Education
for sustainable
development.
Education for sustainable
development
Itaú Unibanco believes that education is key to Brazil’s sustainable development. This guide presents a brief overview of the bank’s social investment, which is conducted through Itaú Social Foundation. The Foundation’s core purpose is to develop, implement and disseminate methodologies aimed at improving public education policies and the evaluation of social projects.
In partnership with federal, state and municipal governments, the private sector and civil society organizations, Itaú Social Foundation operates throughout Brazil. These strategic alliances bring together a wide variety of expectations, competencies and perspectives, which contribute to solutions that reflect the country’s complex demands. Partnerships with the public sector help programs to secure continuity while reaching scale, in order to benefit a growing number of individuals and communities.
Core areas of work include: extended educational services provision, educational management, the evaluation of social projects and social mobilization.
You will find a description of the Foundation’s main programs below.
Unicef Award, 2007 edition,
Bem TV NGO – Education and Communication
Escrevendo o Futuro (Writing the Future), 2006 edition, regional workshops
Itaú Social Foundation’s work has won recognition in Brazil as well as overseas, thanks to the consistence and relevance of its initiatives. For example, in 2008 the Escrevendo o Futuro (Writing the Future) Program became a federal policy and program for elementary and middle schools, as the Olimpíada da Língua Portuguesa: Escrevendo o Futuro (Portuguese Language National Olympics: Writing the Future), , thanks to a partnership between the Foundation and the Ministry of Education.
The Foundation’s Itaú-Unicef Award has become one of Harvard Business School case studies,, as an example of a strategic partnership aimed at solving social problems.
The Itaú-Unicef Award program provides training in addition to identifying, promoting and awarding nonprofit organizations that conduct socio-educational initiatives in partnership with public schools and social welfare agencies.
In 2009, the Portuguese Language Olympics received the Corporate Citizen of the Americas Award, the Foundation for the Americas, an agency under the umbrella of the Organization for American States (OAS), which recognizes private sector projects that combat poverty in the continent. The program was listed in the Education category, which includes projects that promote development through teaching.
The Foundation’s investments in programs will total R$ 78.5 million in 2011.
index
Educational
Management - 12
Economic
Evaluation
of Social
Projects - 17
Extended
Educational
Services - 8
Social
Mobilization - 19
Extended Educational Services
Public education programs must acknowledge that a young person’s development is a process that takes place in formal and informal settings, including the home, school and community. In order to fully develop their cognitive, social, emotional skills and abilities required to navigate life, students need to experience socio-educational activities that help develop social relationships, in addition to mastering competences and professional skills. By being exposed to a wide variety of learning experiences, students are able to acquire values that promote diversity and solidarity, while increasing their access to cultural resources and new technologies.
Over the years, the concept of extended educational services has been disseminated in various environments and institutions in Brazil, where a regular public school day lasts on average only four hours. A recent growing trend has been the development of partnerships between public schools and community resources, in order to offer more educational opportunities for students.
Initiatives such as Itaú Social Foundation’s Itaú-Unicef Award and the Jovens Urbanos (Urban Youth) Program promote the provision of socio-educational activities for children, teenagers and young people in a way that is integrated with public education and social assistance policies, exploring different educational spaces in order to achieve a more well-rounded education.
The Foundation also partners with the city government of Belo Horizonte through its Escola Integrada (Extended Schooling) program to provide training for managers and specialists at the municipal social assistance and education departments, as well as from non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The Foundation also invests in the program’s monitoring system and impact evaluation.
Itaú-Unicef Award – Created in 1995 by the Itaú Social Foundation and by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), its purpose is to identify, recognize, foster and give visibility to the work of NGOs that offer after- school programs and extended learning time initiatives for socially vulnerable children and young people, in a way that is integrated with public education and social assistance policies.
The award is made biannually in odd years. In the even years the program offers training sessions so that participating organizations can expand the debate on extending educational services, share best practices based on their own environments and develop social networks. In addition to onsite training courses, Itaú Social Foundation offers online courses.
In 2011, the 9th Itaú-Unicef Award’s theme is “Extended education: experiences that transform”. Awards are presented to socio-educational projects of nonprofit, non-governmental organizations serving children, teenagers and young people between the ages of 6 and 18. Selection criteria include the quality of services, the level of collaboration with the public school system, conformity with the legislation in effect, its relevance to local context and potential for social transformation.
