"Bolsa Escola Program" is connected with the SDG 1, 4, 5, 8 and 10.

#SDGAction42871

Description

Intro

Bolsa Escola is a Government initiative executed by the State Department of Social Development and consists of supplementing in come to Maranhão families, with the purpose of guaranteeing children and adolescents better conditions to attend school. Annually, families receive the resource for the exclusive purchase of school supplies. 
With the improvement in the conditions of attending school, the program also aims at the permanence of students in the classroom, reducing dropout rates and school dropout, providing more dignity and guaranteeing rights, and moving the local economy

Objective of the practice

1. Ensure the direct transfer of resources for the acquisition of school supplies to families benefited by the Bolsa Família Program; 
2. Contribute to reducing school dropout and dropout; 
3. Improve the learning conditions of students in public schools who are living in extreme poverty; 
4. To economically impact by injecting financial resources annually in the commerce of the municipalities of Maranhão, combining the improvement in the quality of life of those who need it the most, the strengthening of the local economy and generation of jobs.

Partners

Beneficiary families: promote access and stay in school.
Operator (Banco do Brasil): issue of magnetic cards; preparation of reports and provision of databases necessary for monitoring, control, evaluation and inspection.
Accredited network of commercial establishments: be located in the municipality of Maranhão; possess fiscal and legal documentation; be able to meet demand; providing debit card machines; facilitate access to information requested by the program management team; have at least 1 year of operation; issuing invoices regularly.
217 municipalities in the state: shared management in serving the beneficiaries and in the program's functionality.

Implementation of the Project/Activity

The management of the Bolsa Escola Program benefit mainly includes the following procedures:
I - selection of families enrolled in the Single Registry for Social Programs of the Federal Government with students between four and seventeen years old, enrolled in public schools, without limit of children per family;
II - administration of the benefit for implantation, continuity of payments and control of the situation and composition of the financial benefit; the payment will be made annually with 60 to 90 days of validity for purchase in the debit card
III - monitoring the issuance and distribution of the notification on the concession of benefit to its holder;
IV - monitoring the issuance, dispatch, delivery and activation of the magnetic cards of the accounting account specified in the contract signed with the Operator.
The financial benefit of the Bolsa Escola Program, in its first edition in 2016, was R $ 46.00 (forty-six reais), paid for children and adolescents between the ages of 4 and 17 years, in 2017 and 2018, accompanying With the increase, the value rose from R $ 46 to R $ 51 per child served. Announced in July 2016 by Governor Flávio Dino, the increase came into effect in this school year, during the second stage of the Bolsa Escola.
The benefit granted will be for exclusive use in the purchase of school supplies uniform, especially shoes, socks, trousers, shorts, shirts and T-shirts, backpack, pencil, pen, rubber, ruler, notebooks and similar; books indicated by the school)

Results/Outputs/Impacts

- Supplementation of income for families at the poverty line;
- Annual growth in number of beneficiaries;
-Elevation of the value of the benefit;
- Commercial movement,
- Encourages families to ensure the upbringing of their children,
- Self-esteem in childhood for the guarantee of school supplies;
- Circulation investment policy in the local economy;
- Opportunity to generate employment and income

Enabling factors and constraints

To ensure easy access of beneficiaries to the services of the Bolsa Escola Program, the State Government has launched the Bolsa Escola application, with the purpose of simplifying access to information and unblocking the card, an information tool for beneficiaries of the program, who in addition to the site and the ombudsman can install on the mobile device, helping the beneficiary to know the program well and get all their doubts, without leaving the house. The app can be downloaded from the Play Store and available credit card services, balance check, list of accredited business establishments and news related to the program, if the application does not solve the beneficiary's doubts, he can access a link that will maintain direct contact with the management team of the program, strategy is found by the State Government to ensure that the distance and isolation of social characteristics, g and economic conditions are not an impediment to the information reaching the beneficiary families to use the benefit granted.
Regarding restrictions, difficulties or limitations, the major challenge in its first edition was with the CORREIOS, which do not have agencies in the 217 municipalities and do not deliver the cards in the rural area, being the responsibility of the State Government to carry out Caravans in the municipalities that were created to guarantee agility of access to the benefit with direct assistance to the population, speeding up the challenge of delivering more than 400,000 cards and immediate unblocking, ensuring the acquisition of school material, as well as, as for the operator agent, Banco do Brasil, also in the same lack of agencies in all 217 municipalities in Maranhão, to offer the services of generation of new passwords and balances of the cards, is justified the ombudsman 0800, site, applications and roaming of the Caravans.

Sustainability and replicability

The Bolsa Escola Program affirms the thesis that income transfer programs alone can not break the intergenerational cycles of poverty in a state where more than 50% of its population is in a situation of social and economic vulnerability. In the notion of social and economic sustainability, when it includes the relationship between distribution, development and growth, these factors are being developed and taken into account in the actions implemented through the intersectoriality by the implementation and implementation at each edition of Bolsa Escola for low income people , in its set of actions and investments that aim to improve the quality of life of the population, to reduce social inequalities, social inclusion, expand rights and guarantee access to education services that aim to enable people to have full access to citizenship.
For the future stages, the Bolsa Escola Program is part of the actions of the State Government, whose main goal, for the period from 2019 to 2022, is to guarantee the visibility of all its invisible population and not yet accessed by public policies, granting of programs and benefits, to ensure that the Maranhão poverty index is reduced in its 217 municipalities.

Conclusions

The Bolsa Escola Program after the first year of success and with the news that the Government of Maranhão readjusted the value of the benefit offered to public school students to purchase school material by 12.5%, grew in recognition and in the search for commercial establishments interested in selling the utensils. In the second year of registration, in the second edition, the number of establishments already capable of selling had an increase of 352 new trades, higher than that observed in the year, according to reports from owners of establishments, 30 to 50% expected sales expected in previous years, generating social inclusion, employment, income and expansion of clientele, low income, previously not accessed by the direct of belonging and autonomy in guaranteeing school material for their children. 
Unlike the federal program, Bolsa Escola does not limit the number of beneficiary students per family, guaranteeing the right to all members. 
It is the first time in the country a social program starts this size and this way. Usually one begins with pilots, attending a small group of people and then this is expanding. The Bolsa Escola started with the maximum amount, the limit amount of beneficiaries. 
To ensure that the students benefited can use the resource for the purchase of school supplies as soon as possible, the Government of Maranhão performs caravans that work at a joint effort to deliver and unblock cards. 
The caravans are composed of work teams and, in a coordinated way and directed to the municipalities with the highest concentration of beneficiaries, where they deliver and unlock cards in the municipalities, and in the most isolated locations in the State, these actions are also an opportunity to guide and update registrations. 
On the impact on the policy of access and permanence in the classroom, in a state where we have a history of an intergenerational poverty cycle, with a population of almost 7 million people and 4.5 million enrolled in the Cadastro Único for social programs of the Federal Government, to ensure school supplies, in the long run, at least impact on the numbers of correction of flow in the distortion age series, combat illiteracy school achievement and completion of the basic minimum cycle of education. 
The success of the state program was highlighted at the International Fair in commemoration of the 30 years of the School Office Brasil held in São Paulo in August. At that time, the operationalization of Bolsa Escola was presented. According to reports from the manufacturers of school material itself, the program is considered a success story because it favors a considerable increase in the sale of these products throughout Maranhão, and in a short space of time.

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