|
Brazilian oil giant Petrobras announced the 76 social projects that will receive funds from the Petrobras Zero Hunger Program, which this year will have a budget estimated at 20 million reais (US$ 9.2 million).
This money will be used in actions turned to guaranteeing the rights of children and adolescents; education and professional qualification of youths and adults; job and income generation and social and volunteer enterprises. The minimum value to be invested in each initiative is 660,000 reais (US$ 275,000). Since its creation, in 2003, the program, according to Petrobras, has already invested in 1,751 social projects in all the Brazilian states, carefully chosen among 15,000 partnerships in various sectors of the civil society. In this period, over 10.5 million people have been benefited, directly or indirectly. After Petrobras president Sergio Gabrielli announced the chosen projects, the special secretary for Policies for Women, Nilcéa Freire, addressed the importance of the Petrobras program among the social policies developed by the Brazilian government. "It plays an extremely important part as it shows ways out. Men and women, citizens all around the country need to be supported in their most urgent needs. It is necessary to find the means through which they will survive, will have a dignified life to lead their own history. The Petrobras project helps in this," he said. Project "Reunindo Sonhos e Adoçando Esperanças com Açúcar Mascavo, Melado e Rapadura" (Collecting Dreams and Sweetening Hopes with Brown Sugar, Molasses and Molasses candy) is one of the 76 projects approved in the process this year. Developed by the Association of Micro and Small Producers at Santa Tereza Settling, in Tocantins state, the project will directly or indirectly benefit hundreds of families according to Mario do Carmo Teixeira, of the Community in Action Project. "They are families that need to improve their income, their qualification and their knowledge. They are going to work on productive settling and income generation. That is fantastic: The city as a whole and the region will be benefited." The Petrobras Zero Hunger projects are developed through income transfer in the Infancy and Adolescence Fund, through the state-owned company's corporate sector, through the Company's Business Units and through volunteer projects that counted on the collaboration of company workers. Established in 2003, the project ended the year of 2005 with a list of approximately 2,000 volunteers interested in participating in its workforce, among them retired people, of which 1,200 are already working in social projects established and managed with company support and funds.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.