BNDES and Favela Tour 4/20

Today we were supposed to head off to a bank at 8 in the morning, but the traffic is so bad in Brazil that our guide was an hour late because it took him 2 and a half hours just to travel about 20 miles from his house to our hotel! He stated he had left at 6 in the morning and still wasn’t able to make it through traffic!

We then eventually arrived at BNDES which is a bank that focuses on long term finance for enterprises and small businesses. They were founded in 1950 and is 100% state owned. Our speaker stated that they have their first female president and have 3 female directors out of about 7 total, with a total of 2,747 members. The speaker stated that the enterprises and small businesses that can be financed are any legally established company in Brazil. After learning more of what BNDES does, we asked our speaker to discuss poverty in Brazil, and he stated that minimum wage in Brazil is 985 Real a month which is equivalent to about 288 USD a month. He stated however that BNDES does not have a say in what the businesses make their minimum wage since that is a government issue, but they can advise them to provide amenities such as providing a break room or daycare at their upcoming offices. 

One very interesting thing we learned was that in Brazil women are given 180 days for federal maternity leave, and 60 days after they are allowed to breast feed at work. This is interesting to see since we do not have the same for women in America. 

In the afternoon we made our way over to visit Favela Vigidal. The Favelas are large communities of houses stacked on huge mountains filled with thousands of people. The beginning of our tour started with driving around in VW buses which should only have fit maybe 3 people per seat comfortably and we squeezed everyone in there! We zipped up and down the hills of the favela and made it to where we ate lunch, which was not what we expected. Our favela guide said the view we had was better and cheaper than the people who own houses that are billions of dollars because they didn’t have the view we had

However, the restaurant we stayed at was not owned or run by people that lived in the favela. It was an outside company that ran it and no profits went towards those that lived in the favela. While there we tried Guarańa soda which tastes almost like a cherry soda that was very refreshing! Some of us tried Feijoada which was a mix of several different meats and black beans served with rice

Next stop we went to Alzira De Aleluia which was a community center for kids as young as 3 to about 15 where they have donated books, ballet classes, classrooms and  computers. The woman who was the president of the organization was very proud of the establishment and was very happy and enthusiastic to show us everything her program had to offer. After hiking up several stairs she showed us an open soccer field where children and adults are capable of playing there. She then made us a banana, pear and apple drink, and we all thanked her for sharing her program with us.
We then whipped through the busy streets of the favela and made it back to our bus and thanked our guide and called it a day