BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : MAY 1, 2000 ISSUE
INTERNATIONAL -- LATIN AMERICAN COVER STORY Brazil: Small Investments That Make a Big Difference (int'l edition) It hardly seems possible that part of the solution to Brazil's crushing poverty problem could emerge from a beauty salon in Rio de Janeiro. But sure enough, at Dai's Afro Aesthetic & Cultural Center, young women from the city's shantytowns are learning skills that could put them on the road to a better life. Rita de Cassia de Jesus, an 18-year-old single mother, is learning how to cut and style hair and hopes to land work at a salon when she graduates. She has also picked up proper manners while studying at Dai's. ''Even my family noticed a difference,'' Rita says proudly. The $60-a-month cost of the six-month hairdressing course is paid by Comunidade Solidaria, an innovative antipoverty initiative launched in 1995 by Ruth Cardoso, a prominent sociologist who is the wife of Brazil's President. The program also gives students a $28-a-month stipend and pays for meals and transportation to and from school--without which the unemployed Rita would be unable to complete the course. Comunidade Solidaria has an annual budget of $175 million, thanks largely to private and corporate donations. That pales in comparison with Brazil's $100 billion a year in public spending on social programs. Yet Comunidade Solidaria has vastly expanded the reach and impact of government programs in education, health, and job-training by linking them with nearly 1,000 nongovernmental organizations and 70 business sponsors. Literacy is one of Comunidade Solidaria's biggest success stories. More than 40,000 college-student volunteers and community leaders have been trained and dispatched to 1,000 of the country's poorest communities, where they have taught more than 1.5 million people to read and write. Business has played a leading role in the effort: In exchange for donations, companies can ''adopt'' a community and promote the sponsorship in their advertising. Comunidade Solidaria also has provided job training for more than 50,000 poor teenagers, most of them dropouts who are at risk of joining gangs. The program offers everything from computer training to courses on how to organize children's birthday parties--skills that teens can take back to their poor neighborhoods and turn into viable businesses. ''Localized programs like this won't eliminate poverty, but they will improve the situation of people who are very vulnerable,'' says Cardoso. That's how Dai's Afro Aesthetic & Cultural Center got its start. Run by Idalice Moreira Bastos, whose nickname is Dai, the school has trained and found jobs for more than 220 recipients of Comunidade Solidaria scholarships in the past four years. Students, mostly women age 14 to 21, also study math, grammar, and manners. ''Poor women can't afford to go to college to get a decent job,'' says Moreira Bastos, 49. ''First, we have to learn basic skills so we can earn money to buy milk for our children and food for ourselves.'' The hairstyling course has encouraged some students to think big. Katia Correia, 23, used to work as a receptionist, earning just $38 a month. She took Dai's class and was talented enough to become an instructor. Now, she makes $216 a month and plans to learn English and computer skills next. ''I want to have my own business,'' she says. That would have been a distant, if not impossible, dream a few years ago. By Ian Katz in Rio de Janeiro _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS The Fight against Latin Poverty (int'l edition) LATIN AMERICA COVER IMAGE: The Fight against Poverty CHART: The Intractable Problem TABLE: Promising New Approaches to Reducing Poverty Mexico: A Powerful Incentive to Keep Kids in School (int'l edition) Peru: Fixing the World, One Roof at a Time (int'l edition) Brazil: Small Investments That Make a Big Difference (int'l edition) ONLINE ORIGINAL: Chile: Turning Street People into Businesspeople INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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