As one of the pioneers in Brazil to encourage this practice – strongly supported by the Ministry of Education (MEC) in the form of the Mais Educação (More Education) federal program –, the award has received more than 15,000 applications from social projects, reflecting a wide array of innovative experiences that are developed in various educational settings throughout Brazil.
Itaú-Unicef Award
More than 15.000 applications from social projects
Itaú-Unicef Award, 2007 edition, Oboré Arte e Educação Project
Jovens Urbanos (Urban Youth) Program – Itaú Social Foundation provides after-school educational opportunities for young people who live in large urban centers. The main objectives are to: develop young people’s basic competencies and skills for public and personal life; expand their cultural and social repertoire and foster their access to employment in addition to encouraging school attendance and graduation.
In 2011, in its sixth edition, the program has been expanded to attend 960 young people from 16 to 21 years of age, in four peripheral communities of the city of São Paulo: Lajeado and São Miguel Paulista on the east side and Grajaú and Ipiranga/Heliópolis on the south side.
Under the guidance of a program’s educator, participants participate at three four-hour meetings every week, which include workshops on different knowledge areas such as: multimedia communication technologies; hotel management; gastronomy, fashion and design; and urban architecture.
By travelling around the city, participants get a first-hand experience of different resources and at the same time identify thematic areas in their own neighborhoods, where they can, as a group, develop community development initiatives. Following the planning phase, groups are then given four months to implement these local projects.
In 2004 and 2005, the program was run in the city of São Paulo, in the districts of Campo Limpo and Brasilândia.
The 2007, 2008 and 2009 editions were focused on the districts of Lajeado and Grajaú. During these three years, a total of 1,440 young people were attended and over 60 projects were implemented in these two communities. In 2006, an edition of the program was
run in the city of Rio de Janeiro , including the districts of Jacarezinho, Manguinhos and Santa Cruz.
In 2009, the program became part of the Ministry of Education’s Guia de Tecnologias Educacionais (Educational Technologies Guide) , an annual publication aimed at disseminating best practices in education, including processes, programs and educational tools and resources.
Again in 2009, Jovens Urbanos – Sistematização de uma Metodologia, (Urban Youth - Systematization of a Methodology) was published as an effort to promote public debate on how to offer high-quality extended educational services for youth. The publication was tailored for private sector foundations, companies, public agencies and NGOs that work in this area, or plan to. The book describes implementation on a step by step basis as well as all stages of the program’s methodology.
Evaluation of impact – The results of Itaú Social Foundation’s evaluation of the Jovens Urbanos Program indicate an increase in participants’ monthly income and employment rates . Data shows an increase of 77% in personal incomes and 49% in employment compared to the levels of income and employment of the program’s control group.
The Program also has a positive impact on participants’
reading habits. Frequency in reading newspapers, magazines and books increases 7.77 times in relation to young people who do not participate in the Program. Participants also increased their participation in vocational and trade schools and tend to be more involved in social movements or NGOs when compared to their peers.
Jovens Urbanos (Urban Youth), 2004 edition
Jovens Urbanos
(Urban Youth),Young people developping competencies and skills
Escrevendo o Futuro (Writing the future), 2006 edition, regionals workshops
Studies and publications – Since 1995 the Foundation has produced the following publications in this area: Avaliação de Percurso: Fortalecer Organizações Sociais e Induzir Políticas de Educação Integral (2008) (Trajectory Assessment:
Strengthening Social Organizations and Inducing Extended Education Policies); Jovens Urbanos: Sistematização de uma Metodologia (2009) (Urban Youth - Systematization of a Methodology); Educação Integral (2009) (Extended Education); Colóquio Educação Integral (2010) (Extended Education Colloquium); and Tendências para Educação Integral (2011) (Tendencies towards Full Time Education).
Educational Management
Education is key to overcome social and economic problems.
Yet there are major challenges for realizing its full potential.
Educational management is one of these challenges, and includes a variety of different aspects in the day to day management of school systems, such as financing, supervision, teachers training, planning and evaluation;
leadership development, community relations. . Itaú Social Foundation has designed and implemented four core programs to help strengthen educational management competencies among public sector practitioners at various government levels , and promote public debate on the theme: Melhoria da Educação no Município (Improvement of Municipal Education), Excelência em Gestão Educacional (Excellence in Educational Management), Olimpíada de Língua Portuguesa Escrevendo o Futuro (Portuguese Language Olympics: Writing the Future) and Avaliação e Aprendizagem (Evaluation and Learning).
