I'm Flora Castro.
I'm live in Rio.
I'm Lais Baptista.
Originally from Rio but I now live in the UK.
I"m Dayse Dantas, and I'm from Goiânia, Brazil.
Midwest Brazil.
A couple of us found out that a publisher in Brazil, they had bought the rights to Looking
for Alaska, but they hadn't published it.
And then we started this petition to ask them to publish it.
And when it was published, John mentioned in a video that he didn't have the book.
So one of us, her name is Luana, she had this idea of a secret project for us to get Looking
for Alaska, and we would get all the nerdfighters that we knew separately.
We started getting together in this secret project group that we created on Facebook.
At the beginning we were around thirty, forty.
By the end of the project, it took us almost a year to get the book all over Brazil.
We were making mini gatherings so that people could sign the book, they could write.
We made a huge list of different variations of the quote, "If people were rain, I was
drizzle and she was a hurricane."
We made a huge list of different variations.
And we signed, we underlined our favorite passages.
Drawings, there were lots of drawings.
We did several things.
The book was like this, and it ended up like almost like this.
It was super thick.
And then we didn't know how to get the book to him.
And then one of us, Erika, she was going to LeakyCon, and he would be there.
And we also got this official Brazilian jersey.
Pelé signed it.
So we were like, "Oh, this is a great gift we can give him!"
So we were able to organize ourselves to get it done before LeakyCon, and then Erika sent
it to him.
And then he made a video about it, and then lots of Nerdfighters saw that video, and then
they came to that group.
And then that group became Nerdfighters Brasil.
By the time we finished the secret project, we were just under two hundred people, and
that was 2012.
Nowadays, we are around four thousand people.
Just after we handed the book to John, we started organizing this song book for Hank.
Secret Project 2.0.
The song book took like two years and a half to make.
We got every single music that Hank released in a CD.
And some of the ones that were only in video, we made transcriptions of the lyrics, because
not all lyrics are available online.
So we made transcriptions of the lyrics.
Me and Flora were the coordinators of this project.
Yeah, it was a nightmare, but it worked out.
We got Nerdfighters to make art for every single song.
Every single one of the songs had different art from a different Nerdfighter in Brazil.
And each one of the covers for each CD - we divided the book into CDs - has a different
art cover made by an artist, an actual artist.
Because we have some Nerdfighter artists!
We made the cover, we made everything, and then we sent to Rafaela that is here today.
And it was delivered to Hank at last year's NerdCon.
These two points where these projects were being delivered to the Vlogbrothers were really
cathartic moments in the group, because everyone was getting together.
Even the people who weren't in the project, they were so happy for all of us.
Nowadays it's kind of hard to schedule gatherings because we are so huge and you kind of get
lost.
But some states still have regular gatherings, and we've made so many friends.
We are friends because of Nerdfighteria.
And I think we can honestly say that, like, my best friends right now are because of they
came from Nerdfighteria.
Even though we live far away each other.
Like, I won't get to see her for a couple of years I think, if we're lucky.
She lives in the UK.
I live in Rio.
She lives in the midwest, Goiânia.
But the first time that I see her is here!
But it's still something that changed our lives.
It doesn't feel like we are alone, even if we are apart.
Nerdfighteria is a great connection.
It's a group where we feel like we belong.
And it's always great because very often new people in the Brazilian group say, "Oh, I
feel so welcome here!
I was thinking that I wasn't going to participate because I thought it was going to be an already
set group, but I feel welcome here.
And I feel I can talk, I feel I can speak my opinions, and people will listen."
And it just warms my heart every time someone says that because it is true.
It is a an amazing group.
It's the kind of community I don't see anywhere else.
Fora Temer!