Bolsa Família -- A Success Story in Brazil

Launched in 2003, as part of the Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) program by the  Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsa Família (Family Stipend) is seen as the world's leading wealth redistribution system.  It is a conditional cash transfer program that has benefited about 46 million poor people in Brazil, almost a quarter of its population.

The program provided income supplements to poor families subject to certain conditions such as 85% school attendance for children ages 6-15 and mandatory participation in socio-educational activities after school, 75% attendance for teenagers ages 16-17, vaccinations for children, nutritional monitoring and health education for women.

plastic id card for members

Besides reducing the income inequality, the program provides tremendous support to women.  93% of the program's beneficiaries are women and 27% of those are single mothers.  It strengthens their position in their households and communities, gives them more respect and increased influence within their family and has reduced domestic violence.  It has also initiated policies for development of labor skills.  The Ministry of Labor and Social Development works together with the local governments to link employment and social protection policies to ensure poverty reduction.  Bolsa Família gives poor families their first experience with banks, debit cards and credit cards thereby offering them "financial inclusion".  These people have access to small business initiatives and financing.

Bolsa Família gives children freedom from bonded labor and works in cooperation with the Ministry of Education.  It targets households with monthly per capita income lower than US $52.  The program offers US $13 per child/pregnant woman and US $19 per teenager (16-17 yrs. old).  Extremely poor families receive upto US $79 dollars a month.  The government does not put conditions on how the money is to be spent.

Enrollment is conducted at the municipal level and families are registered into a unified central database called the Cadastro Único.

Of course, the program has its glitches.  This blogger quotes a UNDP report,

Bolsa Família uses unverified means-testing conducted at the municipal level to select its beneficiaries. Given the programme’s large size, it would be very costly to use verified means-testing or proxy means-testing to identify eligible households. The programme’s unverified selection method has been criticized on the grounds that its highly decentralized process could lead to selection distortions, such as patronage and leakage.

And so, sometimes absurd things happen.  According to the blog SEMANCOL:  NOTÍCIAS ABSURDAS e PENSAMENTOS (Absurd news and thoughts)

Mother of ex-BBB Grazi gets Family Allowance

The seamstress Cleusa Massafera Smith is a 3204 recipient of the Bolsa Familia in Jacarezinho, in northern Paraná. The federal program of income transfer is aimed at families in poverty and extreme poverty. The problem is that Cleusa is the mother of actress and model Grazielli Massafera, known to participate in the program Big Brother Brazil.

(translated from Portugese by Google)

The main criticism about Bolsa Família is that while it ensures children go to school it has not improved the quality of education and it will not provide higher education.  One comment on BrazzilMag reads:

First, this money doesn't change miserable people into real citizens! If they were just poor, now they are the ones who receive "alms" from the government.
Second, the main criterion to receiving the money is something ridiculous: you just have to send your children to school. if they have attendance, it's ok. They don't need to really learn, just pass. what is not difficult, since teachers can't fail them.
What seems to be good is actually malefic, because when these students are aged to get to University, they won't. First, because there won't be Bolsa Familia when they are to enter High School, second because they won't have learned the basics of the subjects.

Another criticism is that the program has a rural bias; the urban areas demand a higher cost of living and the stipend is just not adequate to alleviate poverty.
No one, however, can dispute that poverty has fallen from 22% of the population to 7% of the population which is a remarkable feat. It costs only about 0.5% of Brazilian GDP and about 2.5% of total government expenditure.

Most people use that extra income to buy their children clothes and shoes. That is how it should be.

A similar program called Opportunity NYC was a privately funded $63 million initiative, the first of its kind in the United States.  The pilot program, however, closed on August 2010. I believe that these ventures must have the backing of the government and must involve several social, educational and economic reforms which are outside the reach of private enterprise.

Serious Farts

The world is a chaotic place what with the civil unrest in Egypt, war in Afghanistan, floods in the Philippines, Baby Doc in Haiti...the list is endless.  But we do have comic relief--in the shape of an anti-trouser cough (fart) law gaffe in Malawi.

