Brazil’s Bolsa Família program is a conditional cash transfer scheme that has been hailed for dramatically reducing poverty and inequality since its launch in 2003. Under the scheme, qualifying families receive a monthly stipend on the condition that they fulfill certain requirements in health and education. Although the Bolsa Família is a federal program, each of Brazil’s 5, 564 municipalities play an important role in its local implementation. Using a combination of regression analysis and four case studies from the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, this study evaluates the impact of local government capacity on beneficiaries’ health and education. I find that municipalities with higher administrative capacity – more developed collaboration across sectors and more competent staff – are likely to be more effective in implementing the BFP, as observed by higher monitoring rates. As a result, the percentage of beneficiaries who comply with the program’s health and education requirements is likely to be higher in these municipalities. The paper concludes that local governments are critical actors in the success of this program and calls for policymakers to build administrative capacity through a combination of incentives and regulations.

 

People Researcher: Pui Shen Yoong Advisors: Professor Jessica Teets (Political Science), Professor John Maluccio (Economics)

Related Links Bolsa Familia (in Portuguese) The Nuts and Bolts of Brazil’s Bolsa Familia Program: Implementing Conditional Cash Transfers in a Decentralized Context  Avoiding Governors: The Success of Bolsa Familia Buying Out the Poor? Bolsa Familia & the 2010 Elections in Brazil

Downloads Full Report Presentation Slides

In a January 2011 Winter Term Class, “Twenty-First Century Global Challenges,”  21 Middlebury students studied great challenges of our time – including wide-scale poverty, climate change, and the struggle for human rights. They then analyzed how social entrepreneurs – individuals and groups who are developing new ways to attack systematic problems – are taking on these challenges.  For example, Nina Cameron ’12 studied how the Global Network is trying to reduce the prevalence of neglected tropical diseases; Erin Kelly ’13 studied how the University of the People is providing tuition-free higher-education throughout the developing world.  The students also spend much of the course developing a vision for a new center for social entrepreneurship based at Middlebury College.  On this MiddLab, we report the ongoing results of this work.

People Jonathan Isham, Jr. Professor of Economics Wahid Ahmed Catherine Brown Nina Cameron Brian Clow Thomas Crocker Matthew Engel Stuart Fram Allison Grant Mark Hannah Paul Hildebrand Aaron Kelly Claire McIlvennie Olivia Noble Bradley Osborn Devin Perkins Hilary Platt Jeronimo Riefkohl Martin Sweeney Rhidaya Trivedi Kenneth Williams Nicole Williams

The Ripple Effect in India

Related Links Social Entrepreneurship in the Liberal Arts – Jonathan Isham (The Middlebury Campus, January 20, 2011) The Development Project Management Institute (DPMI) at MIIS Careers in the Common Good Old Stone Mill The Alliance for Civic Engagement Fred Kropp’s course on social entrepreneurship at MIIS

Downloads Reducing the prevalence of neglected tropical diseases – Nina Cameron ’12 Increasing access to tertiary education in the developing world – Aaron Kelly ’13 A vision for the Hassenfeld Center at Middlebury College – the students of ES380 A 2007 paper on social entrepreneurship at Middlebury – David Hopkins ’07.5 Social Entrepreneurship Collaboratories – Gordon Bloom (Harvard ’82) A recent talk from Bill Gates on Education for the Real World

One Less, Una Menos, a non-profit founded by Monterey Institute students, partners with organizations in the San Jose area to end human trafficking.

Last semester a group of students in the Master of Public Administration program completed a case study of One Less, primarily addressing organizational sustainability in the young nonprofit start-up.

People Adriana Taboada Elizabeth Carlson-Bast Johanna Lounsbury Tahmina Karimova

Related Links One Less Website One Less Website for Volunteers One Less Organizational Sustainability Presentation (Prezi) One Less Organizational Sustainability Notes (Zoho Notebook)

Downloads One Less Action Research Report

Last January fifteen intrepid graduate students (aka Team Monterey 4) traveled to the Bajo Lempa region of El Salvador to tackle agricultural, water access, and conservation issues. Visit the Equipo Monterey blog to explore their adventures searching for illicit turtle eggs at the local markets, or designing workshops for food producers to share knowledge and potential growth strategies.

People Adele Negro Program Directory and Language Faculty Lucy Jodlowska Communications and Outreach Coordinator Robert Taggart Logistics Coordinator Amy Holste Fundraising and Development Coordinator Ryan Gonzalez Recruitment and Applications Coordinator

Related Links La Coordinadora – Asociación Mangle Foundation for Self-Sufficiency of Central America MIIS Press Release

Downloads Memorandum of Understanding between La Coordinadora – Asociación Mangle (LC-AM) and MIIS El Salvador: January 2010 gallery Team Monterey 3 YouTube Channel

For this project I returned to Old Providence for almost a month over J-term with a Garmin GPS to ground-truth information I had acquired from CORALINA (the government-sponsored Corporation for the Sustainable Development of the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina) and to create my own more accurate dataset. I recorded data for all of the roads, dirt roads, sidewalks and trails on the island, as well as important waypoints, and compiled a map of this information, populated areas, the biosphere reserve, and English nomenclature—which I fact-checked with native islanders.

People Alison DeGraff Cartographer and Researcher

Related Links Old Providence and Santa Catalina Map Old Providence and Santa Catalina Brochure

Downloads DeGraff, Old Providence Polylines, Waypoints, and Nomenclature DeGraff, Old Providence Hillshade CORALINA, Old Providence Contour Lines, Gullies, and Populated Areas CORALINA, Old Providence Biosphere Reserve

From the Spring 2010 issue of the student-published Middlebury Geographic magazine, Andrea Jones examines the economic and geographic conditions that lead to the creation of slums and shantytowns across three continents.

People Andrea Jones Author Emily Allison Photographer

Related Links Middlebury Geographic Spring 2010 Middlebury Geographic Spring 2009

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