Melhoria da Educação no Município (Improvement of Municipal Education) – The program’s purpose is to build capacity among municipal managers to help them promote quality at the municipal education level. Since 1999, the program has been responsible for training 3,438 managers in 1,027 municipalities in 17 Brazilian states, developing strategies for developing assessments of the status of local education, followed by the development and implementation of a Municipal Education Action Plan.
The program uses various training tools, the main one being the coleção Diálogos sobre a Gestão Municipal, (Compendium of Dialogs on Municipal Management) a three volume set. The collection also contains software with a database of Brazilian social and educational indicators (Brazil Today/Brazil Hoje Application) and a specific methodology to construct an Education Plan The 2010-2011 edition of the program is being applied on 16 municipalities in the state of Paraná with some innovations. For example, there is a specific section focused on mapping systemic management flows, aimed at assessing, among other management aspects, how decision-making processes cascade down to the school and classroom level, following its beginning stages at the central office level. Another module focuses on enhancing community participation in the development of a Municipal Education Plan, as a strategy to improve the dialog and integration between the public sector and nongovernmental organizations.
Excelência em Gestão Educacional (Excellence in Educational Management) – The program was inspired by the New York City school reform that begun in 2001 and resulted in better learning outcomes and higher graduation rates. With the technical support of
3.438 have been trained by the Melhoria da Educação no Município (Improvement of Municipal Education)
the Fernand Braudel Institute and in partnership with the state of São Paulo’s Department of Education, Itaú Social Foundation analyzed which of the New York City school reform initiatives could be introduced and adapted to São Paulo’s state school system. Two key areas were selected: instructional coaching for teachers and assistant principals, and family outreach through the hiring of parent coordinators.
Ten of the worse performing schools in the state were chosen to participate in a three-year demonstration project, beginning in 2009. The program also includes two research projects and related publications: New York Educational Reform: Possibilities for Brazil, published in 2009, and The Charter School Model: the Pernambuco Experience, an analysis of how the public and private sectors partnered to run a network of public high schools in Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco.
Olimpíada de Língua Portuguesa Escrevendo o Futuro (Portuguese Language Olympics) – The program has become part of Brazil’s Ministry of Education’s Development Program. Thanks to this partnership, Itaú Social Foundation’s methodology has been expanded to reach all of Brazil’s 5,488 municipalities.
This far-reaching teacher training program is divided into two phases and succeeds in stimulating students’
participation throughout Brazil through the strategy of running a biannual national writing contest. In odd number years, when the contest is not held, participating teachers are offered with training and resources to help improve their instructional strategies and develop their students’ reading and writing skills . The national contest takes place during five stages - school, municipal, state, regional and national. Approximately 500 semi-finalists are selected to participate at regional meetings at the regional stage and, 152 of them are chosen to compete in the national finals, when 20 winners are selected, with awards for, students as well as their teachers and schools.
During odd number years, teacher training is intensified through seminars, onsite and online courses, and a virtual community to share and discuss teaching practices and materials.
In 2010, the program was expanded to include the participation of teachers and their students, from 5th graders to high school seniors. Participants are able to submit four different types of texts: poetry, literary memoirs, chronicles and opinion. All participating schools receive the Coleção da Olimpíada (Olympics Collection), a set educational resources aimed at helping classroom instruction. The Collection contains teacher guides, a collection of 10 samples of literary texts and a CD-ROM with audio reading of selected texts.
The 2010 Olympics received more than 249 thousand applications from public school teachers, 60,123 from schools and over 7 million students throughout Brazil.
In 2011, the program will focus on training teachers and managers working at municipal education departments.
Since 2002, the Itaú Social Foundation has counted on Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas em Educação, Cultura e Ação Comunitária (Cenpec – Center for Studies and Research in Education, Culture and Community) to provide the program`s technical coordination. In addition the Ministry of Education, other strategic partners include the União Nacional dos Dirigentes Municipais de Educação (Undime- National Union of Municipal Secretaries of Education), the Conselho Nacional de Secretários de Educação (Consed- National Council of State Secretaries of Education Secretaries) and the Futura TV Channel.
Evaluation and Learning – The Evaluation and Learning Program seeks to help promote the use of evaluation as one of the strategies for improving the quality of public education, collaborating in the construction and implementation of a series of evaluation and learning benchmarks for educational systems and schools. The initiative, which has the support of Cenpec and the Carlos Chagas Foundation, includes the following strategies:
1) studies including a field research in 2011 on the pedagogical use of large scale evaluations at four public school networks;
2) regional training sessions for municipal education department managers and educators;
3) seminars, debates, articles and publications;
4) meetings with the press.
of Brazil ` s municipalities participated
99%
Aplicativo Brasil Hoje (Brazil Today Application) – A new tool was created in 2007 to facilitate and improve public education managers’ ability to assess the social context of their municipalities: Brazil Today. This is a database that includes various social and educational indicators, organized into categories, such as: Social Assistance, Living Conditions, Culture, Education, Finance, Infrastructure, Population and Health, for each one of the municipal districts in Brazil. The database has more than 780 different indicators with their respective variables.
Database sources include the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística – IBGE (Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics), Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira – Inep (Anísio Teixeira National Institute for Studies and Educational Research), United Nations Development Program - PNUD, Unicef, the Integrated Financial Monitoring Systems (Siaf) and the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea/
MDS), among others. The purpose is to maintain the database constantly updated so that managers can make comparisons against historical series, prepare their own reports and monitor the evolution of their municipal districts. The application is available for download from the site www.fundacaoitausocial.org.br
Portal Itaú Fase – This tool was developed to assist policy makers, managers and society in general in their decision-making and resource allocation process. It is a management tool, hosted in the Itaú Social Foundation site, designed for those wishing to know more about
studies which look at the relation between aspects of family, school life and the quality of teaching. The website systematizes the results of scientific studies on the factors which interfere in educational success.
www.fundacaoitausocial.org.br/fase
Avaliação Econômica de Projetos Sociais
(Economic Evaluation of Social Projects)
The evaluation of social projects and public policies is increasingly becoming a critical tool in the quest for perfecting initiatives and social investment. In this context, economic evaluation also takes on a growing importance for supporting the management and improvement of projects, maximizing the allocation of resources and providing the necessary accountability to funding sources, project participants and society in general.
Itaú Social Foundation, in association with the bank’s Risk and Financial Controls area, has set up the Economic Evaluation of Social Projects Program, aimed at promoting the use of economic evaluation as an instrument for management of social programs and projects. The bank combines the use of its expertise in the economic area with its activities in the social field. The program is directed at the evaluation of social projects and seeks to instill an evaluation culture.
Evaluations – Itaú Social Foundation has already undertaken the economic evaluation of its own programs such as Raízes e Asas, Jovens Urbanos, Melhoria da Educação no Município and Escrevendo o Futuro. All the others will gradually be submitted to the same process. Evaluations are also undertaken for government inspired projects as well as those of partners such as the Futura TV Channel; the state of São Paulo government’s Social Assistance Economic Evaluation of
Social Projects, Rio de Janeiro 2008
Avaliação Econômica de Projetos Sociais (Economic Evaluation of Social Projects) - Promoting a Culture
of Evaluation
Department’s Programa Jovem Ação (Youth Action Program); Progressão Continuada (Students Social Promotion Program); Efeito da Educação Infantil sobre o Desempenho Escolar Medido em Exames Padronizados (Effect of Early Childhood Education on School Performance Measured by Standardized Tests); Relação entre Desempenho Escolar e Renda (Relation between School Performance and Income);
Ensino Médio Profissional (Vocational High School Teaching); Educação de Jovens e Adultos (Youth and Adult Education); and the Programa Escola Integrada of Belo Horizonte (Extended Schooling Program).
In 2011, evaluations of the following are planned:
Olimpíada de Língua Portuguesa Escrevendo o Futuro, Prêmio Itaú-Unicef, Curso de Avaliação Econômica de Projetos Sociais, Excelência em Gestão Educacional and Escola Integrada de Belo Horizonte.
Courses and seminars – Beginning in 2004, the program runs seminars and courses for presenting the main concepts and basic instruments for measuring the impact and the economic return of social projects and programs. About a thousand policy-makers and
managers of social projects at NGOs, government departments and foundations or business institutions have participated. Since 2008, Itaú Social Foundation has expanded the number of courses it runs for specific audiences such as those which have already taken place in partnership with the governments of Rio Grande do Sul, the João Pinheiro Foundation (Government School in the state of Minas Gerais), the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture’s office in Recife (PE), the city governments of Nova Iguaçu (RJ), Sorocaba (SP) and Florianópolis (SC), the federal government’s National School of Public Administration and the ArcelorMittal company in the state of Espírito Santo.