Malawi's Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Dr. George Chaponda said in a radio interview with Straight Talk that he would table a bill in the parliament to make farting in public a punishable offence.  “We are entitled to introduce order in the country..I think the government has a right to ensure decency,” he justified.  "You can control your farting. Why not go to toilet instead of farting in public?" It is as disgusting as urinating in public, he said.  "Of course nature can be controlled, when somebody wants to go to the toilet is advised to go to toilet and if somebody maybe you are in public there you decide farting left and right it becomes a nuisance.”

Gosh! Left and right?

He later said he misinterpreted this clause in the legislation:

“Any person who vitiates the atmosphere in any place so as to make it noxious to the public to the health of persons in general dwelling or carrying on business in the neighbourhood or passing along a public way shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”

The solicitor-general Anthony Kamanga explained to him that the clause was alluding to "pollution" and not farting.

Dr. Chaponda will now let people "break wind" in peace in public.

Read more on this in the Nyasa Times.

Boot Out the Looters

 This is the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Nine men managed to enter the museum on Saturday, January 29th, 2011, and break a few things belonging to King Tutankhamen of the 14th century B.C.  So sad.  I took this picture when I went there last year.  Pity we were not allowed to take our cameras inside the museum. I hope the present unrest in Egypt does not take away from this world all the priceless treasures in this building and other parts of the country.  I'd like to go back there again some day.  There was so much to see and such little time!!
Tourism is Egypt's main industry; it's ancient peoples are such an inspiration to all of us. I hope we can keep everything and everyone safe.

Time on their hands

This school year, there were 90 pregnant girls in Frayser High School, Memphis, Tennessee.  That is absolutely tragic!!  These kids need to be involved in other extra-curricular activities.  The township should be responsible since, clearly, there isn't much of an age difference between the parents and the students either and so the parents are in no way competent to take responsible decisions.  Also, these  student mothers and infants are very likely to become a burden on the State. The township could also consider all-girls public schools?  How is it that a deeply religious South fails in teaching its communities the importance of marriage as a condition to parenthood? Churches have to wake up to this issue as well.

More on this from Sylvia Gayle, on Saturday, January 15, 2011:

This is absolutely ridiculous. Don't they have a sex education program that makes them take care of an egg or doll? Where are these teenagers parents? I do not intend to offend anyone's morals, but I also blame the extreme religious values of the South. There are some cases that abortions should be allowed. Up North we don't have these problems, maybe one pregnancy every 500 students. These children need to be educated, by both their parents and their school system, as well as their church.

Guns off their hands

On Saturday, January 8, 2011, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona State Democrat was shot in the head at an event held outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona by gunman Jared Lee Loughner (22) who later opened fire into the crowd killing 6 people and wounding 18 others.  Loughner has had a history of mental instability and was even suspended from Pima Community College because of his erratic behavior; however, he had no problem getting his handgun legally.   Giffords, who is pro-gun and called gun ownership an "Arizona tradition" is now, ironically, a reason for us to enforce stricter gun laws.  Madmen simply should not tote guns.

Fog Harvesting

Image by: Evan Leeson/ecstaticist

Small communities in Chile, Peru  and South Africa are harvesting fog for their water needs.  Fog harvesting is an ancient technique of collecting water -- dates as far back as 2,000 years ago when people collected fog water dripping from trees.  Serious harvesting started only a hundred years ago.  The idea for a mesh fog collector probably came from observing dew on a spider web.  Apparently, humidity changes the structure of the protein fibers of a spider web creating knots in them.  The water droplets slide down the smooth part of the fiber in-between the knots and collect at the knots.

Robert Schemenaeur,  Emeritus research scientist in the Department of the Environment in Canada developed the first fog catching project in Chungungo, Chile at the edge of the Atacama desert.  A fog collector consists of ultraviolet-resistant polypropylene mesh, stretched horizontally between two upright poles. The net is positioned at right angles to the prevailing winds. As fog passes through the net, it forms larger water droplets. The droplets run down the mesh and drip into gutters. The water then flows into pipes, which feed into a reservoir.
The project provides 40 liters of water per person per day.

