cariocas against social segregation!”

“Removal is a social crime!”

“We’re Rio’s chance to show that we have serious policy — Urbanization”

“Why do our news media give voice to the City and not the Community?”

Despite the peaceful and very orderly protest, City Hall closed its gates which, apparently, are always open to the public. In fact, I had walked through those very gates on my way to the protest just a few hours earlier.

In the end, a small handful of community leaders and journalists whose names were on a list were allowed past the gates of city hall to talk with the city officials. I personally hope for successful negotiations.

Jamie Worms is currently a volunteer with Catalytic Communities and Calle. To learn more about favelas and life in Rio de Janeiro, check out some of Jamie’s past posts.