Social mobilization
The bank’s more than 100 thousand employees throughout Brazil are intermediaries in the relationship with local communities in which the institution operates. In line with the challenge of these teams in ensuring sustainable performance, Itaú Social Foundation invests in structured mobilization and qualified engagement in social actions, mainly in the areas of volunteer work and advocacy for the rights of children, adolescents and young people.
Itaú Voluntário (Itaú Volunteer) Program – In partnership with the Unibanco Institute, Itaú Social Foundation mobilizes and coordinates a network of employees who are or would like to be volunteers. The program was launched in 2003 as a pilot project but was then gradually extended to the bank’s administrative areas and since 2005 to the network of bank branches as well. In December 2010, there were already over 10 thousand people, working for the program – including employees, their family members and retirees.
Itaú for the Children
More than 14.000
employees made donations to the program
- Courses and Seminars
- Evaluations of the
Foundation ´ s and its
Partners ´ programs
Itaú Criança Volunteers´ Scavege Hunt
Employees have the choice of volunteering individually at social projects, developing a team project or supporting one of the programs run by the Itaú Social Foundation and the Unibanco Institute such as the Oficina de Uso Consciente do Dinheiro (the Workshop for the Rational Use of Money), the Olimpíada de Língua Portuguesa Escrevendo o Futuro and the Estudar Vale a Pena (Studying is Worthwhile).
Lectures, events for the exchange of experiences and internal communication campaigns are held periodically to encourage volunteer participation , raise the awareness of in-house stakeholders and acknowledge employee initiatives. Another important means of encouraging and promoting actions is through the Itaú Unibanco Volunteers’ Social Network (www.ivoluntarios.
org.br). This is a social network in which volunteers can register their projects, publish reports and announce opportunities for volunteer work.
Social Action Cells have been established by mobilization groups to coordinate social initiatives in each municipal district. Currently, 32 of them are being consolidated, implemented or are at the preparation stage in various Brazilian cities.
Itaú Criança (Itaú for the Children) Program – This program was set up to harness pro-activist spirit among employees, customers, partners and communities in order to promote social causes, with the support of the bank’s structure and the capillarity of the bank branches as catalysts of local community awareness and action. The social cause that has been selected is the involvement of society in advocating for children’s and adolescents’ rights.
In 2010, the program dedicated its efforts towards a national movement in favor of children’s education,
encouraging adults to read to children under 6 years old. Parents, educators, volunteer workers from social institutions and other people who participate in the movement are eligible for free kits containing four children’s books, a leaflet with tips on story-telling and a sticker to help disseminate the idea. Support for this initiative has come from Itaú Unibanco’s over 5000 branches, which helped to distribute 16 million books.
The Itaú for the Children Program also encourages bank employees to make donations or allocate part of their annual income tax bill to projects that serve children and teenagers.
According to Brazilian legislation on tax breaks, every tax payer who makes the full tax return may allocate up to 6% of the tax payable to Children and Adolescent Rights Councils. These resources are deposited with the Infancy and Adolescence funds and managed by the councils.
Based on their local assessment of children and adolescents’
needs, each council is free to define the projects in which it will participate under the local community action plan and that can receive fund allocations.
Today, Itaú for the Children Program works in conjunction with 31 Municipal Children and Adolescent Rights Councils (CMDCAs), located in the five regions of Brazil. In each partner municipality, a group of up to 15 volunteer employees mobilizes coworkers to contribute and select one of the projects suggested by the CMDCA.
At its annual campaign, the Itaú for the Children Program gives employees the chance to donate to a series of projects. In 2010, approximately 14 thousand Itaú Unibanco’s employees donated a total of R$ 1,182,000.00 to 30 recommended projects. The amount collected was 30% greater than in the previous year.
Itaú Unibanco
Volunteers
www.ivoluntarios.org.br
Itaú-Unicef Award, 2007 edition, Crescer no Campo Civic Association Information and Press Contacts
Conteúdo Comunicação
Cláudio Sá – claudio.sa@conteudonet.com Rose Silva – rose.silva@conteudonet.com
Luana Dalmolin – luana.dalmolin@conteudonet.com Michelle Barreto – michelle.barreto@conteudonet.com Tel.: +55 11 5056-9800
Itaú
Paulo Marinho – paulo.marinho@itau-unibanco.com.br Rejane B. Silva – rejane-braz.silva@itau-unibanco.com.br imprensa@itau-unibanco.com.br
Tel.: +55 11 5019-8880 / 5019-8881 www.fundacaoitausocial.org.br
MISTO Papel FSC© C014472