Encouraged by the success of this project,

two German conservationists, Kai Tiedemann
and Anne Lummerich, tried the same technique in

Bellavista, Peru a settlement close to its capital city Lima.  Lima gets only a few drops of rain a year but a thick fog covers the city eight months in a year. The Germans who run an NGO called the Alimón enlisted the help of the members of the community in building these meshes, planting the trees, laying the gutters and creating a reservoir/tanks for the water.  Alimón is a Spanish term for 'working together'.  This project would not be possible without the participation of the entire community.  For more on the work of this NGO click here.


The 200 people that live on the steep slopes of Bellavista had no running water and are considerably poorer than the residents that live downhill and enjoy municipal water.  They spent one-fourth of their incomes on water which was delivered to them in trucks.  Fog harvested water has very little impurities and is much cheaper. A single net alone catches about 560 liters of water.  “At the beginning,” Lummerich said, “the people from the village thought Kai carried the water uphill during the night to fill the tanks, because they couldn’t believe there was so much water.”

Funnel shaped contraptions tied to Tara/casuarina trees also collect fog water; they drip down into gutters or tiled channels and transported storage tanks.  What is wonderful about fog harvesting is that people actually plant trees and there is no threat to the environment. 

It is also heartening to know that communities bond when there is a common cause.


The fog harvesting pictures on the blog are from this National Geographic website


Update 4/7/2013: Thanks to Permies.com for featuring my post on their forum!!  

Cop Cuts in Camden, NJ

Camden plans to lay off half of its police officers and a third of its firefighters this fiscal year. What is to happen to this city that had the highest crime rate in the country in 2008? Although 2009 saw a little improvement, the city is still the second most dangerous place in the US. It has a population of about 78,000 and these alarming crime statistics:

Crime	2004 TOTAL	2005 TOTAL	2006 TOTAL	2007 TOTAL	2008 TOTAL	2009 Year to Date (November)
Murder	49	35	33	45	53	30
Rape	56	47	66	67	66	55
Robbery	822	702	771	781	813	690
Agg Assault	897	898	818	865	832	915
Burglary	1,159	1,020	1,178	1,128	1,218	919
Theft	2,775	2,332	2,424	2,311	2,680	2,036
Auto Theft	1,357	955	1,180	1,161	993	922
Arson	172	142	129	115	120	122

(Source:  Camden Police Department, UCR Status Report and Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs, Rutgers University)

Camden against Downtown Philadelphia Backdrop

And what of the police officers, firefighters and other city workers who will be laid off?  How will they support their families and their mortgages?  Camden depends considerably on state aid; it has no tax base to raise revenue or cover its deficit.  From 2002 to 2010, the city was forbidden to raise property taxes.  PILOTs  or payments in lieu of taxes, were approved by state appointees so that large corporations in the city did not pay much taxes.  The New Jersey state budget cuts have further crippled the city.  Since the state takeover in 2002, not much effort has been put into luring investors here; the city has now been dropped like a hot potato. Whoever comes here these days, visits the aquarium or the Rutgers University (never after dark); the glory days of Campbell Soup, Lockheed Martin and RCA have long since been erased from its memory.  All we can look forward to are days of lawlessness.  Gangs will get a firmer foothold, and people who want a better life will just move. 

Camden--Near Drop

I think the government should now think in terms of planned demolition of the city.  Urban planning to bring about urban renewal. Maybe that will provide more jobs?  Companies could be persuaded to build around the Rutgers University campus providing employment to new graduates thereby extending the safety zone in the city.  Schools hours could be extended, so children's activities could be supervised.  They would have no time for gangs and would learn a little civic sense.  Salaries are a small price to pay for the overall mental and economic health of the community. Society needs growth--maybe this is the way to help it grow.

Thoughts?