A welfare check under fire in Brazil

Brazil's landmark welfare program stipulates kids go to school and visit doctors regularly. But what happens to a family's government stipend when neighborhood violence keeps kids at home?

Eliane Antunes doesn't expect her grandchildren to walk through gunfire. But in Maré, a shantytown abutting Rio de Janeiro's international airport, their walk to school passes through a war zone between rival drug gangs.

That puts more than just an education at risk. It can mean that the family won't receive a welfare check from Bolsa Família, which requires recipient children to have good school attendance.

For Ms. Antunes, it meant her family was suspended from the program for three months.

“I had to prove my grandson was absent from school because of the violence,” says Antunes. “Today there are two schools closed because of the gang fighting. It happens all the time.”

A widow, Antunes receives $72 per month from Bolsa Família to care for two grandsons, whose mother is a drug addict. It supplements her monthly income of $314 as a housecleaner.

"Bolsa Família helps to pay for food, cooking gas," says Antunes, who has been on the program since 2003. "On a good day we have chicken."

Such benefits, and challenges to staying enrolled, have given recipient families an incentive to demonstrate regular use of educational and medical services, says Rômulo Paes de Sousa, the former vice minister of social development. "When families are forced to visit hospitals and send children to school, they raise concerns about the quality of public services," Mr. Paes says. Problems complying with Bolsa don't defeat the program, but make the entire social structure stronger, he says.

"Families are very careful to stay on Bolsa Família," says Nubia Erineuba, a social worker at Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré, a nongovernmental organization. "When they're cut off or suspended, they ask us how to get back on."

That was the case this month with Adriana Lima da Silva, a young mother of five who lives in Maré. Sometimes violence prevents her children from attending school or receiving health checkups, although last month a mere scheduling conflict caused her to miss a postnatal appointment for her two youngest children, which automatically suspended her family's November check of $69. Most of that money typically goes toward day care.

"The schools and clinics will excuse us if we can't come because of the violence," she says. "But if it's negligence, we're suspended." So long as she brings her children to this month's doctor's appointment, she'll be back on Bolsa Família, she says.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to A welfare check under fire in Brazil
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/1117/A-welfare-check-under-fire-in-Brazil
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe